The Fire Sermon

‘Look closer,’ said The Confessor, her breath warm on the back of my ear.

That’s when I saw the man. He was standing against the wall, in the darkest corner of the cell, watching the door warily.

‘Who are you?’ he said, stepping forward, eyes narrowing to see me more clearly. His voice was as rusty as the observation hatch, grating with disuse.

‘Don’t talk to him,’ said The Confessor. ‘Just watch.’

‘Who are you?’ he said, louder this time. He was perhaps ten years older than me. I hadn’t seen him before, on any of those early visits to the ramparts, but his long beard and his pale skin showed that he wasn’t new to the Keeping Rooms.

‘I’m Cass,’ I said.

‘There’s no point talking to him,’ said The Confessor. She sounded almost bored. ‘Just watch. It’ll happen soon. I’ve been feeling it coming for days.’

The man stepped forward again, only feet from the door now, so close that I could have reached out to him through the small opening. He was missing one hand, and his brand was visible through his matted hair.

‘Is there someone else there with you?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen anyone for months. Not since they brought me here.’ He stepped closer, his hand raised.

Then he buckled. It was as sudden as that, his legs giving way like a sand embankment in heavy rain. His hands went to his stomach, and twice his whole body contracted. He made no noise; the only thing to emerge from his mouth was a stream of blood, black in the candlelight. He didn’t move again.

I had no chance to speak, or to respond at all, other than to jump back from the hatch when he fell. Before I could look in again, The Confessor had grabbed my arm, turned me to face her.

‘See? You think you’re safe here?’ She pushed me back against the door, the steel cold against my bare arms. ‘That man’s twin thought she was safe, because she had him locked up down here. But she made enough enemies on the Council that even the Keeping Rooms couldn’t protect her. They couldn’t get at him, so they had to take her out directly. They still managed it.’

I already knew. The horror of the man’s death was doubled for me. I’d seen it the moment the man fell: a woman lying on her stomach in a bed, her dark hair neatly plaited, and a knife in her back.

‘Did Zach do this?’

She shook her head dismissively. ‘Not this time. And that’s not important – what you need to realise is that even he can’t protect you, not necessarily. He’s in favour at the moment, sure, but his plans are ambitious. If the Council turns on him, they’ll find a way to get to one of you.’

Her face was so close to mine that I could see the individual eyelashes, and the vein that pulsed on her forehead, just to the left of her brand. I closed my eyes, but the darkness only filled with memories of the man on the floor behind me, the false tongue of blood hanging from his mouth. I couldn’t breathe.

She spoke very slowly. ‘You need to start helping Zach, and helping me. If he fails, if the other Councillors turn on him, they’ll get to one of you.’

‘I won’t help you,’ I said. I thought of the tank rooms, what Zach had done to those floating people. But those horrors seemed distant compared to the bleeding body on the floor behind me, and The Confessor’s implacable face close to mine.

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I have nothing to tell you.’

I was wondering how much longer I could keep from crying in front of her, but she suddenly turned.

‘Put her back in her cell,’ she called over her shoulder to the guards as she walked away.

*

My world was reduced to the cell, the walls, the roof, the floor. The mercilessness of the door. I tried to picture the outside world: the morning sun throwing sharp shadows over the stubble of freshly cut wheat; the night sky infinitely wide above the river. But these had become concepts, rather than realities. They were as lost to me as the smell of rain, the feel of river-sand underfoot, the sound of birds announcing the dawn. All those things were less real, now, than the visions of the tank room, and of those bodies, sodden-fleshed and silent, floating amongst the tubes. The visions of the island had become rare, too. Those glimpses of open sea could no longer penetrate the cell. The tally of my days in the Keeping Rooms was growing until I felt the cell was crammed with them. It was as though the cell were slowly filling with water. I could barely breathe for the weight of lost weeks, months, and now years. Is this how it begins, I wondered, the madness that so often stalks seers? If it were going to happen, then the years of imprisonment could only accelerate the process. I’d heard my father describe the seer at Haven market as out of his mind. Now that turn of phrase felt like a literal description. The Confessor’s probing, and the visions of the tanks, were so all-consuming that there was no room left in my own mind for anything else, least of all myself.

Zach came to see me so rarely now – sometimes months passed between visits. When he did come, I could hardly speak to him. I noticed, though, how much his face had changed over my years in the Keeping Rooms. He was thinner, so his lips were now the only part of his face with any softness. I wondered if I’d changed too, and whether he would notice if I had.

‘You know it can’t go on like this,’ he said.

I nodded, but I felt as though I was underwater, his words muffled and distant. My cell’s cramped walls and low ceiling conspired to create echoes, doubling every noise so that any sounds were always just a little unsteady. Now the echo had started to feel like part of a broader blurring – everything was slipping out of focus.

‘If it were up to me,’ he went on, ‘I’d keep you here. But I’ve started something, and I need to finish it. I thought maybe I could keep you out of it, if you made yourself useful. But you won’t give her anything.’

He didn’t need to specify who ‘her’ was.

‘She won’t put up with it any longer.’ He spoke so low that I could barely hear him, as if he could hardly bear to hear his own admission of fear. He leaned forward so our faces were close. ‘If it were up to me, I’d keep you here,’ he said, louder now. I didn’t know why it mattered so much to him to convince me of this. I turned my head to the wall.

