“Well?” the magistrate asked, looking pointedly at her. “Have you nothing to confess?”
What did he expect her to say? And why was his question so deliberate when before it was so indifferent?
“Have you not, by your actions, betrayed your very maker?”
Familiar, but out of place. It did not belong here. Not here!
(Neither do you, a wolf among the sheep. Beware the shepherds.)
Her gaze lifted to meet his, saw the face behind the spectacles—how he loves his disguises, his little illusions and deceptions—saw the glimmer in the magistrate’s eyes; eyes that were two different colors, one green, one blue.
(A wolf among the sheep)
She released herself from the chain latched to her collar, and lunged across the table. “Kreiger!”
Bedlam ensued.
The others scurried out of the way, fingers scrambling for holy relics and prayer beads as the guards descended from all sides, the long table collapsing beneath their sheer mass as they struggled to pull Ariel November from the fallen body of the magistrate, to force the still-shackled witch to release him before she crushed his throat.
But she would not, not until she forced the smile from his lips, the wicked grin that glared up at her, twinkled in his changeling eyes, and hinted of plans she could not fathom, intrigues she could not guess, and plots even Jack was not privy to.
“You will not ride my ticket!” she screamed. “You will not! I am Ariel November! Whatever it may be, this is mine!”
“Restrain her!” one of the magistrates hollered over the rising din of the assembly. “Quickly. She is trying to kill Father White.”
The Sons of Light forced their way through the crowd past guards more accustomed to escorting sobbing women than fighting a fallen angel, and descended upon her, burying her beneath their weight. Just like the swamp. On open ground, she could have killed them. Oversight would have killed them. But this was not the Wasteland, and she was not Oversight. She was Ariel November, and this was her world. And the world was not fair.
Fists pounded her until she lost feeling in her hands, could not hold onto the magistrate’s neck—it was not Kreiger; it had never been Kreiger; trickster though he was, he could not open the doorway Jack created; he wasn’t that good. A knee pressed against the back of her neck, pinning her head to the floor until a choking noose could be fitted about her throat, ropes lashed around her arms and legs, wrists and ankles.
“See this witch bound to the Wall of Penitence,” someone declared—maybe the Court Speaker; she couldn’t tell beneath the crush of bodies, the blackening pain clouding her vision and dampening her hearing. “God’s mercy on your soul.”
Ariel was loaded into a cart, the rest of the prisoners cowering from her as far as the meager space would allow, terrified. One of the guards removed the iron shackles from her wrists, and tossed them into a pile with the others to be reused. Then he spat in her face. She clenched her teeth and scowled at the sky, refusing to give him the satisfaction as the warm trail of spittle crept down her cheek. The cart lurched forward down the cobblestone road.
It was several minutes before she felt the cart creep awkwardly through a turn, the wind changing, a corrupt stench invading the air like sewage and rotten meat, the stink of an abandoned slaughterhouse. The horse wickered its objection, hooves chopping quick retreat on stone, and the cart momentarily stopped before several sharp cracks of a whip made it lurch forward again to the sound of crows flapping back and forth across the steeply walled street.
No, she corrected, eyes finding the black birds. The crows were still, perched contentedly and yammering back and forth like washerwomen. It was their perches high upon the wall that flapped in the wind like sailcloth, and made one of the prisoners scream hysterically.
Dangling from each of the innumerable crossbeams up and down the road swung the source of the pungent smell and the rotting stench, the source of the flapping, the source of the shrieking crows. Women clad in white shifts hanged by their necks up and down the street for as far as the eye could see, dangling from ropes like a street of dirty laundry, muslin discolored and stained where the flesh had rotted into the cloth. Crows like demon familiars sat upon corpse shoulders, pecking absently at bits of exposed flesh. Eyeless faces missing lips and noses leered sightlessly down upon her, rot-withered nightmare skeletons wrapped in putrefying gristle and blackened meat, hanged and left as a grim testament to the city’s mercy. Block after block, bodies like lanterns, their lights extinguished, their coverings dancing in the wind, each hastily painted with a wide, red cross to demonstrate the penitent’s return to God; each hung by the neck to assure she would never stray again.
