The Fire Sermon (20 page)

Elsa took Kip to help her feed the babies, waiting back in the dormitory, so Nina and I were left to serve the porridge. The children didn’t seem surprised by my appearance there—I supposed they must be used to people coming and going. They lined up in front of me, and while I ladled the thick porridge into each proffered bowl, Nina walked down the line with a hairbrush, seeing to the children one by one. I noted how each child received a kiss on the forehead or a pat on the shoulder, along with a few sweeps of the brush through their hair. They were polite, too: they thanked me, if a little sleepily. Two seemed to be mute but nodded to me as they took their bowls. One girl, without legs, sat in a small wheeled cart that was pulled along by one of the older boys, and another girl carried two bowls, one for the boy next to her who had no arms. A tall girl, without eyes, confidently navigated her way around the room by the walls. Which of these, I wondered, were the ones whom nobody would take in?

The pot was lighter now and I carried it back to the kitchen myself. As Nina had instructed, I filled a bowl for myself and ate by the fire. The new regularity of food made me tired. When Kip returned to the kitchen I was asleep on the bench, head and shoulders leaning against the stone wall. I stirred as he joined me, feeling his warmth at my side and hearing the scrape of his spoon on his bowl while he ate, but it wasn’t until Nina entered, with a clatter of bowls, that I woke properly.

We were kept busy in the kitchen all morning, but it was warm and Nina chatted easily with us. She didn’t ask any questions; with the constant coming and going of different children she’d probably heard enough stories. As for us, we were greedy for news of the world. Nina’s news was all linked to the children who came, and the families who’d delivered them. Babies dropped off before they’d even been weaned. A toddler left in the doorway in the night and found near-strangled by the bag of silver coins in a pouch around his neck. The growing numbers, every year. “Used to be Elsa would have ten, maybe fifteen kids here at any one time,” Nina said. “But in the three years I’ve worked here, we’re rarely under thirty. And we’re not the only holding house in New Hobart—there’s another by the western edge, not quite as big.”

The stories that she shared with us, however, also revealed glimpses of the wider world. Omega families were less able to take in children, she said, because of the pressure of ever-increasing tithes, and the restrictions on land, trading, and travel that made it harder for Omegas to make a living. Edicts from the Council were intruding more and more into Omega life. Some of the names I recognized from before my imprisonment: The Judge, still ruling the Council, apparently, as he had since I was a child. I’d heard of the General before, too, and Nina confirmed that she was still one of the more aggressive anti-Omega voices on the Council. The new laws to push Omegas to less fertile land, and outlawing settlements by any river or coast, she said, came from the General. “We used to think the General was as bad as things could get,” she went on. “But there are other young ones on the Council, in the last few years. The young ones are always the worst,” she said, scouring a pot viciously. “This new lot are as bad as any: the Ringmaster, the Reformer.”

She didn’t seem to have noticed that I dropped the dishcloth when she spoke Zach’s name. Why hadn’t he abandoned that assumed name once he had me safe in the Keeping Rooms? Though I’d never heard of any Councilor going by their real name. It wasn’t just to hide their real identities; it was part of the pageantry, the fear they inspired.

She went on, passing me another bowl to dry. “Those two, together with the General, have done more damage than the Judge ever did. It’s not just the rise in public whippings—it’s all the other stuff. Registrations now for all Omegas: not just name, place of birth, and twin, but having to notify the Council if you travel, or even move house. Every time we find a home for a child we have to go through all that with the Council office. There’s talk of curfews for Omegas in some areas, too. And there’ve been some Omega settlements sealed altogether: the Council soldiers won’t let anyone in or out, they just take over.” She paused and looked at the door, before continuing in a lowered voice. “There are other stories, too. People going missing—just taken in the night.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, nodding instead, but Kip dived in.

“What happens to them?”

Nina shook her head. “Nobody knows. Anyway, it’s only a rumor. Don’t say anything about it, whatever you do. You’ll scare the kids.” But it was she who looked frightened, and she changed the subject quickly.

