The Fire Sermon Read online

  His hair was so long that it took a long time to cut, and wasn’t perfectly tidy, but eventually there was a mass of brown hair on the floor, and his head was reduced to tufty stubble. It reminded me of the maize fields by the village, right after harvest.

  I insisted on doing my own hair, too, despite his protestations, though I let him help me with the back. I hadn’t realized quite how long it had grown, and after I’d cut it to jaw length I kept shaking my head, unused to its weightlessness. We swept up the cut hair and threw it out the back window, shaking the towel after it. Standing together at the window, we watched the tresses drift down into the street below.

  Kip kept running his hand over his newly shorn head. “It takes years, right? To grow hair that long?”

  I leaned against him. “Normally, yes. But there’s a lot of things we don’t know.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s an understatement, in my case.”

  “I meant, lots we don’t know about the tanks. How they worked—whether things even grew in there. Or how long your hair was when you went in, or if they ever cut it.”

  “I know.” He continued rubbing his head. “I know it’s all just guesswork. And I know it probably won’t get me anywhere. But it’s hard to stop guessing.”

  We’d meant to stay only a day or two, just long enough to regain some strength, but Elsa asked us no questions and seemed grateful for the extra help, so the days passed, and by the third week, we’d fallen into a comfortable routine. We worked each morning and each evening, and in the afternoons took shelter in our room, which gave me a chance to free my arm for a few hours. A few times our curiosity overcame our caution, and I left my arm bound for an afternoon venture into the town itself. I still found it disorienting to be among so many people, after my long isolation in the Keeping Rooms. Kip, however, thrived on the crowds. Although we had no money to spend, he loved the crush of the market, the smell of the roasting nuts and mulled wine, the clatter of voices. For an hour at a time I could almost imagine we were normal people, that nobody was hunting us. But even in an Omega town there were occasional Alphas: tithe collectors, soldiers, merchants passing through. The few times we spotted an unbranded face, or the bright red of a Council uniform, we would turn swiftly, make for the nearest alley, and take the back streets all the way home.

  As we approached the market square one morning, we saw a crowd gathered by the central well. Two Council soldiers stood on a raised platform, so we hung back, but even from the back of the crowd, partly hidden by a barrow of melons, we could see what was happening. A man, perhaps ten years older than me, was tied to a stake, while one of the soldiers whipped his naked back. The beaten man was crying out with each stroke, but the noise of the whip itself was worse: the whistle as it sliced the air; the percussive smack as it hit his flesh. The second soldier stood a few feet away, reading aloud from a sheet of paper. He had to shout to make himself heard over the whip, and the cries of the prisoner:

  “For that crime, ten strokes. Then, upon being apprehended for the illegal removal of a Council information poster, the Omega prisoner was also found not to have registered his change of address with the Council. For this crime, a further ten strokes, with an additional five strokes for failure to pay tithes during the three months in his new residence.”

  The soldier finished his proclamation, but the whipping continued. The crowd was silent, but with each stroke the massed shoulders in front of us winced. Where the prisoner’s back had earlier shown individual welts, some leaking red, now no distinct marks could be made out in the pulpy mass. The waistband of his trousers was darkened with blood.

  I pulled Kip away, but even as we retreated down the alley we could hear the final strokes.

  “But what about his Alpha?” Kip said, as we hurried back to the holding house. “She’ll feel that, for sure.”

  “My guess is that the Council doesn’t care,” I said. “It’s a price they’re happy to pay—some woman miles away will scream for a few hours, but they get to make an example out of her twin for hundreds to see. And the Council’s done such a good job of segregating twins from each other, she’ll probably never even find out exactly what caused the pain. It’s not going to bother the Council.”

  “But if she did know—would Alphas stand for it? Wouldn’t they be furious that their own Council was hurting innocent people?”

  I stopped, turned to face him. “That man—the man being whipped—do you really think he’s any less innocent than his Alpha twin? Because he pulled down a poster, or couldn’t afford to pay tithes?”

