The Fire Sermon (26 page)

“I really thought this would be a safe place for us,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m just grateful to be off that damned boat.”

I smiled. Perhaps it was because I’d dreamed so often of the island that it didn’t feel unfamiliar. Despite the locked door and the barred window, I was able to slip toward sleep.

“It’s good, though, isn’t it?” I said quietly. “Seeing the unbranded children.”

“It might feel a bit more like the promised land if we weren’t locked up,” he pointed out. “But it’s very endearing that you can feel so warmly toward a place that greets us with armed men who promptly imprison us.”

I laughed. “Zach used to call me naive.”

“Far be it from me to agree with your brother.”

Both of us were giddy not just with exhaustion but also with a mixture of relief and fear. We’d made it: arrived at the island that had so far been no more than a rumor, a dream. But here we were again, imprisoned, interrogated. I was conscious that my lips were still cracked and dry, but when Kip rolled over to face me, swept my hair from my face and cupped the back of my head in his hand, I was too tired to deny myself the comfort. His lips, too, were parched, and his hand rough from the oar, but when we kissed I didn’t feel it anymore. Or, rather, I did, but there was a kind of satisfaction and urgency, my cracked lips forceful against his, the good pain of it. And after all this time, kissing him felt the same as landing on the island had felt: the same sense of fear, and of arriving finally on a safe shore.

I first heard of Piper from the children. I woke to the sounds of them playing outside the hut, and arguing loudly over who got to play the part of Piper. I thought it was just another childhood game, like hide-and-seek—like any of the games and songs in which Zach and I had never been included back in the village. But the men who unlocked the door later that morning said it again: “We’re taking you to see Piper.”

“Who’s the piper?” Kip asked.

“Not ‘the piper.’ Just Piper,” said the tall man who had been there the night before. “He’ll decide what we should do with you; whether you can stay.”

He gave us back our bag, though I noticed that the knife had been taken. He and three others escorted us from the tower. The men carried swords but were friendly enough. From the tower they led us up a narrow path toward the island’s central peak. It was steep, and felt steeper in my tired state, but I was reassured to see that Kip’s breath wasn’t labored by the steep march. In the months since our escape he’d changed a lot, his skin losing not just its pallor but also its waxy finish. While he would always be lean, he’d now taken on a wiry strength. He was still awkward, often, with tasks that called for two arms, but I assumed that would fade, just as I hoped the amnesia would.

The tall man had introduced himself: Owen. His earlier terseness was still present but was outweighed by curiosity.

“What news of the Council now?” he asked. “And any news from the settlements in the east?”

I turned to Kip, who shared my smile. Between us, we knew both too little and too much.

“Sorry,” I said, “but we’re the worst people to ask.”

“Been in hiding too long to follow the news? Or just out in the countryside?”

I cringed at how absurd the truth would sound. In the end I just said, “We’ve been—underground. A long time. Me for years, and Kip maybe longer. Probably.”

Owen raised his eyebrows. “You might want to get your story straight before you meet Piper. He’s not one for messing around.”

“There’s no story to get straight,” I said. “Or, there is a story, but we don’t know it. Not all of it.”

“Hardly any of it, in my case,” added Kip.

Owen stopped in front of us, and I thought he might push the point, but instead he turned to the rock face soaring above the path and swept aside the tumble of wisteria that hung to the ground. Behind it, carved straight into the rock, was a door, its rusted metal almost the same color as the sandstone of the cliff face. Another of the men came forward with a key, and it took two of them to drag the door back. Inside was a narrow passage, steps leading steeply into darkness. My jaw clenched at the thought of entering that closed space, the walls narrow enough that they brushed Owen’s shoulders on both sides as he entered. But Kip went in behind Owen, and I had no chance to hesitate. The men following me locked the door behind them before Owen had even finished lighting the torch he had taken from a wall bracket. Following Owen’s light upward, at first I counted the steps, but lost count when Kip stumbled in front of me, his curse loud in the tight space. The tunnel was steep, and long enough that I had to concentrate to keep my breath even. Finally the shadows from the torch faded as the passage lightened, and I heard voices greeting Owen as his silhouette was framed by daylight ahead of us. He turned back to face us before stepping out.

“He’s waiting for you. But think carefully, tell him what he needs to know. Piper’s not like you,” he gestured to me, “but he can still tell when someone’s messing with him.”

I thought of the Confessor. The memory of those sessions in the cell frightened me in a way that this armed escort had not. Had it come to this—a different prison, a different Confessor?

We were out in the light now, and for several seconds I squinted against the glare. Behind us the sea was entirely hidden by the encircling edge of the crater that cupped the city. The stairs we’d climbed had cut through this natural battlement, depositing us halfway up the inside of the island’s central caldera. When I stepped forward, I saw it. Or, rather, saw it again: the city, stacked upon itself within the steep hollow. It was so familiar, from the lake that pooled in the crater’s base, to the houses massed on the far side. The pale gray fort that I’d seen so many times in dreams.

Owen and his men had already disappeared back down the stairs and were replaced by three others, two women and a man, in the same blue uniforms. They didn’t speak as they surrounded me and Kip and led us up the narrow central road that wound through the city. Kip kept looking about him. I had to remind myself that he’d never seen this place before. Several times I had to nudge him onward as he stopped to gaze at the city around us. Above us, a man was hanging washing from a window, a third eye in the center of his forehead; a woman with no arms or legs sat in a doorway, deftly rolling a cigarette with her lips. The adults were branded, but many of the children weren’t. The crowd didn’t return Kip’s curiosity, though some people stared at me as we made our way up the hill. Our escort seemed unthreatened and kept their swords sheathed. They moved so swiftly up the coiling road that we were almost jogging to keep up, and I was glad of the throng of people that sometimes slowed our progress.

