The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1)

by Mark Reynolds

  THE RED KNIGHT HAS COME

  “The Red Knight has come.”

  Leland glanced over at Lindsay, asleep in the passenger seat. It was the second time she had mumbled that same phrase. Nothing else, just that one singular statement, her voice so deep and quiet that it made the hair on his scalp stand up, his skin turn cold. What could it mean? He didn’t know, but he thought he should, and that suspicion ran through him like the passing of death.

  The Red Knight has come.

  No sooner had they left the city limits then Lindsay fell asleep, head resting against the door. She told him to head south, but beyond the general direction, she said nothing else. Almost nothing else.

  The Red Knight has come.

  * * *

  The Wall of Penitence was not a prison, not simply a place for witches to be confined and forgotten. Too inelegant. The Wall of Penitence was as ingenious as it was inhuman, its intent not merely incarceration, but torment: torture of the mind, savaging of the flesh, shattering of the soul. Its architects had constructed a means to reduce a person to base flesh, meat sacrificed to the collective anger and fear of Janus, all the while reminding the city how perilously close to destruction it was, and so the necessity for vigilance. And all conducted on the outskirts, confined to the shadows, unseen, unacknowledged, horror administered without fear of reprisal or guilt. God alone knew the level of indignities suffered therein, for God alone sat in judgment of those in the Wall. Salvation lay through Him and Him alone, and only He would acknowledge their prayers … or their screams. Such was the intent of the Wall.

  The way to Hell is marked with good intentions.

  Alex felt the red coming on, furious and sweet like the smell of fresh blood, as fierce and unstoppable as the roar of the storm, as hot as the molten core of a distant, red sun. It fell across his eyes, seeping through his mind like mist over a deep, shadow-blackened fell as he stood there in the deserted street, the windless chasm of the city’s foulest corner, the wrinkled crevice of Janus’s most hideous, hidden face. With absurd acuity, he could still hear the distant screaming of someone hollering to scar heaven. Over and over, one phrase repeated: The Red Knight has come! The Red Knight has come! He knew the voice from a time before, distant and close, the voice of a man he knew, a man who knew many things, knew nothing, the educated idiot, the braying ass. And in those rambling cries was a hint of the terror magically instilled in those few, fine words, the order and syntax, the definition and inflection, all gathered into a single charm, both simple and powerful.

  The Red Knight has come!

  His gaze swept the vastness of the Wall, saw people receding across its torturous length. He saw them move purposefully among the hundreds—thousands! —whose only crime was being the scapegoats of a terrified and soulless world too myopic to realize its own damnation. He gathered them in like a whirlwind, the men in their conservative attire as they moved upon the tiers with the deliberate solemnity of laymen assisting in the sacrament, selecting a stall, their pants open, faces eager …

  … and the red was coming on!

  It was like that night in the Saloon with the pry bar and Leland Call-me-fucking-Sir-or-Mister Quince, but without the falling away of reason, the dissolution of everything beyond his immediate focus. No blur or haze, but a fire burning with absolute clarity, diamond-forging, crystal-clear, razor sharp. The fire consumed him, wanting only one thing: the freedom to burn, to burn everything!

  Whether by cosmic design or comic error, he had stumbled upon his role in this macabre play, this horrific world that was now his. He was the Red Knight. He knew it, sensed it, felt it was right from the moment of Bartholomew’s accusation. He was the Red Knight. He would destroy Janus. He would end the world and bring about Armageddon. It was what he must do, what he wanted to do. He was the Red Knight.

  But he would need the witch to do it, and the Guardian City had imprisoned all witches in the Wall of Penitence that towered before him.

  Oversight was in the Wall, so said Lindsay’s ghost.

  The Red Knight needs a witch. You need Oversight. Oversight is trapped in the Wall with the witches.

  Serendipity, baby. Can I get a Hell yeah!

  Lindsay.

  Oversight.

  Jack setting the gears in motion, the great universe-machine surging forward on its new course.