  “Of course not. I know as well as you do that it’s all trumped-up nonsense. But if they’re beating people like that now, so badly their Alpha twins can feel it, won’t it cause problems from their own side? Won’t the Alphas be angry?”

  “They will be—but not at the Council. I think if they found out, they’d be angry at the Omega twin, the so-called criminal. If they swallow the Council line, they’ll believe it’s him bringing this on himself. The same way they think Omegas are going hungry because we’re too lazy or stupid to farm properly, rather than because of tithes and blighted land.”

  After that, we were more careful on the streets, venturing from the holding house only occasionally, usually in the early mornings on market days, when we could slip unnoticed among the busiest of the crowds. But it was easier to stay at home, in the cloistered courtyard world within Elsa’s walls, where we could spend time with the children and try to forget that there lay a town beyond, with blood on the whipping post and Council soldiers in the streets.

  We got to know all the children. Louisa, a sweet three-year-old dwarf, became devoted to me, and a slightly older boy called Alex took to following Kip around. Alex had been there for five years, Elsa told us, since he was a baby. He had no arms and would sit on Kip’s lap at mealtimes, Kip feeding him from his own bowl, alternating mouthfuls. Alex’s head fit neatly beneath Kip’s chin, bobbing gently each time Kip chewed. Watching them, I noted how Kip’s face had lost its starved look, his cheekbones less angular. I knew, too, that my own flesh was fuller, my bones less sharp. I was stronger, as well. Even with one arm bound, I could hoist the biggest pots up above the fire without assistance, or carry the toddlers on my hip for long stretches when they demanded to be cuddled.

  I’d never thought much about children. Most Omegas didn’t—what was the point? At best, you might hope to one day take care of an Omega child in need of a home. Since my branding I’d grown used to the taunts from the few Alphas who passed by the settlement: dead end, freak, monster. Now, watching Kip with Alex, or seeing how little Louisa would reach her truncated arms up to me whenever I passed, the name dead end seemed more painful than any of the other insults I’d been called. It was easy to reassure myself that we weren’t freaks or monsters. The kindness of Elsa and Nina, or the ingenuity of the children as they negotiated the obstacles of their bodies, was proof enough of that. But I couldn’t argue with dead end. Whatever different deformations we Omegas had, that was the one we all shared: infertile. Dead end.

  Asking about the island had proved to be another dead end. After a few weeks, I’d tried sounding out Elsa and Nina about the resistance. We were in the kitchen, the pots all washed, enjoying the brief lull before the preparations for lunch. Elsa stood at the window, watching Kip playing with the children in the courtyard, while Nina and I sat on the bench. We’d been teasing Nina about a young wine seller at the market who’d been flirting with her for weeks. Nina had denied this, but it was true that she’d been volunteering to do the early-morning shopping lately, and had taken to doing so in her best dress.

  “And where’s he from, this loverboy?” I asked.

  “He’s not my lover,” she said, slapping at my leg. “But he’s from near the coast—farther north.”

  “Then how’d he end up here?”

  She shrugged. “You know how it is. It’s harder by the coast—lots of Council raids, settlements being sealed.”


  Elsa turned from the window, spoke a little too quickly. “Good news for all of us that he came here, whatever the reason. Nina only complains half as much about work now that she’s in a good mood.”

  I hesitated. “The crackdowns along the coast—is that because of the island?”

  Nina had been blushing, but now the color dropped from her cheeks. She stood, knocking a basket of onions from the bench, and didn’t pause to pick them up as she rushed from the kitchen.

  Elsa spoke so quietly I could hardly hear her over the noise from the courtyard. “We’ve got kids here. Be careful what you say.”

  I knelt to pick up the scattered onions, avoiding looking at Elsa. “But you know something about the island? What have you heard?”

  She shook her head. “My husband used to ask questions, Alice.”

  “You never told me how he died.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Please. Tell me what you know about the island.”

  “Enough to know it’s dangerous.” She knelt beside me, helping with the onions. “Even to talk about. I lost my husband already. I can’t take those risks anymore—not with Nina and the kids to worry about.”

