Green Jack (25 page)

The grass grew
as well, pushing at the soldiers’ ankles, then their knees. They
only had to follow the profusion of green to where Saffron dangled
like a ripe apple.

Chapter
40

Jane

“I’m not a
little girl,” Jane was still seeing distant flashes, but they were
finally fading. She felt different, stronger.

Caradoc
eyebrows rose. “I didn’t say you were.”

She blinked,
her pupils returning to normal. She wobbled slightly. Apparently
her newfound inner strength didn’t extend to her legs. Caradoc
caught her before she crumpled and embarrassed herself completely.
So much for proving she was capable. His arms were strong around
her as he led her to the soft couch in the corner. The blue light
from the bank of computer and vid screens on the opposite wall made
the cabin feel like it was underwater. It didn’t help that she felt
the world titling. Caradoc crouched in front of her. “Deep breaths,
Jane.”

She smiled
weakly. “I’m fine.” She couldn’t help a small thrill when he spoke
her name, but at least she could hide it. He took her hands, turned
them over to examine her palms.

“These look
like they’re healing.” His fingers brushed her skin. She
swallowed.

“I’m all
right,” she said again. When he just looked at her, she shrugged,
“It’s worth it,” she amended.

“Don’t they
teach how to ground the numen at the Collegium anymore? Like a
lightning rod?”

“This is
different.” He stayed where he was but he didn’t say anything, just
waited. Of course he knew it was different—he was the one who had
known to alter her numina mark. He was still holding her hands and
she concentrated on the gentle scrape of calluses and scars. He was
all coiled strength, sharp patience. “My father wore the mask,” she
told him softly.

His fingers
tightened around hers. “He was a Green Jack?”

She shook her
head. “No, you don’t understand. He wore it when I was
conceived.”

“Green Jack
aren’t born. They’re chosen.”

“I know that.
But the Directorate always experiments, surely you know that too.
So even though I wasn’t born a Green Jill, I think it must have
affected my numen.” It was the first time she’d said it out loud.
“Even no one quite knows how yet.”

He tilted his
head, considering. “It makes a certain kind of sense.” He stood up,
releasing her. He paced the room, stopping to switch on a kettle
plugged into a solar hot plate. “So the Program was reactivated.
They must be getting desperate.”

She sat up.
“You know about that?” He nodded curtly. “My mother sold me to the
Garden.”

“Your mother.”
His voice was ice and bare branches and bloodstained teeth.

“She’s…ambitious.”

“Not the word
I’d use.”

“Anyway, that’s
why I ran away.” She smiled drily. “I’m really good at running.

“It’s not just
running away if you’re also running towards something.” His eyes
burned into hers. “Jane,” he said when she didn’t respond. She was
trying to memorize the dark sound of his voice, the way he stood,
like he could handle anything. She nodded, not wanting to sound
like the breathless girl she was very much afraid she was. “Your
mark kept your numen in check. That’s why they do it. So they can
find you. One day they want to alter it to see what you see, but
they haven’t figured out how to do that yet.”

She thought of
the headaches, the pain at the top of her spine. She shifted,
watching him prowl. “I think being here in the Spirit Forest makes
me stronger somehow.” She lifted her chin. “Which means I can make
you stronger too.”

One of the
screens flashed insistently, interrupting them. He bent over a
keyboard, typing furiously. He must be receiving some sort of
message from his contacts among the rebels in the City. The kettle
whistled but he ignored it. Jane knew she should leave but instead
she went to the small table and began to prepare the tea. She
rinsed the pot and added the leaf-and flower-petal blend to a
strainer. She swirled it three times before setting it inside the
teapot. She poured the water and set the cups out. They were
chipped and worn but she handled them carefully, as if they were
china. She took star anise from her pouch and added one pod to the
bottom of each cup. She poured the tea over it, added milk and
honey, and stirred three times.

She turned to
find Caradoc watching her. “The Enclave tea ceremony,” he said
quietly.

