Green Jack (11 page)

Her daggers
were in a pile on top of her satchel on the floor. She couldn’t
even reach them with her foot. Peter thrust a small clay pot no
bigger than a teacup in her palm. There was good dark soil inside.
She stared at it blankly.

“Make it
grow.”

Saffron blew
the hair that had escaped one of her braids out of her face. Sweat
stuck it immediately to the side of her neck. People disappeared
from Tagging centres. She had to get out of here. “I. am. not. a.
Numina,” she said, enunciated very clearly.

“There are many
ways numen presents itself.”

“How about
violence?” she asked. “Because that’s the only magic I’m feeling
right now.”

“Try,” he
motioned to the miniature pot. She had no idea what kind of seed
was buried inside. It was a shame to waste it. All the same, she
threw it at his head.

He ducked and
it sailed over his shoulder. The explosion that rocked the building
and sent the lights flickering was clearly due to something else.
The sound of gunfire crept closer, like a snarling dog making eye
contact. “Full blown riot,” of the Taggers shouted. “Follow
procedure.”

Procedure,
apparently, was to leave her behind when something crashed through
the window. A bottle of liquor stuffed with a lit rag landed on the
floor. Smoke billowed, acrid and eye-searing.

As a
distraction, you couldn’t ask for much better than a riot.

Saffron was
finally able to undo her restraints and grab her pack and her
knives. Taggers stood shoulder to shoulder at the broken window,
Tasers and tranquilizer guns at the ready. Getting by them would be
tricky, if not impossible. Others fussed around the commscreens and
the refrigerator. At the end of the row of chairs was a dark
stairwell. She had no idea where it led but it was still her best
option.

She took the
steps two at a time while the riot pressed at the wall, triumph,
discordant, and feral. The second floor was one long room full of
more equipment, researchers in lab coats, and people restrained to
beds. One had part of a leaf mask sewed to his face. His skin was a
sickly green, like mould on a tree. Someone moaned under a framed
poster of Cartimandua promising to protect the City.

The bank of
plants in the centre of the room partially shielded Saffron as she
stood momentarily frozen, bile burning in her throat. This would be
her, if they ever found the leaf mask. She’d be another test
subject, a specimen to be examined and experimented on. A woman
with leaves growing out of her mouth choked on a cry, noticing
Saffron.

There was
nothing she could do to help them. If she didn’t get out of here,
she’d be strapped in a chair again. She dove out onto the fire
escape and she was on the ground of the alley within moments. A
shadow lurched out of the way, bottles clinking. Saffron caught the
glint of a familiar katana. “Killian!” She nodded to the bottles at
his feet, the rags in his hand. “You threw the cocktail.”

He hadn’t
barged in on some suicide mission to save her. He was too smart for
that. Instead he’d given her exactly what she needed: a
distraction.

“You are
brilliant,” she said. “Now hand me one of those because I owe those
tagging bastards.” She lit the ends and tossed two more into the
side window, aiming for the chairs and the wall of blood. If the
people trapped upstairs were lucky, the fire would burn them up
like kindling.

Chapter
16

Jane

Jane came to so
quickly she leapt to her feet before she realized she was too dizzy
to stand. Searchlights blazed and curfew emergency lights flashed
red, adding to the disorienting chaos. She couldn’t see the
transport, or her friends, or even her guard. Chaos boiled in the
street.

Her mind went
black, trapping her there until someone slammed into her. She fell,
a boot slamming down on her hand. Pain stabbed into her fingers as
someone else kicked the side of her knee. When she finally got to
her feet again, she tripped over a sprawled body. There were raw
bite marks on the back of his neck.

The crowd
surged forward, carrying her along. Fires burned above, dropping
embers onto their heads. She didn’t know the geography of the Core,
only knew one direction: out. The sky tower of the Directorate
headquarters stabbed at the stars, but it was too far away. Mounted
soldiers plunged between the protesters gathered in the centre of a
crossroads, heedless of skulls and spines. A wall of tear gas drew
inexorably closer. She had to find a place to hide until the riot
was contained, someplace better than behind a maple tree.