  His eyes fixed upon a small weasel of a man walking the second tier of the Wall, studying them like a shoplifter looking for that just-right item to steal, that just-right moment to act, rodent eyes darting furtively from stall to stall. Some looked dead, bodies not yet disposed of, or beaten too badly, starved too long, or just not his cup of tea. The weasel man kept moving, kept looking.

  Long, purposeful strides devoured the distance between him and the weasel, and he drew his sword, hilt carved from human bone, blade serrated near the base and forked down the middle, purpose by design: slaughter and terror.

  Eyes crystal sharp, muscles moving with fluid ease, a grace and power that he thought, in a slightly detached corner of his mind—perhaps the last center for reason and possibly even fear left in Alex Foster’s brain—he should not have had. This was not like him. He could not do these things. But he was in the red now. It had fallen over him, consumed him, giving him preternatural power and skill, speed and grace. Alex Foster was not this life. He was the Red Knight.

  And it was good.

  He scaled the steps to the narrow walkway of the second tier with scarcely a whisper of sound, his rational brain screaming advice to hold back the red demon, keep it from boiling everything down into one long, endless bloodbath. How many? The answer elegant in its simplicity: All. All that was necessary. All that was present. All that it could! Tireless. Merciless. Brutal. None would survive.

  Not even him.

  He focused his rage, and the red turned like a dog to the hunt. He caught the weasel man by the back of the neck, fingers fitted on either side of the vertebrae. Whispers from the red rage: The smallest amount of pressure would snap it like kindling, like old, dry sticks. And you know what that sounds like, don’t you? Well, don’t you? Let me show you…

  He slammed weasel into the white tile, the man’s nose breaking against the cold, slick surface, hands flailing helplessly like the wings of a broken bird while his pants slipped down about his knees, his erection shriveling. A muffled squeal started from his lips, and the woman imprisoned in the alcove shuffled helplessly like a cow locked in a milking stall.

  The sight drove barbs into Alex’s mind that would not release, a part of him going cold, turning numb. I will protect you, the red said as a little more of his reason slipped away.

  The Red Knight put the tip of the blade to weasel man’s cheek, dimpling the skin just below his eye, and leaned in. “Do not scream. Do not speak. Do not even move. I am the Red Knight. You understand?”

  The man emitted a frightened burble and pissed himself.

  “Good,” Alex said. “Then answer my questions and you might live.”

  This world needed an iron hand to break apart the sickness that gripped it, and tear it out by the roots that what remained might have a chance to heal, scarred and crippled, but alive.

  You are not the destroyer.

  Nothing is as it should be. Backwards is forwards. Up is down. Left is right.

  When all else falls away, the center will hold.

  Alex’s gaze strayed down the atrocities emerging from the Wall of Penitence, stall after stall, tier upon tier, block after block. Did anyone who looked indifferently upon this deserve mercy? Did anyone who participated in this denigration, this magnitude of cruelty, deserve anything remotely like compassion? Were they even fit to call themselves human? Was mercy wasted upon them, those who did not understand it in the slightest?

  There was only one answer for the red: Kill them! Kill them all!

  Not yet, he thought back fiercely, eager to drive the blade forward, to sever weasel’s head like a dandelion popping from its stem in a gushin
g fountain of crimson, blood-hot and red…

  Weasel man was trying to nod without moving, without upsetting the blade that already pricked his cheek, a droplet of blood welling upon the sword’s tip, the metal like burning chrome, fueling the red desire.

  The Red Knight has come.

  “I’m looking for the lady of dark November.”

  * * *

  Mid-morning found Leland and Lindsay with just under an eighth of a tank of gas as the cab rolled into another dried-up industrial town along the rustbelt whose mainstay industry had shut down years before, the little that remained suffering a kind of economic leprosy, rotting away as businesses and shops closed up and died, outlived by thrift stores and bars and swap meets with wares displayed on cardboard, prices handwritten in black marker. Leland saw what was wrong with the town the way he saw what was wrong with anything. What he couldn’t see was any redeeming value to beg reprieve from a swift, all-consuming fire. The town was dying; the merciful thing was to finish it off; amputate and cauterize with a red-hot brand before the infection spread. Sometimes the only solution was the most final.

