Portent, A Ravensborough Novella (The Ravensborough Saga) Read online

  'Yeah, well, maybe if you gave me the time of day outside this place, I could stand to be a little more civil.'

  He wrinkled up his nose in confusion.

  'Oh come on,' I scoffed, the anger and frustration that had been building over the past few weeks finally getting the better of me. 'You know exactly what I'm talking about. Here in Darkfield, when you've nobody else to talk to. I'm absolutely fine to talk to. But if you bump into me in college, when there's more interesting people around then you don't care. I'm surplus to requirements. So I'm sorry, but I'm a little fed up with being your friend when there's nobody else around. I'm not sure exactly how else you expect me to feel.'

  I pulled my rucksack up off the steps and rifled through it. It was more for something to do with my hands than anything else. I couldn't believe that I'd let him in so far, that I'd let him know that I cared.

  Great plan.

  He reached out and gently pulled the rucksack out of my hands.

  'Kara,' he said gently. I didn't want to look at him, or admit how much he'd hurt me. I crossed my arms and stared fixedly across the road at the records centre. Childish, perhaps, but I couldn’t help it.

  'Look,' he began. 'It's not you that's the problem, it's me.'

  I gave him an incredulous look. 'Yeah, I know Morgan. That part was never in question.'

  'No I mean...' he looked around as if searching for inspiration. 'My mother is on the city council. She’s head of Pagan/Rationalist integration.

  'Wow,' I said sarcastically. 'And she's doing such a great job.' There was a moment of silence. Even for me that was pretty bitchy.

  'All right,' I said. 'I'm sorry. That was way out of line.'

  He nodded, accepting my apology. 'If the media found out that her son was hanging around with a girl who heads up the only group that still supports the Reckoning, then that would bring a lot of attention on you.'

  I got it. The Daughters of Morrigan believed that there was a Reckoning coming, a time of great destruction and death. Long ago, everybody had believed this, but it had become a fairy story over time to most people. We were now the only group who believed in it and were preparing for the Reckoning. Everybody else thought that we were a crazy fringe group. Because our numbers were so small, nobody really worried too much about us. Even Pagans didn't believe us, so there was nothing for us to fear. We had no influence, and could cause no problems. Meaning Rationalists left us alone.

  If I were to be seen with the son of a major diplomat, however, things could change fast. Even a hint of us having a powerful ally would make us - and that 'ally' - a target. Out of nowhere we'd soon be on the 'Prime List; of organisations suspected of subversive action against the state, something we had to avoid at all costs. At the moment, we could hang out here, because nobody really paid attention to us - that could all change though. And any media attention would be pretty awkward for Morgan and his family.

  'Thanks,' I mumbled. I hated being wrong, hated it even more in front of someone like Morgan.

  'It's all right,' he said. 'It's nice to know you care.'

  I opened my mouth to say something pithy, but closed it again. My fast talking had gotten me into more than enough trouble tonight.

  He stood up.

  'I'm going to head off. Mind yourself, ok?'

  With that he was gone, loping off down the road, his footsteps sounding too loud on the empty streets.

  I sighed to myself. Had he left because of me? I knew I was probably being paranoid, but it was hard to shake the feeling that I'd done something wrong. I'm sure he didn't want to spend the night hanging out with me in the cold, but maybe I could have been a little bit friendlier.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I stayed until 3am when my watch finished. 3am was after the last underground train left, which meant I'd have to walk home. This was the worst part. I lived in Vyrion, a high rise estate on the outskirts of the city. Not only had I to be careful not to run into any Rationalist-Pagan conflict: I also had to worry about ordinary criminals. When I'd told Morgan that I lived in Vyrion, he'd laughed, saying I'd probably learned more there about chemical substances than I would at university.

  He had a point.

  Luckily, tonight was quiet enough. I stepped over the prone figure of my neighbour, Gerry Glazier, who had drunk so much whiskey he'd passed out on the tenth floor landing of Vyrion 1. At least I thought he had. A hand reached out and grabbed my ankle before I could get away.

