Chapter 9
Lila brushed past Dixon’s bench. The grackles sprang into the air, fleeing her predatory mood. The scattered senators around Falcon Home did the same, most bundled in long burgundy coats and scarfs to fight the chill. Only their eyes followed her, a strange and welcome deviation from the norm.
Dixon closed his notepad and stuffed it into his pocket, following along beside her. She said nothing when they reached the truck. She just slid inside when he started the ignition and turned on the heat.
She ignored Dixon when he pointed at her seatbelt.
Ignoring him became a bit harder when he snatched the clasp, pulled it across her chest, and belted her in. The shoulder strap crossed uncomfortably over her chin.
They dropped the charges, right? That’s the rumor. Apparently there will be a press conference this evening.
“Yes.” Lila finally adjusted the seatbelt as he backed out of their parking spot. While he drove through the downtown traffic, she recounted a highly abbreviated version of what had been said in the courtroom, leaving out La Roux and the fact that she’d still be working for Bullstow and the prime minister a little while longer. After all, Dixon might turn the truck around, drive back to Falcon Home, and punch her father in the nose once more.
They slipped onto the highway in silence, threading through the occasional patch of traffic. The exit for Shippers Lane slipped past.
“I’d almost forgotten that we’re not going back to the shop,” Lila said. “I do need to fetch my car, my laptop, and my other bag, though. Thanks for letting me leave them in your room.”
He shrugged.
“I’m not in any hurry to retrieve them, anyway. I have my clothes and toiletries. Just give me a minute to think, okay? I need to figure out where you can drop me.”
Dixon shook his head.
“What? I’m broke, and I don’t have anywhere to go, Dixon. I’m not saying that to worm my way into another night at the shop. I heard Tristan loud and clear last night. He meant what he said, just as much my mother did this morning.”
Dixon drew a few circles in the air. If he’d had a free hand to scribble on his notepad, he would have asked her to explain.
“She wanted me to return to the compound. She said if I refused, I was not to come back at all. Ever. I’m not even sure what I told her, but the general intention was that she could go fuck herself. I suppose that makes me an exile now, just like you.”
Dixon smiled a lopsided grin. She’d never seen the expression cross his face before.
Lila sank into her seat, her mind dwelling on where she might stay. The lack of a destination didn’t seem to bother Dixon—he kept driving down the highway, past the scattered diners, old tire shops, gas stations, corn fields, and the occasional pasture. Barbed wire corralled herds of cows and bored horses. Their tails flicked in the cold air.
“I could go to Max’s place,” Lila said at last. “He’d give me a place to stay until I figured things out.”
Dixon’s jaw dropped. Earlwell? he mouthed.
“Yes, that Max. He’s a good friend. We grew up together. I just need to get my things from the shop. I need the oracle’s transcripts, too. I haven’t finished reading through them.”
Dixon shook his head.
“I didn’t say I’d go inside. Tristan made himself clear. I’ll stay in the truck. You can—”
He shook his head again.
“Tristan can’t complain if I’m not—”
Tristan pointed to himself. Me, he mouthed. Not again.
“You don’t want to go back?”
Dixon turned off the main highway and stopped at a red light. Dry weeds lined the street, brown and dying and patchy, no houses or structures in view. He put the truck in park and scribbled a quick note on his pad. I can’t take it there anymore.
“You don’t even have your things.”
I don’t care. I’m taking a vacation for a few days. A week. A month. Who knows.
“A vacation?”
Dixon scrawled faster and faster upon the page. Last night, Tristan tried to tell me who I can and can’t have in my own home. Fuck him. I might not live with the highborn anymore, but I was born one. I still love and care for some of them deeply. He forgets that when he rails on and on about them. I’m tired of feeling guilty for my birth.
“I know that feeling.”
You and me, we’re the same now. We’re exiles. Let’s run away and start our own damn compound!
Lila laughed, and Dixon grinned his lopsided grin once more.
A dimple appeared on each cheek.
Oh Gods! Dimples! Dixon had dimples?
When had that happened?
