The Fire Sermon (21 page)

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.

“Do you know anything about the island?”

She shook her head, but this time didn’t avoid my eyes. “Only the rumors—the same as what you’ve probably heard. I don’t even know if it’s true. But for your sake, I hope it is. The way the Council’s treating us now—I don’t understand it. Nobody does. It’s getting so that the refuges won’t be enough. It can’t go on like this.”

I squeezed her hand before turning away. It was calloused from years of scrubbing pots, wielding brooms, lifting sleeping children.

“Will you say good-bye to Nina, and the children, for us? Especially Alex?” said Kip.

Elsa nodded. Kip hesitated at the window, where I was already crouched on the sill.

“Go on,” I said. “Ask her.”

He looked back at her. “You don’t recognize me, do you? From the five children who were taken?”

Elsa reached out, rested her hand for a moment on his cheek. “Sorry.”

He turned away, clambered onto the sill next to me.

“We can’t thank you enough,” I said to Elsa.

She scoffed. “Then what are you hanging around for? Get out of here, the two of you.”