The Fire Sermon. Francesca Haig

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СКАЧАТЬ all suspended in the timelessness of those glass vats. As the months passed, even as Zach’s visits grew rarer, my awareness of the tank room became near-constant. Far from being abstract, it felt not only real but close. It became so pressing a physical presence that I felt as if I could navigate by it: the sure pull of that room, perhaps only hundreds of feet away, had become my compass point. Just as the river had once been the basis of my mental map of the valley where I grew up, now my imagination’s map of the fort was oriented by two locations: the cell, and the tank room. Beneath it all, the river was still there. I could sense it running deep underfoot, its ceaseless movement taunting me with my own stagnation.

      *

      One day The Confessor unlocked the door, but didn’t step inside the cell.

      ‘Get up,’ she said, holding the door open.

      I hadn’t been out of the cell for more than a year. I wondered if she was taunting me. In the last few months, I’d sometimes begun to fear I was going mad. Looking through the open door, I distrusted even the strip of corridor I could make out. To my space-starved eyes, the concrete passageway seemed as far-fetched as a mountain vista under sunlight.

      ‘Hurry up. I’m going to show you something. We don’t have long.’

      Even with three armed soldiers standing by, and The Confessor watching me impatiently, I couldn’t hide my excitement as we stepped through the door.

      She refused to tell me where she was taking me, or to respond at all to any of my questions. She walked briskly, a few steps ahead of me, the guards following closely behind. As it turned out, it wasn’t far: just to the end of the corridor, through another locked door, then down a flight of stairs to another row of doors.

      ‘We’re not going outside?’ I asked, facing the row of cell doors that mimicked my own: the grey steel; the narrow slot for meal trays near the base; the observation hatch at eye-level, which could be opened only from the corridor, not within.

      ‘This isn’t a picnic excursion,’ she said. ‘There’s something you need to see.’

      She walked to the third door and slid open the hatch. Like the one in my cell, it clearly hadn’t been opened often – it slid awkwardly, shrieking with rust.

      The Confessor stepped back. ‘Go on,’ she said, gesturing at the hatch.

      I stepped towards the door, leaned closer to the opening. It was darker inside the cell, the single Electric light no match for the rows of them in the corridor. But even as my eyes were adjusting, I could see that the cell was just like mine. The same narrow bed, the same grey walls.

      ‘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. СКАЧАТЬ