Perhaps she’d never seen them before for a reason. He looked happy, and he seemed to give just as many fucks as she did at the moment.
“Well, I don’t have anything better to do. I do need to get the rest of my things at some point, though.”
Dixon put his notepad away, then continued their drive. Gas stations and crumbling houses lined the streets, scattered like flowers in the wind.
At first, Lila wanted to ask where they were headed, but she soon realized that she didn’t care. Not enough to play a guessing game while Dixon drove, unable to scribble an answer until they hit the next light.
For the first time in a month, she felt like everything was going to be okay. She wasn’t going to be executed or tossed into slavery. She owned her mark. She wasn’t under her mother’s thumb. She even had a friend with her, perhaps the only person she really trusted at the moment, the only person who had no ulterior motives lurking in the back of his mind.
All she needed now was her money.
She fiddled with the radio, tuning it to an oldies station she’d found at the cottage, overjoyed to hear the same music she’d listened to as a teen.
Back when music was still good.
Dixon grinned as “Running Down the Street” came on, a punk anthem that had topped the charts fifteen years before. He bobbed his head in time to the beat as Lila yelled out the chorus, chuckling harder with each line. With every song they thumped their heads just a bit harder, screamed out the lyrics just a bit louder, though Dixon had no breath to add to his words.
“Road trip, gas up,” they sang, punching their fists.
Lila stopped chanting as the lines coursed on. “Oh shit, I just figured out what this song is really about.”
Dixon snickered.
“Shut up,” she grumbled, finally paying attention to where they were going. The gas stations and homes had begun crowding together again, and she spied a lake up ahead. “The oracle’s temple? I don’t have any leads yet.”
But Dixon avoided the turnoff, marked by an arrow-shaped sign half a meter across. Someone had recently repainted the oracle’s mark: a pair of wings attached to an all-seeing eye.
He stopped the truck a kilometer up the road, engine sputtering twenty meters from a metal gate with the same design. The stone wall extended in each direction, the top so wide that a grown man could walk upon it. Six stubby watchtowers rose above the wall, with peaked wooden roofs and guards keeping watch. Each purplecoat gripped a rifle.
Lila turned off the radio. “The oracle’s compound. I should have known.”
Dixon drove up to the guardhouse. Over the wall, Lila spied the green roofs and smoking chimneys of a hundred log cabins, their expansive windows letting in the midday sun. Unlike a highborn estate, the oracle’s compound lacked a central tower piercing the sky. Instead, a five-story building crafted of log and stone sat in the middle, its roof shallow, its balconies wide and inviting.
The oracle’s administration building. Lila had seen a picture once.
The gatehouse door opened. A purplecoat marched crisply to the truck and knocked on the glass.
Dixon rolled down the window.
“Lila? Dixon?” he asked as he tapped out the truck’s information into his palm. Bursts of static hissed from the radio perched on his shoulder.
“How do you know our names?”
First names.
It annoyed her that he’d referred to her so casually.
Then again, perhaps she didn’t belong to the highborn any longer.
Perhaps she’d have to get used to it.
The purplecoat didn’t seem to notice her irritation. He unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. Her face had been drawn as though she’d sat for a sketch artist. Lila had been scrawled along the bottom in block letters. “We all know your face and your name. We were told to expect you this afternoon with a man named Dixon.”
He folded up the sketch, returned it to his pocket, then quickly finished taking down her information on his palm. His fingers darted to the radio on his shoulder. “Delilah, grab a cart and take our guests to see Kenna. I’ll send a message on ahead to let her know that you’re coming.”
“Yes, sir,” Lila heard through a cluster of fog and scratches.
The metal gate opened slowly. “Follow the cart to the administration building,” he said. “You can leave your truck parked outside.”
The guard marched away and reentered the gatehouse.
“Did you contact the oracle while I was speaking with my father and let her know we’d be coming?”
Dixon nodded sheepishly.
“Good. It gives me the creeps when she says she saw me in a vision.”
