Green Jack (6 page)

She was
thinking about it now.

“Give me the
cash box,” Dahlia demanded, the moment Saffron ducked into the
ticket booth. She let the light glint off her brass knuckles.
Saffron had never seen her without them and she knew the rose and
thorn pattern intimately.

“Bite me.” Even
if she didn’t need to get paid to buy off Argent, she wouldn’t give
Dahlia the mud off her boots.

“Before I break
your fingers, you little gutter rat.” Dahlia knew how much Saffron
liked to draw; she’d watched her paint the little ticket booth with
red and white stripes and leaping black cats. She’d also painted
the signs for the Tattooed Lady, the Snake House, Iago the
Strongman, as well as the few windows that remained in the strip
mall behind them.

“My girls,”
Jedekiah said, coming up to the booth, wearing his usual faded top
hat. There was a small ceramic frog tucked into the red ribbon
tonight. “What’s the trouble?”

“She wants the
cash box,” Saffron said. It was always ‘she’. Just saying Dahlia’s
name set her teeth on edge.

“Well now,”
Jedekiah smiled so that the beads in his beard flashed. “What’s the
harm, eh?”

She narrowed
her eyes. “Jed, you need that money. You work hard for it.”

“Sideshow’s not
work, love, it’s a lifestyle.”

“You heard
him,” Dahlia said, right before she punched Saffron in the face,
brass knuckles clipping her jaw. She fell back against the wall,
rapping her head to add insult to injury. She lunged dizzily at
Dahlia but Jedekiah intercepted her, grabbing her around the waist.
Dahlia grabbed a fistful of coins, which was the most they ever
had, and strode away, whistling.

Saffron spat
blood on the ground. The inside of her cheek was raw and throbbed
where her teeth had slammed together. She poked at her teeth to
make sure none were loose, while revenge boiled inside her
veins.

“Don’t quit.
She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Saffron stared
at him. “Jedekiah.”

He flushed,
looking away. He handed her the flask of whiskey he kept in his
pocket. She swished a mouthful and spat it out, cheek burning
clean. “Jed, I needed to get paid tonight.”

He winced.
“You’re a good girl, Saffron.” No one else ever called her that,
nor were they likely to. “We’ll make more money. There’ll be a
line-up tonight, you’ll see.”

There had never
once been a line-up.

And there never
would be. They were an antique novelty. They couldn’t come close to
competing with the glittering assortment of entertainment in the
Rings. All they had were rats trained to re-enact the Lake Wars, a
ferret dressed as Johnnie with apple leaves in his collar, a woman
covered in tattoos, a short man, a boy who ate snakes, a topless
tarot card reader, and a collection of Green Jack marionettes.
Still she’d take the cheap faded plywood signs and tricks over the
glossy beauty and bright lights of the Rings any day. Even for the
pennies Jedekiah paid her, when he could afford to pay her at
all.

And now she had
nothing to pay Argent back with; she couldn’t even head down to the
black market, it wouldn’t open again until long past midnight. If
it opened at all, some weeks you just never knew, especially with
curfew.

She stayed to
work her shift, on the off chance the patrons would tip her. She
wiped away the doodle she’d drawn with a nub of charcoal on the
table: bare winter trees, and a man with leaves for hair and
hunger-sharp ribs reaching out to her. Something about it made her
stomach clench.

She’d only sold
eleven tickets by the time she had step into the ring. So much for
Jedekiah’s line-up.

The main tent
was painted with more stripes and the circular amphitheatre was
piled with sand. Well, lightly sprinkled. Bathsheba had already
swallowed two swords and breathed fire and Allegra and Marcus
Aurelius walked the tightropes strung overhead.

Saffron was
meant to bow or curtsy or something equally stupid, but she
refused. Just as she’d refused to be the apprentice, standing
against a board painted with the Wheel of the Fortune tarot card to
let Iago throw knives at her. As the Strongman, he was used to
lifting people, trailers, trucks, whatever was on hand; he’d once
lifted a lion cage, much to the lion’s dismay. Standing still while
a girl in a frilly skirt threw knives at his head irked him. But
Saffron was better at being irked and she’d threatened to quit,
leaving her half-completed painted signs and banners behind.

