The Fire Sermon (11 page)

I didn’t speak. Instead, for the first time, I tried to match the Confessor in her probing. I pictured my mother’s hands above the mussel bowl. I tried to make my mind the knife. I’d always resisted doing this: visions had been something I’d suffered, rather than used. The violation I’d felt in my sessions with the Confessor had made me even more unwilling to use my own mind that way. So I was surprised at how easily it came to me: like peeling back a curtain. And what I saw were just fragments, like my dreams, but it was enough. I saw a place I hadn’t seen before. A huge, round chamber. There were no tanks this time. Only wires, like those in my visions of the tank room, but infinitely multiplied. They climbed the curved walls, which were stacked with metal boxes.

I felt the Confessor recoil. She stood so quickly the chair was knocked backward, and she leaned over me. “Don’t try to play me at my own game.”

I tried to hide my shaking hands as I met her gaze. “Send me my twin.”

When he finally came, the next afternoon, he looked shocked at the state of me.

“Are you sick? Has someone done something to you?” He rushed to where I stood, grabbing my elbow and guiding me to the chair. “How did they do this? Nobody else can get in here, except the Confessor.”

“Nobody has. It’s this place itself.” I gestured at the cell. “You can’t seriously expect me to be blooming with health and joy. Anyway,” I said, “you don’t look so great yourself.” I still hadn’t gotten used to this new Zach, his face stripped back to bone, with dark circles spreading like stains from beneath his eyes.

“Probably because I’ve been up most of the night trying to work out what you’re playing at.”

“Why does it have to be complicated? I need to get outside, Zach. Just for a few moments. I’m going mad in here.” It was no ploy to say this, even if I couldn’t let Zach know the true source of my terror. I was genuinely at the limit of my endurance, as my shattered appearance attested.

“It’s too dangerous. You know that. You know I don’t keep you in here for fun.”

I shook my head. “Just think about how dangerous it is for you if I go mad. I could do anything.”

He just laughed. “Trust me—you’re not in a position to threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening you. I’m offering you something—something that could really help you.”

“And since when have you ever been interested in helping me?”

“Since I started losing my mind in here. I need this. Just ten minutes in the light. To see the sky. It’s not a lot to ask, especially given what I can tell you.”

He shook his head. “I’d believe you if you’d ever given us anything useful before. The Confessor says you sit there like a wax doll in her sessions with you. You’ve never even admitted the island exists, and now you’re telling us you know something useful about it. So why trust you now?”

I sighed. “Fine. I lied to her about the island.” He stood, walked quickly to the door. I spoke to his back. “I knew that’s what it would take to get you here. But I’m not lying about having something useful to tell you. I couldn’t tell her.”

“Why? That’s her job, collecting information.”

“Because it’s about her.”

He paused, hand still on the door, his other hand holding the hefty bunch of keys that he always carried.

“That’s why it had to be you I told. It’s about her—what she’s planning to do to you.”

“I’m not going to believe this crap,” he spat. “She’s the one person here I can trust. More than you.”

I shrugged. “You don’t have to believe it. I’ll just tell you what I know, and it’s up to you whether you believe it.”

He stared at me for a few moments. I watched as he turned, inserted the key, opened the door. He still didn’t speak. Finally he stepped outside, leaving the door open behind him. “Ten minutes,” he called back as he headed down the corridor. “Then we come back here, and you tell me everything.”

chapter 7

Later, when I tried to remember the moment of stepping outside the cell, I couldn’t. I’d just chased after Zach, blindly following him through the long corridor, through another locked door, and then up a flight of stairs. It was only at the top of the stairs, where three high windows let in the light, that I felt the enormity of it. I was at once shielding my wincing eyes and gaping at the window for more. Already the fog of the last few weeks was dispersing; my mind felt clearer than it had for months. It was as if the fort above the cells had been a physical weight, bearing down on me. As we made our way out of the depths of the fort, I was shedding the burden.

Ignoring me, Zach led me along another long corridor, unlocked a larger door, then paused. “I don’t know if you’re stupid enough to try anything, but don’t bother.” I tried to disregard the light and fresh air streaming in from the partly opened door, and to concentrate on his words. “You know you can’t fight me. The other doors leading to the ramparts are locked. And stay close to me.”

He pushed the door fully open. Despite the pain from my glare-struck eyes, the fresh air itself was intoxicating. I took heaving breaths as I stepped out.

The long, narrow rampart was unchanged since those escorted visits four years ago, in the first months of my imprisonment. It was a terrace, perhaps sixty feet long, protruding halfway up the sheer face of the fort. In front of us, crenellations toothed the wall that overlooked the drop below. Behind us, the wall of the fort continued vertically, carved straight into the side of the mountain. I heard Zach locking the door from which we’d just emerged, in the center of the rampart. At each end of the terrace, either side of us, identical doors were set in the wall, their solid wood crisscrossed by metal spars.

For a few moments I just stood there, head tilted slightly back, sun on my face. When I approached the battlements, Zach shifted to block my way.

I laughed. “Relax. You can’t blame me for wanting to see. My view’s been fairly limited for the last four years.”

He nodded but stayed close to me as I reached the edge and leaned over the waist-high wall to see the city below.

“I’ve never seen the city properly before,” I said. “It was night when they brought me from the settlement, and I had something over my head. And when they used to let us up here, we were never allowed near the edge.”

From this height, Wyndham was like a jumble of buildings tossed down the slope. It was too chaotic to be beautiful, but its size alone was impressive. The city clambered up the mountainside, as high as the base of the fort, but also spread out into the flat of the plain, where roads faded into the hills and the blurred horizon. The river meandered into view from the south, curving around the base of the city before disappearing into the deep caverns of the mountain itself. Even from this high I could see movement: carts on the roads; washing draped from windows, patiently flapping in the breeze. So many people, so close to where I’d been, alone, for all those indistinguishable days and nights.