  'They're coming,' he mumbled.

  'Really?' I asked, trying to extract my foot. It was no use. For someone who existed solely on liquid sustenance he was surprisingly strong.

  'The Guards,' he muttered. 'They're coming.'

  'Don't worry,' I muttered, leaning down and prising his fingers away from my ankle. 'Nobody's coming. It's all going to be ok.'

  He seemed to accept this, and fell back asleep. The poor man had gotten a beating for back talking a violent thug of a soldier years ago. He hadn't been right in the head since. He lived in perpetual fear of a reprisal, but he was safe here. Vyrion 1 was where the detritus of Avalonian society coalesced. Much like my congregation, we were considered non-threatening, at least not to anybody who mattered.

  Yeah, we had one of the largest drug problems in the city. Yeah, we had a high crime rate. But as most of our time was spent getting high or drunk and killing each other, the rest of society didn't care. That went for Rationalists and Pagans.

  I rummaged in my coat pockets for my keys, and let myself in the front door. It was almost as cold inside as it was outside. I put the kettle on to boil for something warm. There was no point turning on the heating: we didn't have the money to pay for it. We used to get some residual heat from the people who lived next door, but they'd moved out six months ago and hadn't been replaced. Since then we'd lived without. It hadn't been too bad at the start, but now we were reaching the end of autumn. Winter was fast approaching which would bring arctic winds, frost and snow. I'd no idea how we were going to keep warm then. I tried not to think about it.

  I made a cup of chamomile tea, hoping that it would help me sleep. I sat at the sofa underneath the window and looked out. There may not be many perks to living on one of the highest floors in Vyrion 1, but this was definitely one of them. Below me the lights of the city twinkled like an electric carpet, leading out in the distance to Lady's Lake. Beyond that lay the elite Rationalist suburbs of King James, Chesterfield and Bessborough. I’d bet money that there weren’t many people there worrying about the cold right now.

  There was a raven sitting outside on my window box, and I shifted on the sofa and opened the window. It wasn't like I could make it any colder inside, was it? I pulled down the sleeve of my coat and gripped it between my thumb and index finger, making sure that my entire arm was covered. Raven claws hurt. I popped my head and arm out the window and gasped. So much for my smug theory that I couldn't get any colder. The raven landed on my arm and, despite the layers of padding, I could feel the scrape of claws against my skin. I could see tubes of antiseptic ointment in my immediate future.

  Ravens were the sacred animals of the Daughters of Morrigan, but they weren’t half difficult to deal with. Not for the first time I wished we’d gone for something a little less tenacious.

  I pulled my arm closer to me, and the raven put its head to one side and gazed at me quizzically.

  'Darkclaw,' I said, holding the animal as close to me as I could. Darkclaw wasn't one of my favourite ravens. In fact he only came to me when something bad was happening. I closed my eyes and tried to feel what the raven was trying to say.

  It took a great deal of energy to share a mind with another animal, and it was nearly 4am. I'd spent the last four hours freezing my ass off in a deserted and dangerous part of town, and I had precisely three hours of sleep ahead of me before I had to go to university to sit an exam I was ill-prepared for. I had a lot of things clouding my mind, and clearing enough space to have a proper commune with a carrion bird just wasn't high
on my list of priorities.

  Still, Darkclaw disliked me as much as I disliked him. There was no way he'd be here if there was any way of escaping it. I cleared my mind and thought.

  I saw a raven flying. That was easy enough to interpret, when you were able to interact with birds you knew the symbolism – premonition. But a premonition of what? An image of the temple in shadow came before my eyes. The Daughters were in trouble, I sighed inwardly. We were always in trouble. I saw the Pagan Records Building, and a warehouse a couple of streets away that was used for storing fertiliser. I couldn’t make head nor tail of the symbolism. Whatever it seemed to be, it wasn't going to be good news.

  It didn't look like I'd be getting sleep any time soon. It was going to be a long night.