The tent
smelled like stale popcorn and wet dog. Jedekiah’s pride and joy
was his herd of Yorkie terriers. There were seventeen at last count
and he dressed them up and let them loose in the ring. Last week
he’d made them all gladiator costumes. Saffron skirted a discarded
and well-chewed miniature Roman-style leather breastplate as Iago
bulged his muscles. A painted lion chased a bull and a winged woman
around the spokes of a faded wheel around him.

Saffron lifted
her fist dagger, letting the torchlight dance over the blade. She
tossed an apple into the air, spearing it into the open mouth of
the lion painted next to Iago’s left eye. The apple wasn’t even
real, mostly protein paste and gluten, but it was satisfyingly red.
There was a smattering of applause. The next three knives bristled
out of the board like a deadly halo around Iago’s head.

There were
worst jobs in the City, even if you counted having to deal with
Dahlia. She could be stuck riding the buses out to the Enclave to
clean houses or pull rickshaws, or sent down into the sewers to
make sure the pipes were sealed shut. Instead, she got to throw
knives at people without being carted off by the Protectorate.

Usually.

The audience
began to whisper. Saffron turned her head just in time to see
Protectorate soldiers push into the tent. She glanced to the side
but there was nowhere to run. The dagger in her hand was all too
tempting but there were too many of them. If they were here about
the leaf mask, she was already dead.

“You!” A
soldier barked at Saffron. “Who’s in charge around here?”

“I just sell
the tickets.” She only barely stopped herself from asking him
snidely if he’d like to buy one. She wasn’t sure where Jedekiah was
but she wouldn’t have told them even if she knew.

“We’re here
about the Green Jack.”

Her mouth was
suddenly so dry she could barely speak. She hoped her swollen jaw
from Dahlia’s punch would excuse it. “We have sword-swallowers and
bearded ladies,” she said. “And knife-girls. That’s it.”

“We’ll see. Put
that dagger down.” He motioned to the others. “Search
everything.”

They weren’t
here for her. Her knees wobbled faintly with relief. When Saffron
shifted, his gaze snapped back to her. “No one moves.”

She could hear
Allegra protesting the search and her curse when she was tossed
into a puddle. Jasper begged them to be careful with the reptile
house. Every barked order and scuff of steel-toed boot felt like a
slap. After what felt like hours, the guards gathered to report
their findings. “It’s clear.”

“Sorenson got
bit.”

“Snake?”

Sorenson
wrapped a bandana around his bleeding hand. “No, the dammed tarot
reader.”

The leader
handed Saffron a stack of printed notices. There was a sketch of a
Green Jack and bold underline font: Reward for capture. Do your
duty to Elysium City!

“There’s a
bounty set on the Jack,” he said. If only she could turn the mask
in herself and collect the reward. But she knew better. The
Directorate would never let her go. She’d be hanged on a Festival
day, just like the others. “Make sure to tell your customers
tomorrow,” he grimaced at the parking lot. “If you even get
any.”

Saffron didn’t
fully breathe until the Protectorate unit was down the street and
harassing the tavern. “Are they gone?” Jasper poked his head into
the tent.

Saffron tossed
the bounty posters aside. “For now.”

Chapter 8

Jane

Jane wished she
could tell Kiri almost as desperately as she wanted to avoid her.
She wasn’t used to having a secret that had the power to kill. She
rubbed the back of her neck, the ache the only warning before her
head filled with images:
the same pink moon, the field of
crocuses, blue eyes and green leaves.
She gripped the edge of
the parapet to stop her knees from buckling. She wiped blood from
her nose, hoping none of the security cameras had caught her.

Beneath her,
the streets were clean, the horses were fat, and solar lanterns
were strung through trees that were old enough to have seen the
times before the Cataclysms. To stand guard on the parapet was a
small price to pay, even when the rain turned to sleet or the sun
turned the lawns crispy. Jane had her sleek crossbow and enough
training to shoot someone in the eye, if she had to. The alarms
hadn’t rung in the Enclave since before she was born. A shift on
the parapet was mostly boredom and bad food. She pushed back at the
omens simmering in her head.

Hours later,
Kiri waited for her outside the guard towers. She was dressed for
the next shift. She handed Jane a mug. “I hate the Rains.”

“How’d you get
more hot chocolate rations?” Jane asked. “You drank all of yours in
one sitting last week. I was there. It was impressive. And kind of
gross.”