We ate the midday meal with the children, and afterward Elsa called us into the dormitory, where she was finishing bottle-feeding the youngest ones. A crying baby was hoisted on her shoulder, and she patted its back with one hand while looking us over.

“The two of you’ll be wanting to have a rest in your room for the afternoon, I’d imagine.”

I protested that we were happy to work, or just to play with the children, but Elsa spoke over me. “Afternoons we open up for visitors—families come, to see about taking the children, and Alphas come to drop them off. So I’m thinking the two of you will be wanting to have a rest in your room. With the courtyard shutters closed.”

I cleared my throat. “Thank you. We—we don’t want to cause you any trouble, by being here.”

Elsa laughed loudly, setting off the baby again. “I’m a woman with crooked legs, a dead husband, thirty children under my care, and more coming each day. You think I’m not used to trouble? Now get going. I’ll call you when we’ve locked up after visitors.” She pulled a large pair of scissors from her apron pocket. “And take this with you, so you can sort out each other’s hair. I can’t have you in this house with your hair like that. It’s a lice trap. And people could mistake you for a pair of horse thieves.”

Back in our room, my arm unbound, I sat Kip down, wrapped a towel around his neck, and stood behind him. His hair had been long in the tank, and was even longer now, reaching below his shoulders. I lifted a lock straight up, then cut it as close to his head as I could. He flinched at the tug of the scissors’ blunt blades.

“Do you even know how to do this?”

“I used to cut Zach’s hair, my last few years in the village.”

“And he turned out just great.”

I laughed, but I could still picture the fear on Nina’s face, when she’d mentioned the rumors about the Reformer. It was hard to reconcile my memories of Zach—my wary, watchful, twin—with this figure of fear. To know that he was responsible not only for what had happened to Kip in the tanks but also for so many of the awful things Nina had mentioned. Hardest of all was to know that the responsibility for the damage he caused was partly mine. I could stop him right now, I thought, looking down at the scissors. All the Council soldiers in Wyndham couldn’t help him, if I were to turn these blunted blades on my wrist. If I had the courage.

Kip turned and looked up at me.

“The long pause doesn’t fill me with confidence. Are you sure you’re not going to ruin my youthful good looks?”

I laughed, reached for the next strand of hair. It was warm in my hand from where it had lain against his neck. I held it for a few seconds before I began.

His hair was so long that it took a long time to cut, and wasn’t perfectly tidy, but eventually there was a mass of brown hair on the floor, and his head was reduced to tufty stubble. It reminded me of the maize fields by the village, right after harvest.

I insisted on doing my own hair, too, despite his protestations, though I let him help me with the back. I hadn’t realized quite how long it had grown, and after I’d cut it to jaw length I kept shaking my head, unused to its weightlessness. We swept up the cut hair and threw it out the back window, shaking the towel after it. Standing together at the window, we watched the tresses drift down into the street below.

Kip kept running his hand over his newly shorn head. “It takes years, right? To grow hair that long?”

I leaned against him. “Normally, yes. But there’s a lot of things we don’t know.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s an understatement, in my case.”

“I meant, lots we don’t know about the tanks. How they worked—whether things even grew in there. Or how long your hair was when you went in, or if they ever cut it.”

“I know.” He continued rubbing his head. “I know it’s all just guesswork. And I know it probably won’t get me anywhere. But it’s hard to stop guessing.”

We’d meant to stay only a day or two, just long enough to regain some strength, but Elsa asked us no questions and seemed grateful for the extra help, so the days passed, and by the third week, we’d fallen into a comfortable routine. We worked each morning and each evening, and in the afternoons took shelter in our room, which gave me a chance to free my arm for a few hours. A few times our curiosity overcame our caution, and I left my arm bound for an afternoon venture into the town itself. I still found it disorienting to be among so many people, after my long isolation in the Keeping Rooms. Kip, however, thrived on the crowds. Although we had no money to spend, he loved the crush of the market, the smell of the roasting nuts and mulled wine, the clatter of voices. For an hour at a time I could almost imagine we were normal people, that nobody was hunting us. But even in an Omega town there were occasional Alphas: tithe collectors, soldiers, merchants passing through. The few times we spotted an unbranded face, or the bright red of a Council uniform, we would turn swiftly, make for the nearest alley, and take the back streets all the way home.