She brought him
a cup, without asking how he knew about the tea ceremony. He
wouldn’t answer her anyway. He drank, the blue light making his
eyes bluer, and touching the faint stubble on his jaw. He inclined
his head. “Never thirst,” he murmured the traditional words.

She thought
there might be something shivering between them, hoped fiercely
that it wasn’t just her imagination.

And then her
eyes rolled back in her head. “Bloody hell,” she said. “Not
again.”

She didn’t fall
this time, though her teacup tumbled to the floor. “What do you
see?” Caradoc demanded, ignoring the broken shards around his
boots.

The flashes
were too quick, too jumbled. But she felt the prickling in the back
of her calves. “We have to go.” She strained to make out details,
caught corn fields, the flash of an electric fence, rain-smeared
domes. Saffron. “We really have to go.”

Caradoc was
already reaching for a sword. A gun sat at his left hip. “We’ll
never catch up,” she said as they crossed the porch. The visions
were still flashing; she was walking through veils of colour and
light. “And I need my chiton.”

To his credit,
Caradoc didn’t argue. He motioned to Livia, loitering as always, by
his cabin. “She needs the dress in her cabin. Like that white one
you wore.”

She preened.
“You noticed.”

“In my pack by
the cabin door,” Jane interrupted.

“Now, Livia.”
Caradoc insisted when she didn’t move fast enough.

She was back in
minutes, looking displeased when he handed it to Jane. He walked
away without another word, leading Jane to a small paddock set
behind the training grounds. Nico chased after them. “Not you,”
Jane snapped, straight-arming him across the chest.

He stumbled to
a halt, insulted. “Why not me?”

“You’ll die,”
she said flatly. She held out her fingers. “I can see your blood on
my hands.”

He paled.
“That’s not creepy at all. Shit, Jane.”

“Follow us to
take care of the horses at the river but you don’t cross over,”
Caradoc told him, handing him the reins of the smaller horse. “Help
Jane first.”

“I can do it,”
Jane said, reaching down to scoop a handful of dirt first. She
swung up into the saddle. “Society girl, remember?”

“Society girls
carry mud?” Nico asked, perplexed.

“I need to
connect to the earth,” she explained briefly.

“You’ve got the
camp,” Caradoc told him before turning his horse around and heading
down the trail. They picked their way carefully around roots and
boulders before coming out onto the road. Careful meandering turned
to a trot, rain and wind stinging like insects. She longed for a
wild gallop but it was too dark and the road too uneven.

They stopped at
the river of eels and left the horses for Nico, not far behind. “We
have rope bridges to get across,” Caradoc said. “But the
Directorate likes to sabotage them.” He tested the strength of the
ropes before motioning for her to follow. “There’s a village not
far off. They let us steal their horses. For a fee.”

“Vegetables and
fruit?”

“Exactly.”

Jane pressed
more earth to her numina mark as she walked, willing the visions to
slow down and make sense. Her eyes felt like embers.

“Anything
more?” Caradoc asked.

She shook her
head. “I may know more when we get there. The future is always
fluid, but especially right now. It wasn’t like this when they left
for the raid but Saffron is not exactly predictable”

“I knew I
shouldn’t have let her go.”

“It may have
been worse without her.”

“Or
better.”

“All I know is
that she’s in trouble.”

Chapter
41

Saffron

By the time
Saffron realized what was happening, she was caught between two
soldiers. They were at a disadvantage, having been trained to
protect Green Jacks at all costs---but she was at worse
disadvantage, unable to reach for her knives.

“How the hell
did you get out?” one of the guards asked.

Saffron did her
best to elbow him in the head but she just didn’t have enough
traction. The circle of light from the torches being lit around the
gate got closer and closer. She couldn’t see Roarke or Kristoff,
just the yellow mullein and Queen Ann’s lace growing up all around
them. What was the point of the Green Jack’s gift, if she couldn’t
use it to grow trees sharpened like spears or poisonous leaves to
slap at her captors?