  He found a pawnshop where he sold the Rolex that Jack left with him for hundred and eighty dollars. It was easy enough to find: guitars, leather purses and stereo equipment displayed behind iron barred windows, a trio of brass globes hanging in a triangle outside the door. Leland wondered if the Caretaker had ever been inside a real pawnshop before; he doubted it.

  “You don’t have to answer,” the pawnshop owner began, passing over a stack of worn-out bills, the paper over-worn and greasy, “but how’d this happen?”

  A fine question for a cab driver, his face bruised, his clothes dirty and smelling like vomit, not looking like he had two dimes to rub together but selling a wristwatch that was worth as much as a car in another reality. Leland looked at the wad of money, conflicted. He was glad to be free from the sickening, moment-to-moment panic of poverty, but also disgusted that he should feel so elated by the paltry sum, what he once spent on lunch or a caterer’s gratuity.

  Folding the bills carefully and tucking them into his pocket, Leland looked at the pawnshop owner, the man’s eyes large and swimming behind fishbowl lenses, and said, “Have you ever found yourself so far down that you didn’t know who or where you were, or even what you did to get down there? And every time you tried to remember, it only reminded you of how far you’d fallen and how far away the past really was?”

  The pawnshop owner nodded, but did not understand.

  “Well, it sucks,” Leland said, and left.

  * * *

  The weasel was screaming; likely he’d broken something when Alex threw him from the tier. But the weasel’s screams were less about pain than a shrill wail of terror.

  The Red Knight has come.

  Alex stalked the Wall, pry bar in hand. He didn’t need the wicked looking blade to intimidate anyone. They heard the weasel screaming and looked, some angry, some hateful, most initially disinterested. Then they saw him, the Red Knight, a bar of blackened steel in hand, the red scarf twisting from his neck in wicked abandon.

  And they fled.

  Those who did not—too engrossed in their immoral pursuits, too indignant to flee before the raging storm—earned the Red Knight’s wrath, his justice delivered with hard steel. One blow and they forgot everything but their pain, crawling from his path like insects.

  Most were injured.

  Some were killed.

  But they all screamed. And that was as it should be.

  Hidden deep within his mind, safe behind blood-red armor, Alex felt a certain satisfaction, an imperfect justice. Those who fell before the Red Knight were finally learning what it was to be afraid, finally learning what it meant to be a victim.

  Springing up the steps, he raced along the Wall of Penitence, looking to the distant lengths of alcoves for the area where the stalls were not yet filled. The weasel did not know the lady of dark November, had not heard of the November witch, or even of the witch that attacked the magistrates just that morning, the one called Ariel November.

  Alex changed tack. If the witch was sentenced to the Wall this morning, then she would be where all the new witches were interred. Doubtless Janus would backfill the cells as prisoners died and space grew short, but the weasel said there was plenty of empty space further along. Actually, he implied it … right before the Red Knight threw him from the Wall. Still, it was something.

  Was Oversight the lady of dark November? Was that Jack’s riddle, the reason he left him Oversight’s knife, asked him to give it back to her?

  He raced along the walkway, alcoves filled with spindly, malnourished scarecrows, skin weathered and bruised, dirty from self-neglect, broken out in blisters and sores, rampant with parasites …

  Alex felt himself on the verge of being sick, and retreated further into himself, pulling the red in front of him like a shield. And the red spared him—spared him on the promise that no one else in all of Janus would be spared. He was the promise of fear. He was the covenant of pain. He was the blessing of death.

  The Red Knight has come.

  People scattered in the street below, gesturing, shouting. The injured were left where they fell, whimpering and screaming or bleeding with dead abandon. His actions would not go unnoticed. Eventually, they would try to stop him.

