Free Green Jack by Alyxandra Harvey

had to
smile. “Coming from you, Solomon?”
    “Takes one to
know one.” She gathered her books and her embroidered bag. “I’m
going to go study in my room. Smells like feet in here.” She let
her bag swing from her shoulder and hit Asher in the face. He
cursed and made a grab for her but she’d already danced out of the
door, laughing. The red bird someone had released to read patterns
in its flight made a panicked lunge for the window, knocking itself
out. One of the Oracles complained about her reading: the constant
and confusing taste of a spice she couldn’t place. Someone else was
painting crocuses but she didn’t know why.
    Jane went to
her dorm room to change into running clothes. The top of her spine
throbbed with warning. She rolled her shoulders, trying to ignore
the pain. There were books on numen poisoning and ancient magic on
her desk, for all the good it did her. But numen had to be about
something more than growing seeds and divining crop rotations.
Before the Green Jacks came, very few people had believed in magic
and they’d mostly been dismissed as being religious, crazy, or
both. It was still such a new science. No one knew where the next
breakthrough might come from: laboratory, Collegium, or Woodwife.
There were museums of course, and stories told on Festival days,
but so much information was lost after the Cataclysms. The books
that had survived from earlier days treated Green Jacks and numen
as fiction.
    She pushed her
desk chair under the vent, unscrewed the cover and slipped the
books inside. Her research material wasn’t illegal exactly, but it
would attract more attention.
    And she had all
the attention she could handle.
    The door
slammed open. Her essay on the symbolism of black doves in ancient
Greek divination floated off the desk to the ground. “You have to
come down to the Common Room,” Kiri demanded, dragging Jane down
the hall. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “Tell you
what?” Everyone in the Common Room was excited, talking too fast,
placing bets.
    “I should have
guessed,” Kiri shook her head. “Your mother must have done it.”
    “Done
what?”Anxiety fluttered in her chest.
    “Let me
through,” Kiri shoved through the crowd, tugging Jane behind her.
Students parted, some smiling, some sneering. They stopped in front
of the wide screen set into the wall. The usual
Directorate-approved shows played. All other feeds were blocked and
taken down with extreme prejudice. Sometimes a Greencoat video
snuck through, but never for very long. Most Oracles agreed that by
the end of the year there might not be any satellite signals at
all, even for the Directorate. Already, the signals were
weaker.
    “Kiri, what are
we watching?” Jane asked.
    “Just wait,”
Kiri said. “It will play again in a minute.”
    The trailer was
only a few minutes long, glossy as an advertisement for protein
paste cakes. The light was hazy and romantic. There was green
grass, gardens, rows of perfect houses, soft music. Jane recognized
them with a start, dread uncurling in her stomach like a sleeping
snake woken by the sound of mice. A man spoke in a resonant voice
that oozed confidence and charm.“The Garden… where every winner has
the glory and honour of serving you. Vote for your favourite!”
    The recruits
pre-marked for the Garden flashed one after the other. Personal
data followed: ages, proud family names, inoffensive hobbies. Jane
didn’t recognize most of them, until her own face stared back at
her.
    A pink
moon.
    “Jane Highgate
is studying at the Collegium to be an Oracle. She is proud and
excited to serve the Directorate and hopes to find true love.”
    She didn’t know
where they had gotten the footage, when they’d even filmed her. She
was jogging through the Enclave, offering omens on the steps of the
Cella in the Rings, dancing in a beaded dress. Shots of the
candy-coloured tulip beds and gleaming windows of The Garden
followed. Numen burned the back of her neck. Pink