“They better
get the damn power back up,” the soldier muttered to Roarke’s spy
at the gate. “And call for a sweep, Gareth. The boss will hand us
all over to Cartimandua if we lose his Jacks.”

Gareth nodded
but his eyes were on Saffron. He knew damn well she wasn’t the same
Jill that had been kept in the dome-pit. He ducked away. She wanted
to raise the kind of hell that would sear their eyeballs but
keeping quiet was a better strategy. She remembered Jane talking
about seeing more when no one was looking at you. If she called all
the soldiers down on them with her urge to descend into serious
violence, it would be that much harder to get out. She needed to be
invisible.

She slumped. It
turned her into dead weight, which made the soldiers curse, but it
also made them less concerned with her escape. Once they were
inside the dome, she might be able to knock their heads together.
Or strangle them with ivy from her leaf mask. She kept her eyes
half-open for Roarke and the others but the rain was too heavy. It
pattered on the glass dome roof like frantic paws scrabbling for
purchase.

The plants
inside the dome shifted in a wind no one else could feel, sighing
at the presence of a Green Jill. The smell of wet earth and green
things intensified. “Hell of a thing,” the soldier on her left
murmured, distracted.

She aimed for
him first. She managed a solid clout to his ear and he staggered.
His companion was faster, jerking Saffron’s arm up behind her back.
These weren’t street fighters like Argent, or rebels relying on
speed and surprise, these were trained Protectorate soldiers. She
didn’t have a chance. He smacked her head into a column. At least
Gareth hadn’t raised the alarm.

Small comfort
when the soldiers tossed her onto the bed down in the pit, not
bothering with the ladder.

Chapter
42

Jane

Jane tried not
to look as self-conscious as she felt. They had stopped so she
could change into her chiton and it felt strange to her now, as if
it belonged to someone else. She tried to remember the ballroom in
the castle, the elegant dresses, her mother’s poise. When the gate
swung open she met the guard’s scowl and raised rifle with a
haughty stare. “I’m here to see the Green Jack”

He barked a
laugh. “Sure, sweetheart.”

Caradoc’s hand
drifted to his sword. Jane angled between them. “Now,” she
insisted, turning her head so he could see her numina mark. She
hoped the torchlight and solar bulbs weren’t bright enough to show
the scab bisecting the eye. Or the fine trembling in her hands.

He gaped at
her. “Beg pardon, Numina.”

She nodded
once. “Let me pass, if you please. We’ve had a rough night. The
roads are not safe.”

“Of course, of
course. Apologies.” He scrambled out of her way. “We weren’t
expecting you.”

“Of course you
weren’t.”

He frowned at
Caradoc. “This is your only escort?”

“Private
security,” she said smoothly. “And thank goodness for that. As you
know, the Directorate has called all available soldiers home. The
two soldiers I was given didn’t survive when we were ambushed on
the road.” The compound was dark except for solar lights set around
the domes and torches along the fence. “Are we quite safe
here?”

“The rain
shorted out the power. It happens. Nothing to worry about,” he
assured her. “Gareth has gone to have it sorted. If you’ll come
with me.”

“Thank you,”
she said, feeling both unbearably pompous and secretly proud that
her plan was working. She slid out of the saddle and he steadied
her politely. Caradoc stiffened. “And you are?”

“Petrov,
Numina. I…” he paused, as they crossed the grounds and ducked under
the covered walkway. “That is…”

“Yes?” She
clasped her hands behind her back, knowing it made her look chilly
and austere. Better, it covered the trembling in her fingers.

“I wondered if
you might—only if there’s time—.”

“I’d be happy
to read your omens,” she said, reminded so strongly of her duties
at the Elysian cellas that she felt momentarily disoriented. “After
my other obligations, of course.”

“Of course.” He
quickened his pace. “Sir Summervale is away.”

“Yes.”

“You knew
that.”

“I did.”

“I can see you
to the guest quarters. But we have no cella, I’m afraid.”

“I’d like to
start the rituals now, if it’s not too much bother.”

“Shouldn’t you
like to rest?” Petrov asked, surprised.