Ariel November held her eyes steady on the carnage, body after body—hundreds, maybe thousands—and would not close them until they came to the end where a crowd had gathered. Here the shifts were cleanest, the paint fresh and wet, the smell of rot replaced by excrement, the bowels of the newly hanged evacuated upon the street below. The show here was better, the repentant already being hanged from the morning’s sentencing: the crashing thump of the body and snap of the neck as consistent as the theater in the Hall of Fathers, if somewhat livelier. Gathered in semi-circles, the crowd gestured and pointed like onlookers at a museum, displays of wax figurines in sickening repose.
One of the last before the endless rows of waiting gibbets had a head of frizzed, gingery hair. Only then did Ariel November allow herself to close her eyes, better to shut away the tears.
* * *
“I just heard the strangest thing,” the friar remarked, leaning close to Alex to be heard over the crowd.
Since entering the city, Bartholomew had led him along a tangled path of roads, bridges, and walkways that crisscrossed Janus in a jackstraw tangle; one moment, passing over a narrow roadway crowded with pedestrians and pack animals, the next, passing under a similar byway. Overhead, buildings clamped like pincers upon narrow cuts of gray, dappled sky, leaving Alex to wonder if the night ever truly lifted, the city perhaps trapped in some eternal twilight. Every crevice, corner and kiosk sold every manner of good or service imaginable, but none more common than religious trinkets: beads and crosses, medallions and statuary, chicken feet and gris-gris dolls, scripture books and lockets and artifacts of questionable origin. Street people sermonized Armageddon, their rants focused upon the Red Knight’s coming, and the witch that would help him. Alex was more amazed by the attention they were given. He had heard these same speeches before—repent and be saved; be cleansed in the blood of the Lamb or suffer the wrath of the Lion, for the end draws nigh—and paid them no mind, the promise of tomorrow inviolable. But walking the streets of Janus, onetime absolutes seemed less certain.
“I was speaking with a man back there. By the way, I found us some breakfast,” Bartholomew handed Alex an apple, the skin shriveled and starting to brown. He caught Alex’s expression and nodded apologetically. “Sorry, these were all they had left. Anyway, there was an incident this morning at the Court of Fathers that has the whole city buzzing.”
Alex nodded, trying to listen while fighting the uneasiness the city engendered. “What happened?”
“Apparently, a witch attacked the magistrates and nearly killed one of them. Some say she’s the witch, the one that will help the Red Knight.” They flowed with the crowd as it pushed deeper, cycling inward, spiraling down. “They say her name is Ariel November.”
(Remember, remember)
“Yesterday, you asked me if I’d ever heard of the lady of dark November,” Bartholomew went on. “I recall a children’s story I heard growing up. I didn’t remember it until just now. It was more a ghost story than anything, but it was about the November Witch. I don’t know if there’s a connection, but—”
“Where did she come from?” Alex interrupted.
Misunderstanding, Bartholomew shook his head. “The stories were always vague, mostly designed to frighten children and make them behave. Ask someone from the plains,
and they’ll tell you the witch came from the mountains. Ask someone from the woodlands, and she’s from the fens. Boogeyman stuff. Still, it’s interesting that there’s a witch named Ariel November and a legend of the November witch, don’t you think?”
(Remember, remember,)
“What happened to her?” Alex asked.
(The lady of dark November)
Bartholomew stepped into an alleyway empty of people, and Alex caught the change in the air immediately. In the new stillness, the smell of unwashed sweat, animals and mud faded and was supplanted by a stink coupling raw sewage and rotting meat. It happened so suddenly that Alex had to stop, bent over with hands on his knees and breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t gag.
Brother Bartholomew hovered beside him, one hand resting lightly upon Alex’s shoulder, the other covering his nose. “I think we’re near Confessor’s Row,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s been some time since I was last in the city; it seems to have grown.”
Alex straightened, similarly covering his nose, the stench so pungent he could taste it with every breath. “What’s Confessor’s Row? The meat-packing district?”