We passed through several of the fort’s outer walls, stopping at the inner perimeter, only a few hundred yards below the lip of the crater. A door, braced and studded with iron, barred the archway set in the base of the fort that loomed above us. Men on the inside, wearing the same blue uniforms as our escort, opened a smaller gate to the side, and we were ushered through. The sounds of the city were dulled here but still audible: the children playing, merchants shouting their wares, people calling from window to window across the narrow streets. The courtyard in which we stood was surrounded on three sides by the tall building, half-fortress, half-palace. The escort, now six strong but still silent, led us into the front entrance, up several flights of stairs, and up to a dark wooden door.

“He’s waiting for you,” one of them said. It was the same phrase that Owen had used earlier. I glanced at Kip, who took a deep breath. I would have liked to take his hand, but I was on his left, where his sleeve hung empty, so I reached out and touched his shoulder, felt it lift slightly in response.

From the other side, the door was opened. Our escort stood back and Kip and I entered alone, passing the two watchmen who had opened the door. The room was brightly lit by a large window at its head, in front of which sat a high-backed chair on a platform. We approached together, stopping at the stairs that led up to the dais. I peered up into the light; it took several seconds to realize that the chair was empty. I turned back to the door, raised an eyebrow at the nearest of the watchmen, who had resumed their places by the door.

“We were brought to see Piper.”

The man grinned at me. He was, I realized, almost a boy, perhaps my own age or slightly older. “He’s a busy man. Why should he see you?”

He was tall, taller even than Owen, and though his right arm was strong, resting on the hilt of a long knife, his left arm was missing. The sleeve was not hanging empty, as many chose, but was simply cut off and stitched shut at the shoulder, no apology made for the missing arm. He moved with the same well-muscled vigor of the watchmen who had escorted us, and which I’d rarely seen in Omegas on the mainland.

“I have things to tell him. Important things, I think. And we’d like to stay here, for a while, at least.”

“And why should he let you? Or believe the news you bring?”

He stepped forward slightly, but the smile remained. Kip stepped toward him, too, arm at his hip to match the watchman’s, though Kip’s was an empty gesture without a weapon.

“We’ll answer to Piper, and not to you. He ordered us here.”

The man’s grin broadened. “Indeed he did. But you may find yourself answering to me after all.” He sat down at the low table beside the door, where a checkerboard and two mugs of ale sat. “Sit, and tell me what you’ve got to tell.”

He dismissed the other watchman with just a flick of the head. The man bowed casually and slipped out the door. We stood, stranded between the dais and the door. He glanced up at the dais and the empty chair.

“The fancy chair? My predecessor had more taste for grandeur than me, I’m afraid. You can blame him for the ugly tapestries, too. I’m Piper.”

I looked at him, clad simply in the same blue uniform as the other guards. “And the uniform?”

“I’m a watchman, just like all the guards here. Only difference is that I have a bigger jurisdiction. It’s my job to watch out for all of us. For the island.” He leaned back, pushing a chair toward me with his foot as we approached. Whenever he moved, there was a jingling from the row of small throwing knives that hung at the back of his belt.

“I thought you’d be older. The way they spoke about you.” I scanned him again. He was entirely new to me, his wide mouth and dark skin unseen in my dreams. There was an easy confidence in his manner that I found hard to reconcile with the brand on his forehead. It wasn’t just that he lacked the pinched cheeks of most mainland Omegas, the poorest so thin that their faces appeared to be stretched tightly over prominent skulls. It was also the way he sat: leaning back in his chair, legs wide, head thrown slightly back. On the mainland, Omegas had learned not to take up too much space. On the big roads near market towns, we walked close to the ditch, heads down, out of the way of the kicks and jeers of the mounted Alphas. When Council soldiers escorted the tithe collector to settlements, we queued mutely to hand over what they asked, avoiding the soldiers’ gaze and the sting of whip that might accompany it. But here, in this grand chamber, Piper sat completely at ease, commanding the space. It seemed a small thing to notice: just one man’s stance. But at the time it felt as dramatic a statement as the island itself. The cringing existence we led on the mainland seemed shameful in the face of this proud-jawed man, his broad smile etched into the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Even his body, so clearly strong, and well fed, seemed an audacious statement. On the mainland we were constantly told that we were broken, deformed, useless. So it was a joy to see Piper’s beauty: the smooth skin of his arm and shoulder, muscled like a plaited loaf of bread. The wide-set, appraising eyes, bright in his burnished skin. The ease with which he wore his body would have been striking in an Alpha; in an Omega it was nothing short of shocking. And where most Omegas had bangs, or grew their hair long to cover their brands, Piper’s thick black hair was cropped close to his head, the brand undisguised, unabashed. He wore it like a flag. I remembered examining my own brand, when it was new, and repeating to myself:
This is what I am.
That had been a mantra of resignation. But Piper bore his brand like a declaration, and a challenge.

“I don’t see all new arrivals,” he said. “I couldn’t—we have so many now. But they’re brought to the island. You’re the first to find your own way. This worries me.”

“Brought here? How? It’s not an easy journey.”

“That’s an understatement. But we need newcomers—an island of Omegas can’t exactly sustain its own population, after all. We have a network of contacts on the mainland. People seek us out. If we decide they can be trusted, we ship them out here. And sometimes, when we can manage it safely, we get into Alpha towns and take any Omega infants that haven’t been branded yet. The Alphas call them raiding parties, but I prefer not to use that term. We call them rescues.”

“You take them away from their parents?”

Piper cocked his eyebrow. “The parents who’d have them branded? Who’d send them away to scratch out a living with other outcasts on the scraps of land no Alpha would bother to farm? Those parents?” He leaned forward, more serious now. “But you two would ask that question. Your experience was rather different, I’m guessing.”