Green Jack (26 page)

“I’m far too
awake after the ambush. It would be better if I had some
occupation.” And the dome called to her, the reflection of the rain
and torchlight making patterns of oak leaves and swans and horses.
Caradoc still hadn’t spoken. The shadows swallowed him. Petrov led
her inside. “May I get you anything, Numina?”

“Silence for my
work, and privacy. Interruptions can cloud the reading, you
understand.”

“Oi,” he called
out, his voice ringing between the curved glass walls. “Guards
outside.”

“What the hell
for?” a guard grumbled, stomping up a walkway between rows of
ginger and wheat. “We’ve already had to---.” He stopped when he saw
Jane in her chiton.

“Shut your hole
and you might get a reading,” Petrov barked. “Out.”

“You did that
very well,” Caradoc murmured when they were alone. “We’ll make a
Greencoat out of you yet.”

Pleasure snuck
a tingle down her spine, even though this was hardly the time to be
distracted by kind words and hushed tones. The dome was like the
ones in the Enclave—humid, green, and thick with pollen. It was
like breathing perfume. Caradoc stalked straight to the central
pit. Saffron glared up at them. “This is so embarrassing.” There
were fresh bruises on her cheek and she was covered in mud.

“You’re hurt.”
Jane knelt at the edge of the pit.

“You didn’t
have to put on a dress to rescue me, you know. Society girls,” she
winked. “Always overdressed.”

“Your face,”
Jane murmured.

“Yeah, that’s
thanks to lovely Green Jill we were here to rescue. She punched me
in the stomach and into a tree.” She touched her swollen cheek.
“Someone needs a hug from the Mother Tree. Not to mention a boot to
the head.”

“She punched
you?” Jane dropped the ladder down into the pit. Saffron clambered
up like her boots were on fire.

“Right before
she left me to the guards chasing her out. So they grabbed me
instead.” She bent to reclaim her pile of knives by Caradoc’s left
boot.

“No alarm?”
Jane asked, surprised. “Augusta’s that good?”

“Yes,” Caradoc
said. “She is. But most of the regular soldiers wouldn’t ever have
seen the Green Jill, not up close. That’s only for captains and Sir
Summervale.” He nudged Jane. “Now, let’s go,” he said. “We’ve been
here too long.”

“Slight
problem,” Saffron pointed out. “There are guards every-damn-where.”
She stayed hidden behind a trellis of flowering peas. On the other
side of the windows, soldiers stood under the pavilion, glancing
with studied casualness sat the dome. “And they’re acting
weird.”

“I can take
care of them,” Jane said, nerves fluttering in her belly. When she
moved, their gazes followed. She realized she glowed in her pale
chiton.

Caradoc looked
at her sharply. “There are four of them.”

She smiled.
“And they all want to know their future.”

“I’m predicting
violence,” Saffron said. “And pain.”

“I’ll keep them
occupied,” Jane said. “Just find the others and get to the
gate.”

“And then
what?”

She shrugged.
“I have no idea.” She walked out into the misty darkness. She heard
him swear softly behind her and then nothing. She was scared enough
to feel nauseous, and not quite connected to her own body. But she
had to do this, had to prove herself. If not to the others, as
Saffron claimed, then to herself. If she wasn’t Jane of the
Enclave, then who was she?

Time to find
out.

The soldiers
turned in unison at her approach. “That was fast,” Pretov said.

“There’s too
much electricity still lingering,” she explained. The last of the
rain clung to her eyelashes. “Even with the power down, the
lightning of the storm is too much. I’ll have to wait until morning
when it’s cleared. But I still won’t sleep, so perhaps I might read
for you now? If your duties allow?” She exaggerated her Enclave
inflection, the faint accent her mother and teachers had drilled
into her.

Petrov glanced
at the others. “It’s quiet enough now. Shall we go to the quest
quarters?”

Where she’d be
trapped.

“It’s best if
my feet touch the earth to open the connection,” she said. ‘The
rain seems to be stopping, you don’t mind, do you?” She stepped off
the flagstones before they could object, and onto the wet grass.”
You want to know about Samuel,” she murmured to Petrov. She’d never
been given clear names before, only images.

His eyes
widened, and then narrowed suspiciously. “How did you know
that?”

