The CRES code

Chapter Twenty Seven - Jane looks for a job

     Jane didn't know that Loach had decided to kill her. She had stamped out of the boarding house out of sheer fury and now stalked the dark, evening streets of the city as she waited for her simmering temper to die down. She hadn't thought about the danger she was putting herself in until a figure holding a knife emerged from the shadows in her path. "Don't try ter run," he said grinning as he walked towards her. "Jest do as I sez and..."

     Jane was tired, angry and totally fed up and acted without thinking. Her fist flew towards his face and his nose crumpled under it in a spray of blood. He staggered back in shocked surprise, dropped the knife and fled back into the darkness.

     Jane stared in shock as she realised what she'd just done, and as she stood there a sense of triumphant jubilation came over her. She'd been threatened in the street and she'd fought him off! A man who had probably been going to rape her, and possibly cut her throat afterwards, had fled from her. God had saved her, she thought in glorious joy and wonder. The true God had come to her and given her victory over her attacker.

     Of course He had, she realised as she considered it further, still standing in the same spot. She was, quite probably, the only Christian left in the world. God had no choice but to work through her, had no choice but to protect her. God would not let her come to harm, she should have realised that days ago. She wore the armour of God, and He would not let any harm come to her.

     Her first impulse was to run back to Randall and Loach and tell them what had happened, show them that she wasn't the helpless child they thought she was, and if she had, if she had stumbled across Loach in the empty streets of the city, she would have died on his knife before she'd had a chance to say a word. Fortunately, pride came to her rescue. They'd thought she'd go screaming for help at the first sign of danger. Well, she'd showed them, but she wanted to show them more. She wanted to show them that she was quite capable of doing her part in the overthrow of VIX. She would go back to them when she'd accomplished something, she decided. When she'd searched through the city's records and found Randall's secret underground facility. Until then, she would go her own way. Find her own place to live, get a job in the records office, or whatever they called it. She had no fear now. God would protect her.

     She bent down to pick up the knife her attempted rapist had dropped and tucked it in her sleeve. Then she started walking, back to one of the other boarding houses they'd found during their search of the city earlier. It was getting late and she was tired. She would get a good night's sleep and be about her business first thing in the morning.

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     The place she wanted, Jane thought the next morning as she left the tavern again, would probably be in the centre of the city, assuming there were business premises there and it wasn't just the homes of the rich and powerful. The only way to find out was to go there, and so she set of with a purposeful stride, the knife still tucked safely against her wrist in the sleeve of her tunic.

     There was another wall circling the centre of the city, with guards on duty at the gates. They stopped her, demanding to know her business, but let her go when she gave them a gold coin each. It was the only gold she had left, but it was worth it if it gained her passage and smoothed her way to the inevitable triumph of God.

     She paused for a moment, though, and turned back to the guards. "Do you know where the records of land surveys are kept?" she asked.

     "The whet?" said one of the guards, staring at her blankly.

     "When they send people out to see what's under the ground." They continued to stare. "Look," said Jane with growing frustration. "Coal amd iron are dug out of the ground, right?"