Free Oracle by Jackie French Page B

would die if they jumped from a height like this. He knew it even as he grasped Thetis’s hand and pulled her up onto the window ledge beside him. The ground was too far down. Every bone in their body would crumple as they hit the paving stones. They couldn’t tumble like Orkestres, breaking the momentum of their fall…
    The earth still screamed around them. Or was it people screaming? He took a breath, perhaps to scream, perhaps to say goodbye.
    He jumped.
    Hands caught him, wrists grasping wrists, breaking his fall. Orkestres lowered him onto the ground. Nikko looked around frantically, hunting for Thetis. Surely she had jumped with him! The window was empty. As he looked in vain for his sister, the wall around their bedroom collapsed backward in a rolling thunder of sound and movement.
    The ground still shook under his feet—then suddenly it stopped. But walls still fell, and rocks tumbled. Only the groaning of the earth itself had ceased. The room they had spent the last two days in was dust and rubble.
    Nikko began to dive forward, intending to tear apart the ruins with his hands, when something rustled above him. He stopped and looked up.
    Thetis hung from a tree branch by her hands, her bare feet still clean from her last bath. She peered down at him, half scared and half excited.
    How had she leaped that far? Not only leaped, but grabbed the branch. Even as he watched she let one hand go and waved him to come over to her.
    He stumbled to his feet, still unsteady. He held his hands up to catch her. But instead she swung herself back and forth to gain momentum, then let go and flew down, her slim bare feet landing on his shoulders. She dropped her hands to him, and he grabbed her wrists as she somersaulted through his arms and down.
    Dimly he heard cheers that weren’t there. No one waswatching except Orkestres…who made the finger sign against evil. ‘She knew the earthquake was coming.’ His voice was quiet. ‘Is she a witch?’
    He took a step back.
    ‘No!’ cried Nikko.
    Thetis glanced up at him. Her hair was dusty from the rubble. She gestured to her ears, and then her eyes, and shook her head.
    Orkestres looked wary. ‘What is she saying? Do you understand her?’
    ‘I think she is saying that there were things she didn’t hear, didn’t see.’ Nikko tried desperately to find the words to convince him. ‘She told me once she’d noticed that birds fly away before an earthquake. She must have seen them do that here.’
    Orkestres stared at her. ‘A wise woman once told me that animals can sense an earthquake coming.’ He looked at Thetis sharply. ‘No magic?’
    Thetis shook her head.
    Orkestres’s face changed to relief too quickly. We are important to him, thought Nikko. Even if Thetis was a witch he’d find a way not to notice.
    Orkestres laid a hand on Nikko’s head. ‘Men are twigs in the waves when the gods shake the earth. I’m glad the girl was watching.’ He looked around, trying to make sense of the chaos behind them. ‘I must see if I can help. People may be trapped. But you stay here. You belong to the High King now. You’re not bad for a beginner,’ he added to Nikko. ‘But that jump of your sister’s was inspired. Stay,’ he said again, then strode off into the ruins of the palace.
    It was afternoon when they left the shattered village. The sun was shining through a red dust, and the soft coos of doves were singing over the sobs of those who had lost loved ones. Dead and living had been pulled from the rubble. There were enough left of their friends to tend them, and enough houses where nothing had fallen but thatch. The King’s men could do nothing more here except be a burden on the survivors.
    The tribute train stretched out longer than the village now.
    Pony after pony, weighed down with panniers of grain; packs of what Orkestres said was cloth; big pots stoppered with cork and leaves and filled with oil or wine; and King’s men herding the cattle and the goats,