She looked down
her nose at him in disdain. She had a fleeting thought that her
mother would finally have been proud of her. “I am a Numina, am I
not?”

He bowed,
slightly awed. She didn’t stop until she was in the darkest part of
the field, between the gate and the domes, knowing he would follow.
She forced herself not to glance around for the others. She needed
to focus, to offer a few omens too accurate to be doubted, and true
enough to be worth the threat of Protectorate punishment for
leaving their posts. She slipped out of her shoes and pressed her
heels into the soft earth. She held anise seeds in her hand--- the
familiar tradition helped the soldier relax, even if they didn’t
realize it. It was tradition, ritual, power.

She lifted her
chin, feeling her pupils blanch again.

Chapter
43

Saffron

“Wait.
Please.”

The voice was
soft, gentle. Roarke stumbled to a stop so suddenly he had to put
his arm out to stop Saffron from ploughing them both to the ground.
She tracked his gaze to the pale lithe young man pressed against a
tree. He wore a leaf mask so delicate it looked like it was made
from paper. An orchid glowed in his dark hair.

Roarke whistled
once, a soft and haunting song from an impossible bird. Caradoc
came out of the shadows within moments. He saw the Jack and his
usually mild expression slipped. “What’s your name?”

“Roman,” he
whispered.

“If you come
with us,” Caradoc said. “We can take you out of here.”

“Do you
promise?” he asked tremulously. “I’ve been here so long.”

Saffron could
only imagine the iron chafe marks and bruises he must wear, like
Madeleine’s sharp bracelets. His sleeves were long, covering his
arms and wrists all to the way to the base of his fingers. His eyes
were dark and uncertain.

“Come with us,”
Caradoc repeated. Roman took a step forward, then froze, flinching
when the solar light crackled and flickered above his head. He
reached for Saffron’s arm. Sighing, she let him, but mostly because
there was no time to tell him that just because she was a Jill,
didn’t mean she was sweetness and sunshine. She had a feeling River
would love him though.

They moved
fast. The main gate was too far but there was another door within
reach. But when they reached the circle of solar lights, Roman
smiled once. It was crooked and smug and something shivered in
warning inside Saffron’s chest, but too late.

He had already
gripped the chain of the bell and was ringing it violently. The
metal sound was like a hundred flung daggers. Saffron kicked his
arm but the damage had been done. Already the guards were shouting
to each other. “Over here!” Roman yelled. “Greencoats!”

Roarke knocked
him off his feet but Roman only laughed, sprawled on his back in
the mud. “As if I’d go live like a savage in the woods. Do you know
who my father is?”

When
recognition hit, Caradoc’s jaw clenched. “Roman Summervale. Goddamn
it.”

“Your father
did this to you?” Saffron gaped. She wasn’t sure why she was so
surprised, parents did as much and worse in the City. He just
seemed so proud, so happy about it.

“He raised me
to greatness.” His gaze roamed her body. “If you stay, he can do
the same for you.”

“I’d puke on
you if I had the time.” But she was already running, feeling the
tremble in the ground from Protectorate boots behind her. Caradoc
made some signal she didn’t see, but the others veered left and she
did the same. The fence loomed ahead, bristling with barbed wire.
Gareth opened a small gate under an extinguished torch before
disappearing. Smoke and rain made the air taste dangerous.

So did the
electric dart that sliced past Saffron’s ear, buzzing and sparking
when it slammed into the side of a wooden pavilion. She whirled,
dagger in each hand. The rain made it difficult to see. She
squinted, willing herself to be patient. If she threw too soon,
she’d miss the target. Too late and it might leave a scratch but
that was all. Soldiers poured across the wet grass, lights flashing
on tasers and rifles. Saffron darted around Roarke to place herself
in front of the others. “Crazy girl,” Kristoff thundered. “Behind
the line”

“They won’t
want to hurt me,” Saffron said. “So I am the line.”

Caradoc was
already on horseback, thundering towards Jane standing in a circle
of soldiers. Her chiton was lake-blue and made her look ethereal as
mist. The soldiers gleamed with weapons and chemical light. Caradoc
cut one down with his sword and bent to swing Jane onto the horse
behind him.