Kiri shrugged.
“I got more.”

“Uh huh.”

She grinned. “I
stole them from Asher so it doesn’t count. It’s okay to steal from
jackasses, everyone knows that.” She stiffened. “Damn it.” Jane
followed her gaze to Asher, coming around the corner. “I hate it
when we’re on the same shift.”

Asher sneered
at Jane in her uniform. “How they think you can protect anyone is
beyond me.”

Kiri drank her
hot chocolate pointedly. “Bullies are boring, Asher. Get a hobby or
something.”

Jane’s stomach
started to burn, as it always did when Asher was around. Kiri would
have eviscerated him by now and read the omens in his entrails. She
talked about it in great detail, and would no doubt bring it up in
the next ten seconds. Sometimes Jane wished she was anyone but
herself. Asher smiled slowly. “Should I tell her a little secret,
Jane?”

The burning
coal in her belly tuned to a shard of jagged ice. The Directorate
had handed Asher a new weapon. All he had to do was tell Kiri a
single detail about the Program and she would disappear in the
middle of the night. Her mother would offer a reward, she would
post bulletins with Kiri’s photo, and none of it would make any
difference whatsoever.

Asher loomed
over Jane, until she bowed her back to inch away. Fear turned her
into a rabbit, frozen and quivering and hating herself. Blissfully
unaware, Kiri lost the few ounces of patience she had. She bared
her teeth. “Go away now, Asher. You’re pissing me off.”

The last time
Kiri had gotten into an argument with another student, they’d both
walked away with stitches. Asher didn’t look particularly
concerned. The fact that he was a foot taller probably had
something to do with it. Seeing as most people were taller than
Kiri, she didn’t look particularly concerned either.

She dumped her
hot chocolate on his head. He gave a shout that sounded more like a
shriek. “Oops, better dry off.” Smiling sweetly, Kiri grabbed his
wet, sugary collar and propelled him into the guard house
changeroom. She wedged a chair under the doorknob, locking him
inside. “I guess Asher will be late for his shift. He might even
get a demerit for that kind of disrespectful behaviour.”

Jane winced.
“Maybe we should---.”

Kiri eyed her
hotly. “Don’t you even dare. I know where you got those bruises on
your arm last week. He deserves worse than this. Now, I’m going to
go stand in the rain and pretend I’m doing anything else anywhere
else ever.”

Jane was
stopped at the gates by Protectorate soldiers. She hoped Kiri
didn’t see them, she’d be relentless with her questions. “Jane
Highgate.”

“Yes,” she
replied, even though it wasn’t a question.

They motioned
her onto a waiting bus that smelled like exhaust, and some kind of
cleaner. There were seven students already on board. Jane sat next
to Lee since she as the only person she knew. Lee looked serene but
her hands were twisted together so tightly her knuckle bones
strained against her skin.

They picked up
three more passengers before heading out of the Enclave. Jane
glanced up through the windows but she couldn’t see Kiri on parapet
duty. The sky was a hard shell of pink, the clouds lined in gold.
It was sharp and angular, like a broken jug.

The road behind
them stretched out through the ruins of abandoned suburbs to the
Badlands beyond. If you followed it long enough, it would take you
the farms and the Spirit Forest where the Greencoats helped hide
Green Jacks from the Directorate. The bus turned right, heading
towards the City.

The screen set
into the back of the seat in front of her showed serious and
concerned Directorate scientists and clerks, pink-cheeked children
eating protein paste cupcakes; Ferals, Greencoats. The Greencoats
always had the same tagline: Treason and Terrorism. And always the
same message—protection in exchange for obedience. Order. The
advertisements looped over and again as they passed through the
gates and soldiers with rifles peered into the bus windows.

There was only
one street cleared for vehicles in the City and they followed it
past rubble strewn sidewalks and burned out buildings. It took them
closer to the Kill Zone than any of them had ever been. The Kill
Zone circled the lake and in the very rare instance a person
actually managed to break through, they were met with miles of
landmines and traps. The only access to the freshwater lake was
through a narrow bridge from the Directorate district. The fence
was decorated with bonechimes, mostly made from the dead of the
Lake Wars. Skulls leered at them, nailed to posts. One of them was
recent enough that rotted flesh dangled from its cheekbone.