Chapter 46
Jane
Jane woke up to the sound of whispering. She sat up, feeling groggy but refreshed. Caradoc was in his chair and Saffron and Roarke stood around the consoles and the radios. It didn’t take Oracle training to know there was something new between the two of them. She hid a smile even as Caradoc noticed her. “How long did I sleep?” she asked.
“Eleven hours,” Saffron replied. She was twirling a knife between her fingers. “I held a mirror to your nose to make sure you were still breathing. You tried to slap me.”
“I did?”
Saffron grinned. “Your aim’s improving.”
Jane ran a hand through her hair, trying not to care that she must look dishevelled and rumpled. As usual, the shadows under Caradoc’s eyes and the stubble only made him look more rugged. Clearly this infatuation wasn’t as easy to get over as a case of numen burnout. Her stomach complained loudly that it wasn’t getting any of her attention. Roarke tossed her an apple. She bit into it gratefully. “What did I miss?”
“Training. A memorial for Kristoff,” Saffron replied. “And Livia being a bitch.” she grimaced ruefully. “I’m sure there’ll be a repeat performance.”
“She’s just upset,” Roarke said.
Saffron snorted. “Don’t defend her to me, Roarke. Lots of people can be upset without being jackshits about it.”
“Can you?”
She grinned. “Nope. So remember that.”
Jane looked away. Saffron flirting seemed more intimate than the hours they’d spent sealed together in a bedroll against the Red Dust. Caradoc was, of course, entirely focused on his screens. “Any word out on our raid?” she asked quietly.
“Plenty of words,” Saffron was the one to reply. “Most of them unsavoury.”
“Any retaliation?”
“Not yet,” Caradoc said. “A message was sent to Summervale and to the Directorate headquarters, but that’s it.”
Jane finished her apple. “Good. Then I’m going to go practice.”
He shot her a telling glance. She held up a hand. “After I fill my numen cup with pancakes and eggs.” He nearly smiled.
“I’ll come with you,” Saffron said. “I’m starving.”
Roarke grinned knowingly. She shoved him amiably. Jane barely saw it, just a blur of motion out of the corner of her eye. Saffron paused, snapping her fingers in her face. “Jane? Hello? Are you trancing out again?”
Jane shook her head mutely. The others tuned to follow her frozen gaze as the blood drained from her cheeks. The screens flashed one after the other, switching from Directorate emails and hacked video feeds to the same bounty poster.
Jane Highgate. Wanted for crimes against the Collegium and the Directorate.
She saw herself in all of the screens, a grainy but identifiable image of her inside the Summervale farm dome in her Oracle chiton. “Security feed,” Caradoc said darkly. “Must have had just enough battery power after even Augusta took the grid down.”
“It’s not like you were going to back to Elysium City anyway, right?” Saffron tried for a reassuring tone, with which she clearly had no practice whatsoever. “I mean take it from me, you’re not missing much.”
Jane thought of the Program, of the warnings, of the girl shot when she tried to escape the headquarters. She thought of her family, of Kiri. She’d hoped they would just let her go, that Jane was as unimportant as she had felt. The apple sat like a stone in her belly. “I have to go back.”
Saffron gaped at her. “Jane, you have a bounty on your head.”
“Your reputation is not worth sacrificing yourself over,” Roarke pointed out when Saffron nudged him sharply with her elbow to help her out.
“But that’s not it, is it?” Caradoc asked, crossing the cabin to stand in front of her.
She swallowed, forcing words out through her suddenly dry throat. “They’ll kill my family.”
“Because of the Program,” Caradoc said. “But mostly because a Numina who can’t be controlled, has to be stopped.”
“You can’t know that,” Saffron argued, though it was obviously the truth. She knew the Directorate. It was written all over her face.
Jane thought about the way Cartimandua circled her at the parapet the night she’d fled. As if she knew something. She reached blindly for the cup of tea by the keyboard. She drained it even though it was too hot and burned a path down to the icy stone in the stomach. She slammed the cup down, turned it three times and then flipped it over again. She pointed. “A swan for deceit, a horse for destiny, and two crossed swords.” It might not mean much to them, might just be the dregs in a tea cup, but to her it told a story. A story without a happy ending.
“I have to go.”
“And then what?” Saffron asked. “What’s your plan?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Ah, the plan of martyrs and madmen everywhere,” Roarke muttered.
“You’re not ready yet,” Caradoc said softly.
She stared at him, eyes dry and hot. “Maybe not. But I have no choice.” She went back to staring at the bounty announcement. “I could tell them I was kidnapped or something. To buy myself some time.”
Caradoc tilted his head. “Might work.”
“It will have to.” She spun on her heel, ready to pack her things and walk out into the forest. He caught her elbow even as Saffron squawked her protest. “Jane, it’s midnight. You can’t leave now.”
“I can’t wait either.” Even now, Kiri might be being dragged out of her bed. Her mother might be in prison carriage, her sisters cornered at school. She felt sick. She’d been naïve, selfish. Idiotic. She couldn’t beat Cartimandua and the Directorate. She’d been mad to think it was possible.
“You can’t travel alone at night so soon after a raid. At least wait until the morning,” he urged. “We’ll come up with a proper plan.”
“He’s right,” Saffron said. “You need to give us a fighting chance.”
“Us?” Jane echoed. “No.”
“Saffron, you’re a Green Jill,” Roarke said. “You can’t just---.”
Saffron cut him off, her smile as sharp as her knives. “Us.”
When Jane couldn’t convince her otherwise, she gave up in favour of gathering her belongings and food from the dining hall. Saffron followed her, as if she didn’t trust Jane not to run off when her back was turned. There were hours and hours left until the sun rose but Jane knew she couldn’t sleep anymore. She paced the training grounds instead. Saffron and Roarke watched her. She pointed to Roarke. “Come at me.”
He didn’t move. “Like hell.” He jerked his chin towards Saffron. “She’d kick my ass.”
Saffron snorted a laugh. “I need to practice,” Jane insisted. And to get out of her own head before she gave in the scream building in her throat. “And it might not be as easy as you think.”
“She’s right,” Saffron conceded. “And she knows how I fight. This will be a better test.”
Roarke shook his head like he thought they were both insane but stepped onto the beach regardless. The stars watched them. Jane remembered a Feral story about the stars being the eyes of the ancestors. “You should at least have a weapon,” Roarke said.
“I don’t need one.” She plucked a staff from the stand and handed it to him. Something new burned inside her, something strong. “Use this so you don’t pull your stitches out.”
He spun it one-handed, grinning. “I think I can manage.”
“Show off,” Saffron called out.
Roarke aimed the end of the staff at Jane’s heart, stopping a hairsbreadth from touching her. Or would have, if she hadn’t already moved back a step. She called up the burn of the numen traveling up her spine, of the roots of lights it sent into her skull, showing her flashes of what wasn’t there yet. Roarke came at her again and again, and again and again she anticipated moves he hadn’t decided to make yet. It filled her with a calm that was cold and numbing, like a winter pond.
r /> Roarke finally stopped and leaned on the staff, sweating. “I admit it. I’m impressed.”
“She’s getting good,” Saffron agreed. “But Jane, the Directorate is always better.”