The Map of Bones. Francesca Haig
my dreams?’
‘Stand down,’ said Piper. He didn’t shout, but it was a command nonetheless.
The blade didn’t budge. Her other hand had grasped a handful of my hair, her knuckles jabbing against my skull, holding me in place. The blade had gone straight through my jumper and shirt, and was pressed flat against my stomach; I felt its cold indentation on my skin. My head was twisted back and to the side. I could see the rabbit on the ground where she’d dropped it, its wrung neck and open eyes.
‘What the hell have you been doing?’ she said. As she leaned closer the blade became more insistent. ‘What did you see?’
‘Zoe,’ warned Piper. He wrapped his arm around her neck, but he didn’t fight her – just held her, and waited.
‘What did you see?’ she repeated.
‘I told you. Just the sea. Lots of waves. I’m sorry – I can’t control it. I didn’t even realise until just now.’ I couldn’t explain to her how it worked. How my awareness of her dreams wasn’t an eavesdropping, any more than I’d eavesdropped on the sea while on the island. It was just there, a background noise.
‘You said it didn’t work like that,’ she said, her breath hot on my face. ‘You said you couldn’t read minds.’
‘I can’t. It’s not like that. I just get impressions, sometimes. I don’t mean to.’
She shoved me backwards. When I’d steadied myself, I put my hand to my stomach. It came away red.
‘It’s rabbit blood,’ Piper said.
‘This time,’ said Zoe.
‘If it makes any difference,’ I said, ‘you know what I dream about.’
‘Everyone within ten miles knows what you dream about, the way you scream and carry on.’ She tossed the knife down next to the half-skinned rabbit. ‘That doesn’t give you the right to poke around in my head.’
I knew how it felt – I would never forget the sense of violation that The Confessor’s interrogations had left me with. How my whole mind had felt sullied by her probings.
‘I’m sorry,’ I called after her, as she walked away towards the river.
‘Let her go,’ said Piper. ‘Are you OK? Show me your stomach,’ he said, reaching out to lift my jumper.
I swiped his hand away.
‘What was that about?’ I said, staring after Zoe.
He picked up the rabbit and shook the dirt from its flesh. ‘She shouldn’t have done that – I’ll talk to her.’
‘I don’t need you to talk to her for me. I just want to know what’s going on. Why did she react like that? Why is she like this?’
‘It’s not easy for her,’ he said.
‘Who has it been easy for? Not for me, that’s for sure. Not for you, or any of us.’
‘Just give her some space,’ he said.
I waved at the plain surrounding us, the pale grass stretching for miles, and the sky so big that it seemed to have encroached on the earth itself. ‘Space? There’s nothing here but space. She doesn’t have to be in my face every moment.’
I got no answer but the rasping of the grass in the wind, scratching at the underside of the sky, and the moistened scrape of Piper’s knife on the rabbit’s flesh as he finished the skinning.
Zoe didn’t come back until after dawn. She ate in silence, and slept on the far side of Piper, instead of her usual spot between us.
I thought of what she’d said earlier: once they’d made it to the island, most people never came back. Is it Piper she’s thinking of, I wondered, when the sea floods her sleeping mind? The sea that he crossed for the island, leaving her on her own, after all that she’d given up to be with him.
I’d first heard Piper and Zoe mention Sally, and the Sunken Shore, when we were still in the deadlands. They were meant to be resting, but I could hear their raised voices from the lookout spot. It was dawn; I’d volunteered to take the first watch, but when I heard them arguing I left the lookout post and headed back to the fire.
‘I never wanted to drag Sally into this,’ Zoe said.
‘Who?’ I said.
They both turned to face me. It was the same movement, doubled. And the same expression: the same angle to their eyebrows, the same appraising eyes. Even when they were arguing, I felt like an intruder.
Piper answered me. ‘We need a base, with someone we can trust. The safehouse network’s crumbling. Sally will give us shelter, so we can start to muster the resistance and send people to Cape Bleak to seek the ships. Outfit new ships, if we need.’
‘I’ve told you before,’ said Zoe, still ignoring me and addressing only Piper. ‘We can’t get Sally involved. We can’t ask her. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Who is she?’ I asked.
‘Zoe told you about how we got by, as kids, after we were split?’
I nodded. They’d been raised in the east, where people used to let twins stay together a little longer. Piper had been ten when he’d been branded and exiled. She’d run away to follow him. The two of them had survived by stealing, working, and hiding, with some help from sympathetic Omegas along the way, before they’d finally joined the resistance.
‘Sally was one of the people who helped us,’ he said. ‘The first one. When we were really young, and needed it most.’
It was hard to imagine Zoe and Piper needing help. But I reminded myself of how young they’d been – even younger than I’d been when my family sent me away.
‘She took us in,’ said Zoe. ‘Taught us everything. And she had a lot to teach. She was old when we found our way to her, but years before that she’d been one of the resistance’s best agents, working in Wyndham.’
‘In Wyndham?’ I thought I must have misheard. No Omegas were allowed to live in an Alpha town – let alone in Wyndham, the Council’s hub.
‘She was an infiltrator,’ said Piper.
I looked from Zoe to Piper, and back again. ‘I’ve never heard of them,’ I said.
‘That was the idea,’ Zoe said impatiently.
‘It was the resistance’s most covert project,’ Piper said. ‘It wouldn’t be possible these days. This was back when the Council was less strict about branding, especially out east. We’re talking about fifty years ago, at least. The resistance had managed to recruit a few unbranded Omegas, with deformations minor enough that they could be disguised, or hidden. For Sally, it was a malformed foot. She could jam it into a normal shoe, and she trained herself to walk straight on it. It hurt her like crazy, but she got away with it for more than two years. There were three infiltrators, right inside the Council chambers. Not as Councillors, but as advisors or assistants. They were right in the thick of it.
‘The Council hated infiltrators more than anything.’ Piper smiled. ‘It wasn’t even the information that they managed to find out. It was the fact that they managed to do it – pass themselves off as Alphas, sometimes for years. Proof that we’re not that different, after all.’
‘Sally was the best of any of them,’ Zoe said. ‘Half of the current resistance was built on the information she got out of the Council.’ When she spoke of Sally, Zoe had none of her usual sarcasm, or the raised eyebrow that could sharpen a single word into a weapon. ‘But she’s ancient now,’ she went on. ‘She can hardly walk. Hadn’t worked for the resistance