“Nothing like that, no. The slaughterhouses and tanneries are on the north side of the city. Confessor’s Row means we’re closer to the Court of Fathers than I thought.” Brother Bartholomew smiled uneasily. “It’s easy to get turned around in Janus.”
It was as close as he would come to confessing that he had become lost.
Alex settled the red scarf over his nose and mouth, the dusty wool smell favorable to the stench. Already breathing through a corner of his cassock, the friar nodded and continued to lead the way. “Confessor’s Row is where they take the confessed witches,” he explained, “their souls cleansed by their admission before God and the repentance of their sins. That it’s grown is a testament to the success of both the Sons of Light and the Fathers, saving those who have strayed and bringing them back into His fold.”
“What are the Sons of Light?” Alex asked.
“Soldiers of God who have taken it upon themselves to stop Armageddon,” Bartholomew said. “The Orthodox decry their efforts, but that debate’s been around for centuries. And so long as the Sons of Light have the authority of the Court, they will continue rounding up witches and bringing them to Janus. Orthodox are fatalists, anyway.”
The narrow alley dumped out suddenly in a wide avenue, empty but for a single horse-drawn cart creaking slowly along, the horse, saddle-backed and head down, wearing a vented canvas muzzle and blinders. Two men wearing aprons and gloves followed the cart, their faces masked and goggled as they routinely took shovel-loads of white powder from the back of the cart and scattered it at the base of the far wall, brick and cobblestone splashed with the salt-white dust that settled on their hair and clothes, and made them resemble ghosts. The heavy drift of dust caught Alex unaware, his first breath causing him to cough, the gasp of air sucking in a lungful of the burning chemical and dropping him to his knees in a paroxysm of choking.
Bartholomew grabbed his arm instantly, dragging him down the street hacking and gasping as they distanced themselves from the retreating horse cart. Throat burning, Alex was barely able to keep his feet under him, coughing so hard he nearly collapsed as he ran blindly, his eyes burning and nearly impossible to open.
“They’re liming the street,” the friar explained through a wetted corner of his cassock, eyes blue stains in pools of reddish pink, tears streaking his cheeks and nose. He produced a canteen, cupping a handful of water and soaking the section of scarf Alex was breathing through before ladling more water across his eyes and face. “I didn’t realize, or I would have brought us another way. The air’s damp, though. It should settle in a moment.” He placed the canteen in Alex’s hand. “Drink this. It will help.”
Alex took a swallow from the canteen as soon as he was sure he wouldn’t cough it right back out, then tried to scrub any remaining chemical from his face with the scarf. “Why?” he gasped.
“Can you imagine the stench otherwise?”
Crouched against the far wall, Alex saw the lime cart disappear around the corner, people already returning to Confessor’s Row: a gaggle of old women coming from the market, shaking their heads, clucking and crossing themselves; further down the street, children throwing stones at one of the hundreds of dangling canvas sacks.
Those aren’t canvas sacks.
Alex kept rubbing at his eyes, certain what he was seeing was incorrect, an effect of the powder that burned at his soft tissue like a face full of chlorine. But there was no mistake. Hanging from crossbeams all along the length of the street, end to end and beyond, were not laundry bags hung out like mail pouches as he’d thought, but cheap sackcloth dresses with bare feet dangling from the bottoms! They’re people! Someone has hanged hundreds of people and left them to rot! His gaze turned higher, compelled by horror and outrage, and he saw that they were women, every one of them for as far as the eye could see, faces crooked, stares vacant, knots running up abraded throats tying each to crossbeams extending from the wall of Confessor’s Row. Death made their faces slack; no fixed grimace or horrified stare or rictus of anguish like he had read about in books or seen in movies. Just emptiness. Crows perched on dead shoulders, pecking at features and turning their stares into hollow sockets of accusation while the air buzzed with the temperament of blowflies.
“What … what…” Too many questions; not one could be voiced.
“I know,” Bartholomew said. “These are dark times.”
“Why were they hanged?”
