Chapter 24
Jane
As they crossed the hills, more solar stills pockmarked the strange landscape. It made everything more alien, as though they had somehow crossed to the moon even though no one had been to the moon in a long time. People barely crossed rivers, never mind the sound barrier. There had been talk years ago of a relocation, of ships sent to orbit to ensure basic human survival of some kind. It had never happened—they couldn’t even figure out how to keep the satellites working. But one could be forgiven for not knowing that with the red dust on their boots and the hot dead air all around.
Smoke from cooking fire wreathed a cluster of brightly coloured yurts on wooden platforms set over the narrow red crests of the hills. The setting sun cast long darts of light off spear points, sword tips and arrowheads. Jane felt her lack of combat experience keenly, as keenly as she’d felt watching that boy die in that basement auditorium.
The village was set out in two concentric circles of yurts, the surrounding gullies and crevices filled with thriving gardens. Tall feathered corn stalks moved gently, peas and squash shoved between them. There must have been accessible ground water nearby, and they would have stolen the soil, or bought it off an illegal caravan.
They crossed over a series of painted wooden bridges that bisected the hills and connected the yurts. A spear poked Jane in the back when her gaze lingered too long on the bright red of tomatoes in the gully gardens. They were taken to a small yurt bleached white by the sun and devoid of any decoration. It glowed like old bones. Inside, the walls were painted with symbols and patterns that whirled like star constellations, a secret language easy to see and difficult to understand.
Shanti thrust a small glass in her hand. “Drink,” she said brusquely before stalking out.
They had placed Saffron on a narrow cot and she was trying to sit up, a similar glass in her hand. She looked dizzy and the liquid sloshed over her hand. Jane crouched next to her to help her steady it. She sniffed it carefully and forced a bright smile. “Probably not poison.”
Saffron gave her a ghost of a smile. “Now you’re learning.”
Jane tasted her own drink—it was tepid water flavoured with mint leaves and lavender blossoms. The smell transported her back to the Enclave gardens, to mint tea at the Collegium, and on the train. Everything in her ached with homesickness, sudden as a flu.
“If you’re mooning over a boyfriend, I’m going to let them kill you.” Saffron had one eye cracked open. “Anyway, crying will only dehydrate you. So cut it out.”
“I wasn’t crying,” Jane replied. “Not really. Isn’t there anyone you miss?”
Saffron glanced away. “Drink more flower water,” she said. “Only one of us should be weak as jacking kitten. And apparently, I’ve got that covered.” Even saying that much exhausted her. Her lips were faintly blue, even though the dim shadows were stuffy. Jane bit at her own lips anxiously, chapped and sunburned. There was no magic to fix this, no omens to lead them out.
No time.
The door opened to a flash of sunlight and red clay and Shanti returned with a young girl, about thirteen years old, and a woman with skin as pale as Shanti’s was dark. She ought to have been burned in the relentless red sunlight but the only red was in her violent hair.
“Move aside for Elisande,” Shanti ordered. The red-haired girl didn’t bother with words, just shoved Jane aside.
“Is she your queen?” Jane asked, detecting a certain arrogance she knew very well from the Directorate parties her mother attended.
“Anya, is my spear-sister. Elisande is our shamanka,” Shanti replied curtly.
Jane was surprised that the young girl was the shamanka. She would have expected a shamanka to have wrinkles as deep as the Badlands crags. White paint dotted her hairline and above her eyebrows, dividing her face down the line of her nose. Her hair hung with bones wrapped in red thread and coyote fur. She stood for a long moment over Saffron’s bed, barely blinking. Jane shifted closer but Shanti’s spear hit the back of her knees, crumpling her onto the heavily patterned rug.
“Her soul needs to be fetched back,” Elisande said impatiently. She touched Saffron’s braids and the brittle leaves turned to dust. Elisande’s eyes narrowed, tracing the pattern of woven vines and thorns. She said something in a language Jane had never heard before and suddenly she was being propelled outside with an unceremonious toss of Shanti’s hand.
“Wait,” Jane struggled. “She’s my friend.”
“And you can’t help her. But Elisande can.” Shanti shrugged. “Sit down and wait here, or walk away and let the Badlands claim you.”
Jane was getting heartily tired of meekness and patience being the only choice that was made sense. She wanted to scream, make fire from her fingertips, open the earth until everything trembled. Instead, she crossed her ankles like she’d been taught and smouldered inside. She wondered if this was how Kiri felt every day: defiant and frustrated. She’d always put it down to temper and a certain carelessness for others, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She glanced at Shanti who stood silently at the yurt doorway. She only knew about Ferals from Directorate warnings and the disdainful hushed voices of her teachers when she was little. She could feel numen thrumming through the earth here though, and they were trying to save Saffron. They couldn’t be that bad, could they?
“Is Elisande an Oracle?” She asked hesitantly. “Or a Seedsinger maybe?” The gully gardens were fairly impressive, after all.
Shanti glanced at her. “A what?”
“A Numina,” she explained. “Someone who works with Green Jack numen, and plant magic.”
“We all work numen, just some better than others,” Shanti shrugged. “Magic is everywhere. Always has been.”
Jane tilted her head, intrigued. “Is that what you believe?”
“It’s what we know. Don’t the Cities know it too? We just never needed magic enough to pay attention to it before the Cataclysms and the famines.”
“But numen comes from the earth,” Jane said. “The first Green Jack awakened it when he stepped out of the forest. We’ve channeled it and studied it ever since.”
“Is that what City folk believe?” Shanti raised her eyebrows. “Odd.”
“Don’t you pray to the Green Gods?” The entire village felt as ritual-soaked as the Collegium temple.
“Sometimes. Sometimes to the earth, to the ancestors. Sometimes we dance the rain. People have been doing it for centuries, long before the Jacks even.”
Jane had never heard any of her professors talk about numen that way. Like it was in everything, not just the Green Jack masks. “Don’t you have ceremonies to control numen?”
“Numen can’t be organized or measured,” she scoffed. “It needs to stay wild. No wonder you’re all the way you are. And no wonder your friend is sick.”
As Jane tried to integrate Feral beliefs with Directorate decrees inside her head, the sun sank into the hills as though it was being swallowed. The sky was streaked with purple, lavender and oranges. Jane had never seen anything more beautiful in her life, not even on feast days when paper lanterns were strung between the houses in her neighbourhood. The green of the sunken gardens seemed to glow as the light faded. Water barrels stood on platforms and a well of some kind had been dug into the ground until groundwater bubbled up. It was surrounded with decorated bones, chimes made of salvaged metal, stubs of burning candles in clay dishes and faded prayer flags.
When the drums started, it was a low thrumming that vibrated under her feet. Her numina mark thrummed at the top of her spine.
“It’s time.” Anya replied, pushing out of the tent. The last of the light flashed off her spear head.
Jane scrambled to her feet. “Time for what?”
Two villagers carried Saffron to a raised platform over the gardens, depositing her into a hammock knotted with feathers. Sage and sweetgrass smoke blew around her. Small fires were lit all around the village and more herbs scen
ted the smoke, making Jane dizzy enough that she had to sit down again. Shanti had a cloth mask decorated with bells over her mouth and nose.
When Elisande collapsed, the rest of the villagers sank into unconsciousness. Only Shanti and a few other warriors remained upright and alert. Jane was awake but she was made of water and stone, impossible to move. She could only watch as Saffron began to twitch and tremble, the firelight making her eyes appear red when they rolled back in her head.