As we approached the market square one morning, we saw a crowd gathered by the central well. Two Council soldiers stood on a raised platform, so we hung back, but even from the back of the crowd, partly hidden by a barrow of melons, we could see what was happening. A man, perhaps ten years older than me, was tied to a stake, while one of the soldiers whipped his naked back. The beaten man was crying out with each stroke, but the noise of the whip itself was worse: the whistle as it sliced the air; the percussive smack as it hit his flesh. The second soldier stood a few feet away, reading aloud from a sheet of paper. He had to shout to make himself heard over the whip, and the cries of the prisoner:

“For that crime, ten strokes. Then, upon being apprehended for the illegal removal of a Council information poster, the Omega prisoner was also found not to have registered his change of address with the Council. For this crime, a further ten strokes, with an additional five strokes for failure to pay tithes during the three months in his new residence.”

The soldier finished his proclamation, but the whipping continued. The crowd was silent, but with each stroke the massed shoulders in front of us winced. Where the prisoner’s back had earlier shown individual welts, some leaking red, now no distinct marks could be made out in the pulpy mass. The waistband of his trousers was darkened with blood.

I pulled Kip away, but even as we retreated down the alley we could hear the final strokes.

“But what about his Alpha?” Kip said, as we hurried back to the holding house. “She’ll feel that, for sure.”

“My guess is that the Council doesn’t care,” I said. “It’s a price they’re happy to pay—some woman miles away will scream for a few hours, but they get to make an example out of her twin for hundreds to see. And the Council’s done such a good job of segregating twins from each other, she’ll probably never even find out exactly what caused the pain. It’s not going to bother the Council.”

“But if she did know—would Alphas stand for it? Wouldn’t they be furious that their own Council was hurting innocent people?”

I stopped, turned to face him. “That man—the man being whipped—do you really think he’s any less innocent than his Alpha twin? Because he pulled down a poster, or couldn’t afford to pay tithes?”

“Of course not. I know as well as you do that it’s all trumped-up nonsense. But if they’re beating people like that now, so badly their Alpha twins can feel it, won’t it cause problems from their own side? Won’t the Alphas be angry?”

“They will be—but not at the Council. I think if they found out, they’d be angry at the Omega twin, the so-called criminal. If they swallow the Council line, they’ll believe it’s him bringing this on himself. The same way they think Omegas are going hungry because we’re too lazy or stupid to farm properly, rather than because of tithes and blighted land.”

After that, we were more careful on the streets, venturing from the holding house only occasionally, usually in the early mornings on market days, when we could slip unnoticed among the busiest of the crowds. But it was easier to stay at home, in the cloistered courtyard world within Elsa’s walls, where we could spend time with the children and try to forget that there lay a town beyond, with blood on the whipping post and Council soldiers in the streets.

We got to know all the children. Louisa, a sweet three-year-old dwarf, became devoted to me, and a slightly older boy called Alex took to following Kip around. Alex had been there for five years, Elsa told us, since he was a baby. He had no arms and would sit on Kip’s lap at mealtimes, Kip feeding him from his own bowl, alternating mouthfuls. Alex’s head fit neatly beneath Kip’s chin, bobbing gently each time Kip chewed. Watching them, I noted how Kip’s face had lost its starved look, his cheekbones less angular. I knew, too, that my own flesh was fuller, my bones less sharp. I was stronger, as well. Even with one arm bound, I could hoist the biggest pots up above the fire without assistance, or carry the toddlers on my hip for long stretches when they demanded to be cuddled.