“See the painted crosses,” Bartholomew motioned with a hand. “These witches confessed before the Fathers and renounced their allegiance with evil. God has forgiven them and taken them back. Their souls are saved.”
“You believe this is a good thing?” Alex asked, dumbfounded. “They were executed and hung out on display like … like … I don’t know what it’s like. It’s monstrous! They were human beings, for God’s sake!”
“No,” Bartholomew corrected. “They were witches.”
Alex shook his head, unable to look at the sincerity in the friar’s eyes, sickened. “You’re nuts. You and everyone in this town have gone crazy.” He gestured to the rows of dead faces, pointing to a corpse that, by her size, could be a girl of no more than eight or nine, one eye and a portion of her cheek gone to the efforts of a perched blackbird. “Do you honestly believe that child was the witch who would lead the Red Knight against your city?”
“Well obviously not her, she confessed to—”
“Regardless! Had she not confessed, can you honestly tell me that the Red Knight, the destroyer of your world, would have need of a little girl?”
Bartholomew shook his head, his expression sympathetic if condescending. “She’s a witch. You are one of the warriors from beyond the desert, Alex. You know nothing of evil or witchcraft or the Enemy. You see the imperfect solution of the Sons of Light, and are horrified. And you should be. Don’t you think my heart bleeds to see such suffering? But imperfect or not, it is the only solution.”
Their argument had drawn the attention of passersby, people wondering at the strangely attired lunatic shouting blasphemies. Signs were made, wards against evil, gestures of the cross. Brother Bartholomew panned around apologetically, proclaiming, “He is one of the gray warriors from beyond the desert, raised innocent of wickedness by God and sent here to help us. Forgive him. His perfection clouds his understanding of this crude but necessary measure.” He moved closer to Alex, fingers digging sharply into his shoulder as he whispered. “Have a care, Alex. These are suspicious times. Incautious words will get you accused of heresy.”
Alex let his anger speak for him. “You’re all insane!”
Bartholomew shook his head. “Necessary sacrifices for the greater good. To surrender would be to end God’s Kingdom on earth for our lack of commitment. Where would our faith be then? How empty our praises and prayers if we fail to execute as we are called
upon to do? God has laid this challenge before us, and will forgive the faithful for those acts committed in the execution of His will just as he will punish those who turn a blind eye to evil for the sake of convenience.”
Alex looked up, ready to speak—some rebuke unlikely to penetrate the thick-headedness of Bartholomew’s faith—and felt the words evaporate.
Twenty feet from where he stood, dressed in the same white muslin shift of the hanged women up and down Confessor’s Row, was the first familiar sight he had seen since boarding the train at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.
“Lindsay?”
Bartholomew followed Alex’s gaze, but saw nothing.
“Lindsay?” Alex called again, desperate for an answer, a familiar voice, anything to help make sense of this nightmare. But her eyes would not fix upon his, as if she were trying to focus on something that would not stay in the same place from one moment to the next. And when she spoke, her words echoed off the brick, lending a strange hollowness to each syllable like echoes in a great, empty hall. “Help her.”
“What?” he called back. “Help who?”
“Help her.”
He felt himself stepping away from the friar, moving as if in a dream. Did anyone else hear her, or was he going mad? Did they see her, or register the exchange between the two of them, or was she a ghost, a vision privy only to him? And what was she asking of him. Help who? Who would need his help, good-for-little-or-nothing-but-screwing-up Alex? No one should need him, no one at all, no one except …
Oversight! “Lindsay, is Oversight here?”
But Lindsay turned and ran, bare feet slapping the wet cobblestone.
“Wait, please!” he yelled, the street’s gristly trophies and bovine inhabitants receding as he chased her to the end of the avenue of the gallows. No more bodies in featureless white shifts, crudely hung angels in a sad pageant of macabre insanity, as the road Lindsay fled down plunged deeper into the earth to a place where sunlight could not reach, the unnatural ravine cut into Janus as if by a razor, a deep wound left behind that promised to scar what it failed to kill.
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 42