*

At first I didn’t know why the dreams of the empty tank terrified me so. I’d been seeing the tanks for three years now. They always sickened me, but they’d become familiar – my body no longer flinched in surprise when I saw them in a dream. I’d grown used to them, the same way I’d grown used to the brand on my own face. Why, then, when I dreamed of the empty tank, did I wake tangled in sheets wet with sudden-sprung sweat? The tank was empty – it should have been less horrifying than the occupied ones that normally plagued my nights. It just sat there, a glass belly waiting to be filled.

For the fourth night in a row, I dreamed of the same tank again. It sat in the same dull light; the wires and pipes clustered above it as they always had. The curve of the glass was the same, but something was acutely wrong. This time the glass curved not away from me, but around me. I could feel a tube in my own mouth, its rubbery intrusion into my windpipe, and the pain at the corner of my mouth where, protruding, the tube had eroded my skin. I couldn’t close my mouth, or keep out the liquid that now filled the tank, foully sweet. My eyes, too, couldn’t close. The viscous fluid blurred my vision, everything wavering and softened, as if seen through one of the heatwaves that hovered above the settlement’s fields on midsummer days.

When I woke, I screamed until my throat was gravelled and my voice couldn’t stick on any note, juddering and jerking between them. I screamed Zach’s name, until that single syllable took on strange shapes, became unrecognisable. In my first weeks in the Keeping Rooms I’d learned that screaming achieved nothing, brought nobody to the cell door, but I screamed nonetheless.

For six more nights I felt the tank fill around me, unable to move as the fluid took possession of my flesh, closing finally over my head, around the tubes that threaded into me at the throat and wrists. Each night, until I woke myself, screaming, I was suspended from the throat tube like a fish on a line.

I couldn’t eat. Each attempt to swallow reminded me of the tube down my throat, and I gagged and retched. I did what I could to avoid sleep, when the visions came most easily. At night, I paced the cell, counting footsteps until the numbers blurred. I took to pinching my arms and pulling hairs from my head, one at a time, trying to use the pain not just to keep myself awake, but to locate myself in my real body, and to keep at bay the tanked self of my dreams. Nothing worked. It was all unravelling: my body; my mind. Time itself was jumpy and fragmented now. Some days I slipped through hours like someone skidding, out of control, down a scree-slope. Other times I could have sworn that time stopped, and a single breath seemed to last a year. I thought of the mad seer at Haven market, and the mad Omega on the ramparts. This is how it happens, I thought. This is how my own mind deserts me.

In the end, I scratched a note into the meal tray with the edge of my blunted spoon. Zach: urgent – important vision. Will tell you (only you) in exchange for ten minutes outside, on the ramparts.

He sent The Confessor, as I’d known he would.

She sat in her usual chair, back to the door. The previous days must have left me looking ragged, but she made no comment on it. I wondered whether she even saw it, or whether her mental acuity meant she had no need for external observations. ‘Normally, you’re not so keen to share your visions. Quite the opposite. Which makes us curious, you see.’

‘If Zach’s so curious, send him. I won’t tell you.’

I’d known this would be the hardest part. I could feel The Confessor probing my mind, the way our mother used to pry open the shells of river-mussels, circling the seam, testing with the knife for the one weak spot from which to lever open the shell.

‘Closing your eyes won’t stop me, you know.’

I hadn’t even noticed I’d closed them until The Confessor spoke. I realised that my teeth, too, were clenched tight. I forced myself to look straight at her. ‘You’ll get nothing.’

‘Perhaps. Maybe you’re getting better at this. Or maybe there’s nothing there – no special vision, no helpful insight.’

‘Oh, so it’s a trap? What am I going to do? Shimmy down the walls on a rope made of bedsheets? Come on.’ I paused. It was hard to talk and brace my mind against The Confessor at the same time. ‘I just want to see the sky. If I’m going to tell you what I know, why shouldn’t I trade it for that?’

‘It’s not a trade if you’ve got nothing to offer us.’

‘It’s about the island,’ I blurted. I’d hoped not to give away even this much, but the terror of the tanks made me reckless.

‘I see. The island that you’ve insisted for the last four years doesn’t exist.’

I nodded, mute. While her expression didn’t change, I felt her mind, eager now, like the hands of an unwelcome suitor. I concentrated harder than ever, trying to open my mind without allowing her full access. I focused on giving away only a glimpse, just a fraction of a glimpse, enough to confirm the value of my visions without revealing anything that would be disastrous for the island, or for my own plans. I fixed my mind on a single image, the way a lone shaft of light would fall between the curtains of my kitchen at the settlement, illuminating only a fragment of the opposite wall. Just the town on the island, just one of its busy, steep streets. Close-up, no identifying features of the landscape. Just the town, its market-hub, the houses stacked on the rising ground. Just the town.

I heard The Confessor’s intake of breath.

‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Tell Zach what he has to do, and I’ll tell him everything.’

But it wasn’t enough. The probing continued, almost frenzied now. Once, at the settlement, I’d woken to find a raven had picked its way through a gap in the thatch and become trapped in my tiny bedroom, dashing from wall to wall in a cacophony of feathers until it found the open window. The Confessor’s presence in my head felt like that now: the same mixture of desperation and aggression.

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 always 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, just 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 backwards, 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 got 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 or not.’

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 centre of the rampart. At each end of the terrace, either side of us, identical doors were set in the wall, their solid wood criss-crossed 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 Mum.’

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 towards 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 upwards as I jumped, springing backwards 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 towards 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 backwards, hands still raised.

One arm still on the stone merlon to my right, I lifted my shirt and jumper 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 forwards 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 upwards. 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.