Dixon pulled the truck through the open gate. They followed an electric cart as it wheezed its way toward the main building, barely faster than walking. Purplecoats and the occasional woman dressed in fur and white robes flitted throughout the compound. Most people wore normal clothes, though, clothes Lila might have seen in New Bristol.
Sort of.
Here people wore color. Lots of it. Lila had never seen such a rainbow in one place, for highborn only wore their family’s color. Lowborn tended to pick their own and wear it exclusively, trying to start a tradition amongst their own family. Workborn and slaves could only wear color if they held a contract, and only the color belonging to their employer’s family.
The oracles had no such rules, save for the lilac robe of the oracle and the purple coats and gray uniforms of the militia. Lila saw bright pink jackets and navy hats, forest-green trousers and plaid socks, bright red boots and aqua sweaters.
All mixed and matched and rarely monochromatic.
“I believe we have found your people, Dixon.”
His dimples reappeared.
The cart stopped before the central building. The first floor had been made of the same stone as the wall around the compound, and it extended several meters before pine took over. Columns of the uncut timber burst through the front of the building, looking as though they’d been planted and coaxed into place, rather than cut and hewn. The top blended into the same darkly stained wood as the cabins throughout the compound.
The purplecoat hopped out of her cart. Her dark hair curled around her ears, barely reaching her chin. “If you’ll follow me, please.”
Lila followed as the young woman spun and marched away. It felt odd not to hear “madam” or “chief” after every sentence. Perhaps the purplecoat did not know she was highborn. Perhaps none of them knew her as anything more than Lila.
The pair followed Delilah past two purplecoats at the door. They both rushed to open them for the little group, both staring as though she and Dixon had sprouted horns and a tail.
“Everyone’s always curious about outsiders,” Delilah explained under her breath. “You’ll get that a lot today.”
Lila couldn’t blame anyone for staring, not as her eyes drank in the lobby. The recessed ceiling spanned the heights of three grown men. Light dotted the surface, keeping the room free from shadows. A master had cut the stones in the wall. Each one lay flush against the next, with barely a hair’s breadth between them. Thick rugs lay upon the wooden floor, which gleamed with polish. Half a dozen couches sat throughout the room, clustered near a fireplace. The thick stuffing invited her in, as did the throw pillows tossed upon each one.
Delilah led them toward a wide staircase in the back, but they did not ascend to the next floor. Instead, they darted past it, turned to the right, and slipped down a hall, past several open offices. Inside, people sat at counters, talking on palms or typing on the same brand of computer.
More pillows dotted the offices. A rolled blanket sat on a little table by each door.
The purplecoat took one last turn and ushered them into a small room, devoid of anything save a few padded stools and a shoebox-sized panel of buttons. A tall woman in a white robe with lilac trim stood inside. She looked very much like the oracle, but with silver hair and blue eyes.
“Thank you, Delilah,” the woman said. “Stay close, will you?”
The purplecoat bowed, and closed the door behind her.
“I’m Kenna.” The robed woman extended her arm, shaking hands with Lila and Dixon. “My sister and I are very glad your troubles with Bullstow have ended, Ms. Randolph. Word is they’ve dropped all charges.”
“Your spies are correct.” Lila’s gaze shifted toward one of the walls. It had not been cut from stone but fashioned from glass, dividing the room from the one next door. Several sofa chairs and a large bed filled it. A young girl lay amid a mountain of pillows, bundled to her neck, her eyes dark and half-lidded. A woman—probably her mother—had settled beside her, brushing the girl’s hair from her face.
The oracle sat beside them in a sofa chair, her lilac robes pooling around her feet.
Kenna flipped a switch on the box. A raisin-sized bulb lit up across the room, throwing the slightest blur of red against the white wall.
The woman and the girl didn’t seem to notice, but the oracle did.
“The dead rise and walk the halls of our mothers and fathers,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “Just or unjust, good or bad, it makes no difference. You both will be together in the afterlife, though it may take some time for you to find one another again. Can you be brave until your mother gets there, Sarah?”
“She’s dying, isn’t she?” Lila whispered.