  She stayed beside me until we’d gathered the last of the onions back into the basket. She didn’t seem angry, but she never spoke of it again, and for three days Nina avoided me altogether.

  In our room each night, Kip and I endlessly debated when to leave. I knew that he would have liked to stay, and I understood the temptation: in New Hobart, inside the holding house, we’d stumbled onto something that felt like normal life. But my dreams and visions were still dominated by two things: the island, and the Confessor. For all that I longed to succumb to the busy contentment of the holding house, the island still drew me to it, more urgently than ever now that I knew we were only a few weeks from the coast. And I could still feel the Confessor seeking me, her mind scraping at the layers of night in search of me. In my dreams, she reached out her hand and my secrets fell into her palm with as little resistance as overripe raspberries. When I woke, Kip said I’d been covering my face with my hands all night, like a hiding child.

  I couldn’t bear the idea that I could lead her to this place. To Elsa, Nina, and the children.

  “We can’t stay,” I said to Kip for the hundredth time, as we went through the same argument again.

  “We could explain to Elsa and Nina, about your arm. They’d understand. They wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “It’s not that. I do trust them. It’s something else.” I couldn’t explain the sensation. It was like a noose slowly tightening. It reminded me of the feeling I’d had for those last few months in the village, waiting for Zach to unmask me; or that frantic moment when Kip and I were stealing the horses and found ourselves trapped in that ever-shrinking circle of torches. Something was closing in around us.

  When I tried to describe the feeling, he shrugged. “I can’t argue with you when you start on the seer stuff. It’s your trump card. But it would help if you could be more specific.”

  “I wish I could be. But it’s only a vague feeling—like this is too good to last.”

  “Maybe we’ve earned it. Maybe it’s our turn to have something good for once.”

  “Since when do people get what they deserve?” I paused, wishing I hadn’t spoken so angrily. “Sorry. I can’t help it. I’ve just got a bad feeling.”

  “Well, I’ve got a good feeling. And you know what it’s from? From eating three meals a day and not sleeping under logs.”

  I knew what he meant. But it was for him, above all, that I knew we had to leave. We weren’t going to find the answers to his past here. And there were the others, too—those floating faces that still visited my dreams. Wasn’t I betraying them, slipping into the comfort of this new life while they waited, silent, behind the glass of the tanks?

  I tried again. “You heard what Nina said about the Reformer. And you and I know even more about what Zach’s doing.”

  “And what makes you so sure that we’ll be able to stop him if we somehow get to the island?”

  I could understand his point. For me, the island remained a vivid reality. I saw it nightly. I knew the precise shape of its silhouette against the dawn sky, and through the fog of rainy evenings. I knew the texture of the black rocks that slashed the water at the base of the cliffs. More importantly, I knew what the island contained: an alternative. The Omega resistance. A place where we would no longer have to run or hide. For Kip, though, I could see how the island would seem abstract and uncertain, especially compared to the concrete reality of our daily lives since we’d arrived at Elsa’s.

  We could never resolve the argument. And despite my unease, I was happy to be persuaded by him, to have an excuse to stay longer. Just for one more day, I’d say to myself each evening. At night, curled next to Kip in the tiny bed, I did my best to ignore the images that crowded the periphery of my dreams. Above all, I tried to ignore the sense of the Confessor’s seeking, as pervasive and inescapable as a ringing in my ears.

  In the end Elsa resolved the argument for us, bursting into our room one afternoon with a sack in her hand. I’d been sitting on the bed with my arm unbound, so I lunged to hide under the blanket, but Elsa waved impatiently at me.

  “Don’t waste time with that. Think I don’t know a skinny girl like you isn’t bulky round the waist like that? And you’re clumsy as hell with one arm. Not that he’s much better,” she said, with a jab of her hand toward Kip.

  I let the blanket drop. “Then why not say something?”

  “Because it wasn’t a bad idea of yours. For the kids—we can’t have them letting slip there’s a seer here. Not just that it’s rare, but you know what people are like, even Omegas, when it comes to seers.” I nodded, remembering the sniping comments of the others back at the settlement. “The arm stunt would work well enough on the street, at a glance,” Elsa added.