And then all
she could see were brittle leaves, slapping at her face and
scratching at her arms as she was pulled between the branches. Her
head bumped against the trunk, vines curling around her throat.

Jane had
managed to get herself taken by the only ones worse than the
Protectorate and the rioting Elysians: a Dryad.

She hung from
her ankles, using some kind of braided rope and vine as a lasso.
Her irises were a strange acidic moss-green and her hair was mostly
tangled leaves and branches, woven with what looked like finger
bones. The branches were strewn with more bones, the remains of
anyone who had dared stray too close to her tree nest. Jane wasn’t
entirely convinced that the red glistening rope further up wasn’t
made of human intestines.She tried to speak through the pressure of
the vine across her windpipe. “I meant no disrespect.”

The dryad
hissed. She was beautiful the way nightshade, henbane and mistletoe
berries were beautiful; dangerous and deadly. Jane could only think
of the Garden, of being forced to breed little Green Jacks, with no
guarantee that they wouldn’t turn Dryad. She could almost imagine
she was right now being hanged by her own daughter. She was dimly
aware that she was gasping for air, that the lack of oxygen must be
meddling with her thinking.

Either way,
this was the City— where everything and everyone was food.

And everyone,
Directorate included, was always hungry.

The riot
continued to roar below them. Protestors dropped in their own
blood, rare bullets flying like the plates her mother used to throw
at her father. That was before he’d died of a fever, before they’d
moved deeper into the Enclave, before they’d climbed the shining
and slippery social ladder. Before Jane died in a maple tree, her
skin used as streamers. Dryads might not eat their victims, but
they definitely used them as cautionary decorations.

She was losing
the thread of coherent thought again. Her throat was on fire, her
lungs so empty she was deflating. Choking was a remarkably slow
process. Time turned to honey, sticky and stiff.

Focus. There
were the usual prayers for rain, for good crops, trancework for
omens, the symbols in tarot cards, colours, plants. She had to
sift, dig deeper. Her professors taught that numen came from the
earth, that it traveled though her, up her spine, to send images
into her brain. Her neck ached and burned, cramping under her
tattoo.
The pink moon, blue eyes between branches, a wooden
floor with light shining between the slats.

“Numina,” the
dryad said, suddenly curious and interested. Not a great deal of an
improvement, actually. Usually dryads spoke their own language,
sounding like twigs clacking together. Slow as sap, she leaned
closer, smelling of mud and moss. Her teeth were too sharp and a
she wore a necklace of beetles. Everything about her was suddenly
hungry.

She licked the
side of Jane’s throat. Jane should have been scared but she didn’t
have the energy. She slumped, breathless, vision greying. When the
dryad bit down, Jane jerked violently into consciousness. Pain
stabbed at her, flesh tearing. The dryad reared back, teeth bloody.
“No!” she shrieked. She rubbed Jane’s blood off her tongue so
aggressively, the vines loosened abruptly.

Jane dropped
out of the tree, hitting the branches as she fell. She hit the
ground as the riot broke open like rotten fruit.

She didn’t know
how long she crouched there until she managed to drag herself into
a doorway, until Protectorate soldiers found her covered in soot
and scratches. They escorted her to the train, the streets echoing
with the night’s work. Bodies lay where they had fallen, drawing
flies and coy dogs, and bonebirds overhead. Anything of value had
already been scavenged, leaving some corpses entirely naked. A
raccoon chewed on a bloody foot and Jane looked away, gagging.

Her mother was
waiting for her in the wayfarer’s cella inside the parapet. “Kiri?”
Jane asked. “And the others?”

“They’re fine.”
There were bags under her eyes, dark enough that she’d tucked an
orchid from the hothouse in her hair to distract from them. She
hadn’t even done that for her own wedding day. “They were starting
to suggest you’d run away, Jane.”

“Sorry the riot
interfered with your political aspirations,” Jane said tiredly.

