The Fire Sermon (39 page)

We sat in silence for a while longer, before he spoke again. “How do you know we can trust her?”

“You’d be dead by now if you couldn’t, for one thing,” said Zoe, stepping back into the clearing. She crouched opposite us and tossed us a heavy flask. “And how do I know I can trust the two of you?”

Kip rolled his eyes. “You’re the one with the fancy knife skills.”

I leaned gently into him. “She gave us knives, too, Kip.”

“Perhaps, but we both know she could fillet us if it came to a fight.”

“Look at it from my perspective,” Zoe said. “I get messages from Piper, once a week, from the courier ship. A few weeks ago he sends word that they’ve had a surprise arrival on the island.” She leaned back against a tree, absently fingering one of the knives at her belt. “And that’s big news in itself, because nobody’s done it without a map before.” With a movement that managed to be both speedy and casual, she flicked the knife forward, burying it into the tree behind me and Kip, a foot above our heads. “Then I hear from him again, all excited because one of the arrivals is this big-time seer, the greatest thing that’s ever happened to the Omegas.”

Kip snorted. “I got the impression Piper thinks that’s his own role.”

Zoe ignored him. “Then he sends word that he’s identified your twin: our old friend the Reformer. But this week, no message, no boat at the usual place.” Another blade thrummed into the tree, directly beneath the first. “Then, a few days ago, evacuees start landing. First around here, and then another load farther south—the whole damn fleet, if the rumors are right. And Council soldiers swarming the coast and offering a bounty for catching any of them. So what I want to know is this.” A third blade quivered above us, so close now that I felt a tiny yank as some strands of my hair were pinned to the tree trunk. “Was my brother wrong to be excited about you? It seems a big coincidence that the Council just happened to find the island right after your arrival. And how is it that the two of you are safely ashore while my brother and the rest of the islanders are probably being slaughtered?”

“If you’re who you say you are, then Piper’s fine,” said Kip.

She interrupted him. “Alive. He’s alive, but there’s a difference between being alive and being fine. You should know that. Piper told me about the tanks she found you in.”

I jerked my head to the side, flinching as I pulled free the pinned strands of hair.

“We warned them,” I said. “I felt the attack coming, told them to get off the island. Piper sent us away.”

“He could have used you as a hostage. If you’re who you say you are,” said Zoe.

“He could have,” I said. “A lot of people on the Assembly would have wanted him to. And in the end they wanted to hand us over. But Piper didn’t. So really it’s not a question of whether you trust us. It’s a question of whether you trust him.”

Zoe stared hard at both of us, then darted forward. By the time Kip had got his hand to his knife, she’d already snatched her three knives from the tree trunk, and stepped back.

“If you’re a seer, you’ll already know the answer to that question.” She slipped the knives back into her belt. “Time to sleep,” she said, turning her back to us as she stretched out on the ground.

I woke early but Zoe was already up, sitting on a log and using one of her knives to flick the dirt from a handful of large mushrooms. When I sat up, Zoe tossed two of the mushrooms to me. “I got a rabbit, too, but we’re still too near the coast to risk a fire. Tonight, maybe.”

She reminded me so much of Piper that I was ashamed not to have realized earlier who she was. It wasn’t just the sheen of their dark skin, or the thick black hair—these were common. It was more about the way they held themselves. The defiant set of the jaw. The way that each movement managed somehow to be both decisive and languid. The bond between the two of them was self-evident, even when they were apart. Watching her made me understand why I’d felt so comfortable with Piper, despite the many good reasons to fear him. I didn’t know how they’d managed it, but somehow he and Zoe had stayed close. The similarities in their manner and movements spoke of years of intimacy, of a bond that is as much habit as choice. I recalled what Piper had said to Kip, in passing, when I’d eavesdropped on their conversation on the island.

It also explained, perhaps, why he’d chosen to believe in me. For all his utilitarian approach, and the demands of his role on the island, if he’d worked closely with Zoe for all this time, then he must know what it was to see your twin as something other than an opposite. I’d thought that I was almost unique in that experience.

Seeing Zoe made Piper seem closer and, at the same time, further away. He was so present in Zoe’s every movement that his absence seemed starker. When I saw Zoe’s hands, busy with the knife, I thought again of Piper’s hand on my shoulder when we’d last seen him.

Kip yawned, rolled over. Zoe stared at him. “Piper told me about him, too, you know.”

“The courier ship?” I asked.

She nodded. “The island couldn’t work without some kind of communication: news of planned rescues, warnings of coastal patrols. New Omegas needing transport out there—more and more over the past few years. Supplies, too, though for the last year or two they’ve been close to self-sufficient. They grow most of their stuff themselves.”

The present tense hung in the clearing. I thought of the neatly plowed fields around the lake below the city, and the terraced garden plots clustered on the steep sides of the caldera. The goats in the market square.

“Then,” she continued, “ever since you got there, all the news has been about you two. How you arrived the way you did, without any contact with any of the safe houses or the network. What that means for the island’s security.”

“I think that’s how they found the island, too,” I said. “The Alphas, I mean. They have a seer too—she was on the raiding ships.”

“The Confessor,” said Zoe, and I nodded.

Kip was surfacing from sleep. He sat up, caught the mushroom Zoe tossed him. “The network you mentioned, here on the mainland,” he asked through a mouthful. “Are there other Alphas?”

“Does it matter?” asked Zoe.

