The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig Page B

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 realize is that even he can’t protect you, not necessarily. He’s in favor 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 Councilors 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 among 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