“Don’t be
smart. And you survived, didn’t you?” Amaryllis stated, eyeing her
clinically. Her rose and lilac perfume overpowered the smell of
smoke from Jane’s burned dress. “Good. You’ll do the family
proud.”

“Wonderful. How
obliging of me.” She was too tired to care.

“There’s no
need for that attitude. If you do well, I will be promoted. Portia
might train with Cartimandua herself.”

“I nearly died.
Dozens did die.”

“But you
didn’t.” And that, as far as her mother was concerned, was
that.

Jane was
trapped between a useless scream and a woman who wouldn’t hear it
anyway.“Shall I drop you at the Collegium or would you rather clean
up at home?”

“The
Collegium.” The riot hadn’t been doused after all, it had only been
transplanted. It reverberated inside of Jane, battling against her
bones, burning in her brain. Her thoughts whirled, desperate and
impossible to catch.

“Yes, that’s no
doubt best,” her mother wrinkled her nose at the dried mud clumping
off Jane and onto the rickshaw cushions. “You will do what is
required of you,” Amaryllis said curtly. “And you will make this
family proud.”

Jane was
abruptly exhausted. “I’ve heard this speech before, Mother. And I’m
really not in the mood.”

“This is
serious.” She reached out, digging her fingers in her arm. “For
once, you have the power to be a true help to the family. Don’t
ruin it.”

Jane scrubbed
her hand over her face, trying to erase the vision of identical
houses on platforms and identical cribs behind identical windows.
Of the dryad’s too-sharp teeth and the bones in her hair. “You
don’t even know.”

“This isn’t the
first Program,” her mother added coldly. “And you ought to be
grateful. We were given cots in a locked room in the basement of
the compound. You get a house, a village. Luxury.”

Jane stared.
“You were in the Program?”

“How do you
think you were conceived?” she asked. “And why do you think you
were chosen for this? Honestly, think, Jane. Why else would it be
you?”

“I… but….my
father wore the mask?”

“Don’t be
silly. It wasn’t him. As if he’d have been strong enough. I married
him for other reasons.”

“But Green
Jacks aren’t born, not like that.” And the glaringly obvious: she
wasn’t a Green Jill. Though it might explain the dryad’s violent
reaction to her blood.

“No, but
there’s still so much we have to learn. And there is some progress.
Numen for one, has many secrets. The more we study and experiment,
the better we can understand.”

Jane might have
laughed that she and her mother finally agreed on something. Numen.
This had to be the reason numen stabbed at her, like an Elysian
pushing against the Wall. She wanted to ask about her headaches,
but she didn’t dare.

Her father had
worn a leaf mask. They must have been watching her all this time.
Her mother would have filed reports, growth charts, observations.
She was nothing if not thorough. Their move had nothing to do with
inheriting a house, Jane realised. When she thought about it, it
had come too soon after she had first shown an aptitude for being
an Oracle.

“Is he still
alive?” She asked. “My… biological father?”

“Of course
not,” Amaryllis waved that away. “The leaf mask was too much for
him. It always is. There are no miracles, Jane. But he did his
duty. We’d hoped for something more when you were born.” She
shrugged. “But progress is slow. It’s enough that we don’t give up.
And that I now work for Cartimandua.”

Of course. She
was stupid not to have realized it before. “You sold me.”

She should be
shocked. Startled, at least. But she felt nothing but mild
curiousity and a kind of recognition of a truth she should have
guessed before now.

“There’s no
need to get dramatic,” Amaryllis sighed. She looked briefly
animated, as if she had regular emotions like regular people. “It
was her idea, you know, the first breeding program. She was only
sixteen at the time. She’s brilliant.”

Jane wanted to
be anywhere else. “I have parapet duty in a few hours. I need to
rest.”

Amaryllis
nodded, annoyed. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Chapter
17

Saffron

Fires burned
everywhere. Angry Elysians had swarmed down the street, tossing
anything they could find through shop windows, smashing the
abandoned cars littering the streets, knocking Protectorate
soldiers off their horses. Soldiers responded with tear gas and
bullets. Search lights pierced through windows.