“It seems to, to every other Alpha we’ve met.”

“I’m not like every other Alpha you’ve met,” she said, throwing him another mushroom.

“No kidding,” he said.

“Anyway, The Confessor working for the Council,” Zoe said. “She proves it doesn’t always come down to Alpha or Omega.”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

Zoe stood. “You’re going to defend her?”

“No. I meant, it’s not like you said: that she’s working for the Council. She’s more powerful than that. She’s calling the shots. Maybe not obviously, but a lot of the new stuff that’s happening—it’s coming from her.”

She gestured for us to get up. “She’s not the only one, the way I hear it.”

We stood slowly and I hoisted the bag to my shoulder. “You can’t think I agree with what my twin does.”

“Then we have that in common,” said Zoe. “I wouldn’t have let you go from the island, like Piper did.” She nodded toward the river. “Five minutes to fill your flasks and clean up, then we move.”

That night Zoe reckoned we’d traveled far enough from the coast to risk a fire. Used to the pace and rhythms of traveling with Kip, I’d found Zoe’s pace unrelenting. In the unsteady light of the fire I could see that Kip, too, looked tired, though all day neither of us had asked to pause or slow down. On the other side of the fire, Zoe was skinning the rabbit. I was grateful for the meat but couldn’t help looking away as she peeled back the fur. I thought again of the dead bounty hunter, his open eyes and the slack wound at his neck.

Later, hands greasy with rabbit meat, we watched the fire settle to ashes. Zoe was cleaning her fingernails with one of her tiny knives. Kip watched her carefully.

“The whole knife thing,” he said. “You and Piper had to learn that together, right?”

“It’s not a coincidence, if that’s what you mean,” said Zoe, not looking up.

“So you were never split?” Kip continued.

“Sure we were. You’ve seen his brand.”

Kip and I nodded together. I pictured Piper’s face as it had looked that last night on the island, flecks of blood across his brand.

“I thought maybe you were raised out east,” I ventured. “I heard things used to be better there. That they didn’t always send Omegas away. Or not so early, anyway.”

“It used to be that way,” said Zoe. “Not these days. We’ve got contacts there, get word from time to time. Seems the Council’s brought the east into line, last decade or so. Even the farthest settlements, on the edge of the deadlands.”

“But you and Piper?”

“Yeah—we were from out that way. Got split late, like you said. He was ten when our parents sent him away.”

I looked at her. “You were the lucky one.”

“Sure, nobody drove me out.” She looked up at us and grinned across the subsiding fire. “But I left the next day anyway.”

Kip matched her grin. “Two ten-year-olds—how did you live?”

Zoe shrugged. “We learned fast—hunting, stealing. Some people helped, along the way.” She stretched her arms, yawning unapologetically, and looked at me. “Still think I’m the lucky one?”

“Yes.” There was a pause. “You got to stay with your twin.”

Zoe snorted, lay down. “Doesn’t sound to me like your twin would be great company.”

“Trust me,” said Kip. “I’ve tried making that point to her before.”

I rolled my eyes. “And I get it. I do. But if things were different—if he hadn’t grown up being terrified of the split—he wouldn’t be like he is. This whole system—it’s what made him. It’s what makes Alphas turn on us.”

Kip cleared his throat. “Not all Alphas—obviously.”

“Don’t speak too soon,” said Zoe. Again, that flash of teeth, the broad grin that reminded me so much of Piper.

Later that night, when the darkness was almost complete, Kip asked where we were running to. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I’m not enjoying spending all day madly scrambling through the forest. But I was wondering what the end point was.”

“This whole area’s crawling with soldiers looking to kill you, or worse,” said Zoe. “And now that they’ve put word out to local Alphas, too, we need to get you away from the coast—there’s nowhere within fifty miles of here that you’d be safe.”

“So we head away from the coast—I get that. But then?”

“It depends. Piper and I have meeting spots. Usually we meet on the coast, but when that’s unsafe there’s another place, on the far side of the mountains, where he’ll come, or send word, if he can. After that, it’s up to you.”

“We’ll keep moving. Safer that way,” I said. “Maybe try to head east.”

“So that’s it then?” Zoe asked. “You just keep running?”

“We tried staying put—at the island. That didn’t work out so well,” Kip said.

“It worked out pretty well—for you,” she said quietly.

For a few minutes the only sound was the fire’s lazy sputtering. I spoke first. “We couldn’t have saved the island.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Piper could have used you.”

“To kill her, you mean?” said Kip. “And kill Zach?”

“Not necessarily. But threatened it, at least. To make them stop.”

“Piper let us leave the island,” I said. “If we get caught now, that’s it—there’ll be no point to what he did.”

“And if you just keep running, what’s the point then? He let you leave because he thought you’d be valuable—thought you could help us.”

My voice was unsteady. “I tried to help, and all I did was get locked up by the Assembly, and draw the Confessor to the island. I don’t know what everyone thinks I’m supposed to be able to do now.”

“Nor do I. So far, to be honest, I’m not seeing what all the fuss is about. But Piper saw something in you. And the Alphas sure as hell found a use for their seer. So it seems to me that running away is just throwing away the sacrifice that he made. That all those people on the island made.”

“She gave them warning,” said Kip. “Two days’ notice, which they wouldn’t have had without her. All of those who got away, that’s thanks to her.”

“Is that it, though? Is that all you’re good for, the secret weapon that Piper believed in enough to throw away the island’s last chance?”