A dart exploded
next to Augusta’s head, blinding her. She dropped into a crouch,
making herself as small as possible. Saffron threw her first knife,
then her second. One of the soldiers grunted, the knife blooming
from his shoulder, another ducked. The others formed a line and
advanced.

“If you fire,
you hit a Green Jill!” Saffron shouted at them. She stepped just
inside the circle of light, close enough that they could see the
burrs and thistles and dandelions gone to seed. Silky white pod
fluff drifted like storybook snow.

“Shit, Saffron,
pull back!” Roarke reached to grab her arm and stopped himself just
before his fingers brushed her. She couldn’t throw a dagger if he
got in her way. Later, she would decide it was the most romantic
thing anyone had ever done for her.

Kristoff wasn’t
nearly as romantic. He tossed Saffron back into Roarke yelling
“Run!” before he charged the line of soldiers like a demented bull.
Roarke wrapped his arms around Saffron and they hit the ground just
as the rain turned to bullets.

Kristoff was
fast, but not fast enough. He took out three soldiers and crumpled
with a smile on his face, his beard stained with blood. Saffron
crawled back, shock tightening her throat. She bumped into Augusta,
tears streaming from eyes gone to flint. A bullet hit Roarke in the
arm when he rose into a crouch. His body snapped backward, blood
spraying from the wound. He pushed back to his feet, fingers
pressing into the wound, head down as if he was walking against a
storm.

“No!” Caradoc
pulled the reins tightly and blocked Roarke. “Don’t waste his
sacrifice.” When Roarke hesitated, Caradoc kicked him lightly from
the horse’s back. “Go.”

They pushed
through the gate just as the fence sizzled back into electrified
metal. When Saffron brushed too close to the chain links the power
jolted through her. It was a brief song, one full of pain and bone
and blue light searing into the spine.

They finally
made it into the forest where no searchlight, no hunting dog or
rifle, was stronger than a Green Jill. The woods closed around them
like a fist.

Chapter
44

Jane

The return trip
back to the camp was silent and solemn.

“Should we
track the Jill?” Roarke had asked when they’d first set out.

“She’ll find us
if she wants to,” Caradoc said. “We’re not a running a prison.
She’s out. Good enough.”

“I’m sorry,”
Roarke grimaced, clutching his wounded arm. “It all went to
shit.”

“They usually
do,” Caradoc replied. “Anyway, you freed her, which was the
objective.”

“And she’s a
peach,” Saffron said grimly. “She wasn’t worth Kristoff.”

“No one
is.”

And then two
hours passed with nothing but the clomping of the horse hooves and
the dripping of water from pine boughs. Jane would have walked but
when she shifted to slide to the ground, Caradoc’s hand closed over
hers where they were clasped around him. He didn’t speak or turn to
look at her, and she stayed where she was.

They reached
camp as dawn broke through the clouds. The birds sang a cheerful
song in contrast to their stark procession. Most of the Greencoats
were awake and waiting. Jane heard Kristoff’s name being whispered
and flinched. Livia was the first to break through the crowd, fury
staining her cheeks red. “You!” she snarled at Jane. “This is your
fault. If you were as good an Oracle as everyone says you are,
Kristoff would still be alive.” She choked on the last word.

Jane paled. “I
know.” She had nothing to say in her defense. She’d replayed the
night in her head for the last two hours. She’d known Saffron
needed help, known Nico had to stay behind—why hadn’t she been able
to see Kristoff? She slapped at her numen, wishing it could
explain. Instead, her spine burned.

Caradoc
scrubbed a hand roughly over his face. “We are not doing this right
now.”

“But—.”

“No.” His
weariness sharpened to a weapon. “Kristoff is to be honoured and
remembered. And this is not the way to do it. He made his choice.”
He motioned to a woman with a shaved head. “Can you see to
Augusta’s eye and Roarke’s shoulder?”

“It’s fine,”
Roarke said.

The healer just
jabbed her finger into his wound until he staggered back,
ashen-faced and swearing. “You’ll come with me then?” she asked
blandly.

They walked
away but Livia stayed where she was, glowering. Jane just wanted to
close her eyes and sleep for a week. Her head spun. She didn’t even
realize she’d passed out until she came to again, stretched out on
Caradoc’s saggy couch.