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.”