  I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you the truth.”

  Again, Elsa brushed my words aside. “Keeping your secrets is a good habit for the two of you to get into. You’ve done a decent job of that here. I hoped you might stay longer. But you have to go, before tonight.” Even as she talked, she was stuffing Kip’s blanket into the sack.

  He stood up. “What’s happened?”

  “Council soldiers, in the market today. That’s nothing unusual. But there were more of them, and the word on the street is that they’re setting a watch on the town. Building gates. They’ve told our mayor it’s for our own protection.” She laughed. “Apparently there’s a sudden bandit problem, and the Alphas care so deeply for us that they’re guarding us themselves.”

  “How long until they seal the town?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. They’ve got guards already on the main roads, but they won’t be able to get a wall up yet. Until then, they’ll be trying to surround the place with patrols—it depends how many soldiers they’ve brought.”

  I stood up. “They’ll have come with hundreds. They’re trying to encircle the town. I should have known.”

  Elsa nodded. “That’s what the baker said—men patrolling the outskirts already, others putting up the wall. And that’s not all.” She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from her apron pocket, passed it to me. With Kip looking over my shoulder, I smoothed the paper out on the bed, and saw my own face, and his, take shape. Under the sketches, in large lettering: WANTED—HORSE THIEVES. Two bandits (female seer; male missing left arm) guilty of midnight raid on undefended Alpha village. If seen, contact Council authorities immediately. Substantial reward offered.

  Elsa snorted. “Amazing, isn’t it—what good likenesses they were able to get from some villagers who glimpsed these horse thieves in the dark.”

  I looked up at her. “I’m sorry if we’ve brought trouble on you. On New Hobart.”

  She grabbed back the piece of paper, screwed it up, and shoved it into her apron. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s happening elsewhere,
too—Alphas taking control of settlements, even big Omega towns like this. They’re turning them into ghettos. It was always going to happen here eventually.”

  “You weren’t tempted to turn us in?” asked Kip.

  Elsa laughed again. “To be honest, I don’t need the reward. If there’s one thing Alphas are willing to pay money for it’s to get rid of their Omega children. We’ll be all right here, don’t you worry.”

  “And the horse thing,” I said. “It’s not what it seems.”

  She shushed me. “You think I took you in because I needed two starving, one-armed kitchen helpers? Listen. We lost some children once, a few years back, before Nina even worked here. The men came at night, with swords. They weren’t in uniform, but I’d bet my life they were Council soldiers. They took five. Three were babies, two much older.” I heard an intake of breath from Kip as Elsa continued. “And the only word we ever got about them was when three of their families came back two weeks later, set to wring my neck because their Alpha kids had died, suddenly, all three of them within a day of one another.” I thought of the skulls on the grotto floor when we’d escaped from Wyndham. Elsa went on. “I don’t know what they did to those kids, or what happened to the other two they’d taken. But I do know that there’s lots of reasons to be on the run from the Alphas, and those reasons aren’t about stealing horses, either.” She passed the sack to Kip. “There’s enough food there for a few days, and water, too. The blanket, a knife, and some other stuff that might be useful. You should stick to the small roads, which they might not have covered yet. You’d be safer splitting up, but I know you won’t. Alice, you should hide your arm again.”

  I tucked my arm beneath my sweater, but waved off Kip when he made to help me bind it. “No—if I have to run, or fight, I’ll need to be able to get it free.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait till dark?” he asked.

  I shook my head at the same time as Elsa spoke. “No—go now, while there’re others about, and before they’ve sealed the city. Head to the southern edge of town, away from the market. I’m going back to the market now. There’s a crowd gathering, not happy about what’s happening. We can’t fight the soldiers—we’re not stupid—but we’ll gather, and at sunset we’re going to march, make a fuss. It’ll be enough of a scene to draw some of the soldiers our way. Sunset—remember that. Now go.” She pointed us at the window, but I couldn’t leave without asking one more time.