“It’s leukemia. The doctors say she only has a few weeks left,” Kenna explained. “You may speak normally here, Lila. The room next door is soundproof, and the mic only works the one way.”
Lila faltered at her first name again, used by someone she had only met a few moments before. Then again, she supposed anonymity dictated such informality.
“So they’ve come to see the oracle.”
“Yes. They’re a one.”
“A one?”
“Lots of people conference with the oracles, but they usually come for the same few reasons. The parents of dying children want to know if they’ll see their babies again one day or if their children will die gasping and in pain. Sometimes they want to know both. This woman and her child are both ones. Neither one wants to be alone.”
Lila’s eyes drifted down to the box and the buttons. She wondered if Chef had ever visited the same room. “And you help the oracle?”
“Mòr rarely needs my help. She’s been at this for a very long time, but occasionally she gets stumped. Of course, sometimes I think she only pretends to make me feel useful.”
“You wrote the list.”
Kenna nodded.
“How often does the oracle meet with visitors?”
“She goes out once a week to see the ones who can’t make it to the temple. We have a complicated process for weeding out the ones who need such visits, rather than summoning her due to laziness.”
“I thought she only made house calls to the rich.”
“Of course you would, you cynical little atheist.”
Lila looked away, not because she was offended, but because she wasn’t sure if she was an atheist anymore. She had no idea what to believe about the oracles and the gods.
Perhaps she had become an agnostic who didn’t want to think about the question.
“Now that’s very interesting,” Kenna mused, studying Lila’s face.
Lila’s eyes flitted back to the other room. “I didn’t know the oracle met with anyone inside her compound.”
“It’s rare, but this is a favor for a very dear friend. The little girl desperately wished to see the oracle’s house before she died. She’s going on a tour of the compound today, for as long as she can manage it. We don’t want to tire her out too much.”
“I didn’t know the oracles granted wishes.”
“Everyone grants wishes. Few of us are lucky enough to know the wishes we grant.”
“Fortune cookie?”
“A proverb from the oracles’ archives. Some tended to be overly impressed with themselves. Luckily, Mòr has never been like that. I suppose that I gave her too many wet willies as a child.”
“Wet willies?”
“I guess the highborn really are different. Look it up. You can practice on him.”
Dixon licked his finger and stuck it in Lila’s ear, rubbing a trail of cold spit on her skin.
“Ugh!” Lila wiped at her ear and smacked him in the arm.
“Friends, then, not lovers.” Kenna grinned. “I’m glad to see it. I imagine you need a good friend now.”
“You got all that from a wet willie?”
“No, I got all that from the fact that you slapped him like a little brother. Your pupils didn’t dilate, either. Neither did his. Who is he?”
Dixon flipped his notepad over. Dixon Leclair had been written in large block letters on the back.
“I thought so. The oracle speaks well of you and your brother. Connell, too.”
In the other room, the oracle drew their attention. She helped the mother pick up her child in a bundle of blankets and thin limbs. “Delilah will take you back to the cart and drive you around the compound. You’ll have to wear your coat, though, Sarah. She might even let you steer the cart if you are very good and eat your lunch.”
The little girl gave a weak but happy squeal as Delilah whisked them both away.
Kenna led Lila and Dixon into the other room.
“You did well, Mòr,” she said.
“Not well enough. I nearly had Sarah pegged as a two. Rambling on about how it wouldn’t hurt would have only frightened the girl.”
“It’s difficult with children that age. You were right to wait it out. Their parents often influence their thoughts.”
Mòr smiled at Lila and Dixon. “My sister has always been better at this than me. We nearly had an agreement when we were younger. Kenna would play oracle, and I would have the visions. I never wanted to be famous, and she never minded so much.”
“I couldn’t sing, so it was either that or voice lessons,” Kenna said. “Of course, it obviously didn’t work out in the end. Mother was against it. She said we shouldn’t thwart the gods’ decisions. She said that if I was supposed to play oracle, I would have gotten the visions instead.”
