Francesca Haig - The Fire Sermon

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. 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.