Zach had turned away from the city. I did the same, leaning back next to him against the low wall. On either side of us, merlons rose to above head height.

“You said before that you don’t trust anyone here, except the Confessor.”

He didn’t respond, looked down at his hands.

“So why choose to live this way?” I asked. “I’m here because I can’t leave. But you could; you could just walk away.”

“Was this part of your bargain? That we have a little heart-to-heart? Because I didn’t agree to that.” He turned around again, looking over Wyndham. “Anyway, it’s not that straightforward. There are things I need to do.” In the clear light I could see how prominent the bones had become in his face. He exhaled. “I’ve started things here. They’re my projects. I have to finish them. It’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You’ve always been such an idealist. Things are simple for you.” His voice matched the tiredness of his eyes.

“It could be simple for you, too. You could just leave—go back to the village, work the land with Mom.”

Before he’d even turned, I knew I’d said the wrong thing. “Work the land?” he hissed. “Do you have any idea who I am, now? What I’ve achieved? And the village is the last place I’d ever go. Even after the split, I was never treated like the other Alphas. I thought it would get better, but it didn’t.” His pointing finger jabbed toward me. “You did that, all those years you dodged the split. I can never go back there.” He’d stepped away from me, stood halfway between me and the door.

Both hands on the wall behind me, I pushed upward as I jumped, springing backward to sit on the ledge, and then scrambling to my feet. The movement was so quick that only by throwing my hands out to the merlons on either side was I able to catch myself from toppling back.

He lunged toward me but hesitated as he saw how close I was to the edge. He raised both hands in front of him, helpless as a puppet. “That’s crazy. Get down, now. That’s crazy.” His voice was high and strident.

I shook my head. “One more word and I jump. Shout for a guard, and I jump.”

He inhaled, put a finger to his lips. I wasn’t sure if he was hushing himself or me. “OK,” he murmured. “OK.” Again, I couldn’t tell who he was trying to reassure. “OK. But you wouldn’t do it. You’d never survive it.”

“I know. And don’t pretend it’s me you’re worried about.”

“Fine. Fair enough. But you couldn’t do it to me. You wouldn’t.”

“You called my bluff once already, at the split. I protected you that time. I can’t do it again.”

He took a step forward; I edged back. Only my toes and the balls of my feet were on the wall now; my heels tremored over the emptiness below.

“I’ll do it. There’s no reason for me to go on living, in that cell.”

“I let you out—you’re out here now, aren’t you?”

I dared a glance over my shoulder, then turned back quickly, hoping my eyes didn’t reveal too much of my terror.

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” The stones on each side were warm and rough under my outstretched hands. I wondered if it was the last texture I’d feel. “Walk back, all the way to the door.” He nodded, kept nodding as he walked slowly backward, hands still raised.

One arm still on the stone merlon to my right, I lifted my shirt and sweater with my other hand to reveal the makeshift rope I’d wrapped around my waist at dawn. I smiled at the thought of my comment to the Confessor the day before. All day the knotted strips of sheet had been digging into my stomach, but I hadn’t dared to loosen it, already worried that the bulk beneath my clothes might be visible.

Unwinding the rope was a delicate task. At first I tried to keep one hand on the stone, but it was too difficult, the unwound loops dropping around my legs and threatening to tangle me. Finally I relented and used both hands. I’d edged forward a little, but my heels were an inch, at most, from the brink. I kept my eyes on Zach. The white rope, slowly unfurling, trailed its way down the outer wall behind me.

I don’t know whether I saw him tense, or just sensed his intention, but before he’d taken a single rushed step forward I raised a hand.

“Run at me and I jump, or we’ll both end up going over. It amounts to the same thing.”

He stopped. His breathing was harsh, heavy. “You’d seriously do it.”

It was a statement now, not a question. At least it spared me from giving an answer that I didn’t have. I just looked at him, and he retreated again to the far wall.

The whole rope was unwound now. The base of the merlon was far too thick for me to pass the rope around, but at the top it narrowed to a single stone’s thickness. To loop the rope around this, I had to turn sideways, my cheek pressed against the stone so that I could keep watching Zach while I reached upward. To pass the rope from one hand to the other I had to wrap both arms around the merlon’s breadth in an awkward embrace. When it was done, I was reluctant to relinquish the tight hold on the stone.

“You must be insane,” called Zach. “The rope’ll never hold. You’ll fall and kill us both. And even if you do get down there alive, there’re guards all along the outer perimeter. It’s pointless.”

I looked at the rope. He had a point: to transform my sheet into any kind of length, I’d had to tear it into strips only two fingers thick. The knots looked shoddy, even to me. I knew I was light these days, but the rope was still uninspiring. And what Zach couldn’t see was that the rope hung only part of the way down the face of the fort beneath me; from its frayed end, there was still a drop of at least twenty feet to the stone terrace below.

“Listen carefully,” I told him. “You’re going to go out that same door. You’re going to lock it behind you. If I hear you shout for guards, I jump. If I hear you starting to unlock the door again, I jump. Even if I’m halfway down the rope and I see you peering down at me, I jump. You get behind that door and you count to one hundred before you even think about opening it, or making a sound. Got it?”

He bobbed his head. “You’ve changed,” he said quietly.

“Four years in a cell will do that.” I wondered if this was the last time I’d see him. “You could change, too, you know.”

“No,” he said.

“It’s your choice,” I said. “Remember that. Now lock that door.”