  My alarm went off, making me want to cry in frustration. How could it be that time already? My mother was already up, having her first coffee of the morning, readying herself to get the train into the suburbs and clean at the large hospital off Guinevere Plaza. I poured myself some cornflakes, turned on the television and scrolled along until I got to the news channel. Maybe there'd be some clue behind Darkclaw's message on the news. But there was nothing obvious. Unless Darkclaw was worried by some business scandal involving a minister I'd never heard of, then there was nothing here that could give me a clue.

  'What's up with you?' asked my mother. The words were innocuous enough, but the tone held a hint of antagonism. We hadn't been getting along too well lately.

  'Late night,' I answered now, shoving another spoonful of flakes into my mouth to prevent me saying more than I should.

  'How was Darkfield?' she asked. Mum was the Pagan fanatic, not me. She liked to know every single details of all our meetings and activities, no matter how boring they were. I believed in the work of the Daughters. You couldn't grow up in a chapter and not absorb at least some of the ideology. If I was left to my own devices, I'd probably be involved with the Daughters in some way. But this 'high priestess' security guard job? Not cool.

  ‘Nothing much was going on,’ I answered. ‘A couple of patrols, nothing to write home about. Or to distract me from the fact that I should have been studying.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do fine,’ she said, in a tone that was probably meant to reassure me. I bit back the retort that came to my lips. How the hell would she know?

  I knew I was being unfair to my mother. She thought that pushing me into the Daughters when I was a teen was a good idea. She'd never listened to my dreams of becoming a forensic scientist. Even if she had, she wouldn't have liked the idea of such a 'Rationalist' job.

  But then Darkfield had come under threat. The increase in Rationalist terror attacks hadn't made our membership levels fall. On the contrary many more people signed up and paid their tithes as an act of defiance. But it had meant that people were afraid to be seen to be active. And that was a problem.

  Only a handful of active members were left and, if I tried to pull back, they'd be left trying to manage all the shifts by themselves. And I'd never hear the end of it.

  Aside from that, mum's job was barely covering rent and food. I'd won a scholarship to university, but was always worry that my grades would slip – and that I'd lose the funding. I knew I should try to get a job to contribute financially, but honestly where was I going to find the time?

  There was nothing in the cupboard. Our electricity was about the only thing that hadn't been cut off. I was going to have to go and get more money off my doting father. My doting father who had promised me the sun, the moon and stars and then decided not to deliver once he'd remarried. It galled me to have to go and plead with him for money, but it looked as if I had no choice.

  When I left Vyrion 1 the sky was that rich blue that you get just after dawn, where it's unmistakably day time but you can still make out some stars in the firmament above. As I walked to my train stop, I noticed a black bird flying in the sky above me. On its own this meant nothing, after all. When you lived in a city called Ravensborough seeing members of the crow family wasn't exactly unprecedented. But I could tell from the flight path that it was one of our ravens, and that it was Darkclaw.

  If he was hanging around me this long there must be something really strange afoot. But what?

  When I got off my train Darkclaw was again waiting for me outside the station. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt a wave of nausea that was nothing to do with exam nerves. I walked into the exam campus, which was milling with people. I strode past the exam hall, with students outside talking in high pitched voices and frantically looking over highlighted pages of notes. Truth be told, I should be doing a little of that myself, but once again my Pagan life was interfering with my college one.

  Finally, I found myself in the campus rose garden. In a couple of hours it would be thronged with people trying to avoid classes and eat lunch. But for now, it was mercifully silent. I put my arm out and Darkclaw flew down and landed on my arm.

  'All right,' I told him. 'Let's make this as quick as possible.' He opened his beak and made an ear splitting screech.

  Of all the fricking days.

  Again I cleared my mind. The images cycled through in the same sequence as before. Bird, book, key, fire. Again, it meant nothing.

  'I'm sorry, I don't understand what it is you're trying to tell me,' I said.

  He flew off, obviously disgusted at my lack of understanding.