“Of course, now that we’re older, we play with the gods’ decisions all the time.” The oracle sat back down in her sofa chair and gestured for the others to join her. Chair legs scraped against the wooden floor as they dragged their seats closer.
“You lie to people,” Lila said.
“I’ve already admitted as much. Life is frightening enough. When the world is dark and paints you in shadows, you need a light. We try to provide that.”
“No one comes here for a theological argument,” Kenna said. “They come for assurances. My sister gives them that.”
“We give them that,” the oracle corrected. “I don’t work alone. Kenna has been my greatest teacher. I’ve learned a lot from her. I hope you’ll do the same. Did you get her list?”
“Yes, though I’ve been doing some investigating on my own first,” Lila said. “I have some photos I’d like you to look through.”
She briefly told the women what she’d found so far.
While she talked, Dixon withdrew a few star drives from his pocket. All of her star drives, in fact. He’d likely planned to bring her to the oracle’s compound no matter what.
Lila fished out the correct one and handed it to Mòr. The rest she put in her pocket.
“I’m sure most of your hits are genuine,” Mòr admitted. “The oracle children have a long history of sheltering runaways. Some come from tragedy. Some come from abuse and neglect. Some join us because they believe. Just because someone left home, doesn’t mean they’re missing. It doesn’t make them agents of the empire, either.”
“So noted,” Lila said. “What have you told your family about me? The purplecoats at the gate had a sketch with my name on it.”
“They know you are a friend of the oracles and that they should let you inside unimpeded. Those I tasked with rescuing you from Bullstow don’t live on the compound, so no one here knows who you are except for a trusted few.”
“Who?”
“Kenna and Connell. Even if the others heard your proper given name, it’s unlikely that they’d mark you as an heir or the prime minister’s daughter. We don’t care much about outsider politics and business here.”
Is your offer still good? Dixon wrote.
“What offer?”
Kenna studied Dixon’s face. “Methinks there are domestic troubles afoot.”
“Ah, that offer.” Mòr rose to her feet. “I find myself glad for those troubles, although that probably makes me an awful person. When you mentioned you were both coming by, I’d hoped you would stay, at least for a little while. We prepared one of the guest cabins for your use.”
The oracle threaded through the furniture, leading the group toward the door.
Mòr took Lila’s arm. “I must say that I’m excited to host you. I’ve been wanting to get to know you better. Sometimes bad things lead to good things, don’t they? Do try to—”
All at once, the oracle stumbled.
Lila grabbed her out of instinct, realizing quickly that she had not tripped. Lila tried to slide the oracle to the ground gently, just like a tranqed a suspect.
But Mòr didn’t behave like someone who’d been tranqed.
She fought against Lila, thrashing as she fell to the floor.
Kenna knelt at her side and fiddled with a little bracelet on her sister’s wrist before turning her on her side. “Lila, fetch padding for her head. Dixon, push back the furniture.”
Lila snatched a pillow from the bed and worked it under Mòr’s head. Chairs scraped against the floor as Dixon shoved them away. Mòr’s eyes flickered underneath her eyelids, darting back and forth, as if she feared for her life. She muttered gibberish, her body twitched, and her head smacked against the pillow.
Lila understood now why thick rugs covered every floor, why blankets and pillows had littered every room.
“What if we hadn’t been with her?”
“Someone is always with her,” Kenna said, her eyes glued to her wristwatch.
Mòr muttered words as she thrashed, phrases barely intelligible, interrupted by a stray turn of her head. “In the valley near the fallen… The bishop hides from the Army of the Dead…”
Kenna stroked her sister’s forehead as Mòr twitched and bucked.
“What is she saying?” Lila asked.
“I’ve stopped caring. You should, too. Don’t let yourself get drawn in by it. You’ll only be disappointed.”
“The bishop moves diagonally… Lost in a nest of gold…”
“It’s okay, Mòr. It’ll be over soon,” Kenna murmured.
A fine sweat broke out over the oracle’s forehead.
“Will she be okay?” Lila asked.
“Yes. It’s going to be a bad one, though.”
Lila startled as her own name passed the oracle’s lips.