  I went to the exam hall, and found my desk. The hall was the oldest building in the school, and its draughty cold reflected this. High vaulted ceilings soared overhead and figures from the university's five hundred year history stared down imperiously from the walls. I fiddled with my answer booklet as I waited for the questions to be given out.

  I tried to work out what the symbols had meant. I hadn't studied ravenology as heavily as I should have. I tended to communicate mainly with Quince, my own raven, and I'd been talking to her for so long I didn't need to interpret the symbols. I just knew what she was trying to tell me. Like the verbal shorthand that couples have, we just got each other.

  I needed to think more about the symbols. I ran through them in my head, but nothing was clicking with me.

  I decided to put it out of my head. The questions were handed out and the exam started. I was relieved to see that some questions I knew were on the paper. I should pass, but whether or not I’d get a high enough grade to hang onto my scholarship remained to be seen.

  I got to a section on the application of science to agriculture. It wasn’t the most glamorous of sections, in fact, truth be told it was completely boring, but I knew part of it so I decided to give it a go.

  The section was about the differing applications of ammonium nitrate. It was a pointless question, really. Ammonium nitrate had been used as a fertiliser, but very few people in Avalonia used it anymore. It was hard to get a licence to use it, because ammonium fertiliser was also used in…

  Explosives. More specifically, bombs.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I needed to get to Darkfield.

  I stood up much to the surprise of the invigilator. 'I'm sorry, I have to go,' I said and turned and left.

  I ran across the university square dodging people and sending one elderly professor stumbling.

  'Sorry!' I called back over my shoulder. I tried to pick up speed as I ran out onto the streets of Ravensborough. It was a twenty minute walk to Darkfield but I didn't know how long I had. I'd have to run all the way.

  I was surprised to find out how unfit I was. I'd been on my school track team, and I shouldn't be getting puffed this easy. But then, sitting outside a temple was pretty sedentary. Maybe I should be running laps of it or something. I was beginning to understand why many nightclub bouncers spent a lot of their free time in the gym.

  On and on I ran. My lungs burned with the effort. As I got closer to Darkfield the crowds thinned out, meaning I wasn't bumping into as many people as I'd been earlier. A glance above me confirmed my suspicions. A swirl of flying black bi
rds followed my progress. The animals were instinctive, they followed and protected all the Daughters. There was no way they'd be up there if I was on the wrong track.

  That was a bit of a mixed blessing. I so badly wanted to be wrong, wanted all this to be down to an overactive imagination and bad communication with the birds. If I was this bad and made mistakes of this magnitude, maybe they'd demote me. That way I could still be part of the Daughters and go on and become a forensic scientist. How great would that be?

  Of course, if I was wrong, then I'd just left my exam for no good reason. I'd have to meet with my tutor and explain, but insanity wouldn't exactly make a good defence...

  Still, I couldn't think about that now. Just keep running, Kara.

  A couple of streets away from Darkfield, I stopped. Bending at the waist I tried to slow my heart rate by breathing slowly. If a Rationalist guard caught me going into Darkfield the way I was now, there would be hell to pay. Somebody that worked up would raise alarm bells, and they wouldn't believe my reasoning. The guards had little time for 'Pagan superstition.' If I was right, and what I had forseen was going to happen, they'd assume I could only know about it from being involved myself. And that could turn nasty.

  I wished I had a cell phone that actually worked. It was another thing on the list of non-essential expenses that my mother and I had to forgo. It didn't matter much, because I had nobody to call. Apart from a couple of friends that lived in the Vyrion complex, everyone I socialised with was in the Daughters. And they could always send a raven if they needed to contact me. But Morgan...Morgan was still doing his work experience in Darkfield. I could have called him and told him to get to safety.

  I knew where the bomb was. In a deserted warehouse on one of the side streets. Nothing was really in the vicinity. I had no idea why anyone would place a bomb there. But then, I couldn't understand why anybody would want to kill innocent people. It seemed so over the top and twisted.

  There was only one building that could possibly be damaged in the area if the usual Pagan-style fertiliser bomb was used and that was the record centre. Where Morgan was.