  That’s what the guns are for.

  He found the section the weasel man spoke of, a place near the Wall’s farthest end where the newest arrivals were being interred, still struggling, still unbroken, a din of crying and screaming, pleas for mercy gone unnoticed by the men imprisoning them.

  Four stories above the road and a dozen yards from a handful of bricklayers, Alex stopped short, shoulders aching from the effort to hold himself back, his fists white from gripping the pry bar, temples throbbing, every pulse a tight twist of an invisible, knotted cord that wrapped about his skull. He knew he could end the pain simply by releasing the red, by giving himself over to it. Worse, he suspected that if he didn’t do it soon, it would burn him alive. Then nothing would hold the demon in check.

  Beyond the workmen, rows of unfinished stalls waited to be filled, waited on the conclusion of more mock trials that would land all their victims here, or the street of endless gallows. The wall gaped at him, hundreds of empty holes, eyeless sockets, vacant pits of once-teeth, blaming mouths opened in screams.

  They must never be filled! Never! End it here! End it now! Whatever you believe yourself to be, whatever or whoever you are or were, you are the Red Knight. And the Red Knight will end this!

  He felt his grip tighten on the pry bar, his free hand drawing out the long-handled war hammer as he started forward, a delicious sense of purpose washing through him, erasing his pain. The bricklayers turned, stares of confusion that might be the fledgling moments of fear as one reached absently for a smoldering cigarette and missed, the butt falling away to extinguish itself in a single dance of sparks.

  Have you the savagery to plant the sharp end of a war hammer into another’s skull? the red asked.

  Let’s find out.

  * * *

  Leland stepped from the pawnshop to find Lindsay leaning against the cab, hands clasped in front of her, staring at the sidewalk. “What’s with you?”

  “Did you sell the watch okay?”

  “Of course. It’s what I do.” He wasn’t about to add that he settled for a fraction of its worth. He was short on both money and time, and had no idea where he would get another offer, much less a better one. “So long as we’re not traveling too long, we’ll be traveling in style.”

  “We won’t be traveling long.” Then she looked up at him. “I’m hungry, Mr. Quince.”

  Leland looked at her and rubbed his chin. A day’s worth of stubble and a morning of bruises, but he thought he could eat, too. The idea of being able to lay money down in an honest exchange for services rendered had an appeal far greater than simply satisfying his hunger. No begging or pleading, no searching for compass
ion in the eyes of strangers. Money created wants. And where people had wants, Leland had control. People would be polite to him for money, do what he asked for money, put sugar in his coffee and cream on his table for money. Yes, something to eat might be in order … so long as it was soft—and it wasn’t runny eggs with pork sausage gravy!

  “Okay, what do you say you and I see about getting us something to eat?” he said. “There must be a restaurant or a diner around where we can get ourselves some breakfast. Then we’ll fill up and hit the road. Sound good?”

  Lindsay considered his suggestion very deliberately, head tilted in that childlike way of deep concentration. “Okay. But we have to hurry.”

  “Why?”

  “We started out last, so they’re ahead of us,” she said. “If they reach the door and we’re not there to open the other side, they’ll be trapped forever. And so will we.”

  * * *

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” the head mason said, staring evenly at the man in the gray overcoat and red scarf, a vicious assembly of weapons hanging from belts across his back and waist. The man heard him, he knew, but he kept coming, his defiant swagger and hateful expression, eyes flat windows of rage. Fuckin’ pilgrim, the head mason thought darkly. Pissed about everything, don’t know shit about nothin’. But what’s with the weapons? Crusader maybe? “This here’s a work zone. Whole section’s off limits. Ya gotta go back that way.”

  It was the last order the head mason would give.

  Alex swung the war hammer around and under the man’s jaw with bone-crushing force. There was a loud crack as the blunt end broke the man’s chin and slammed his teeth together so hard that they shattered, small chips like porcelain fragments flying from his lips with a spray of spittle and blood; so hard that it actually lifted the man’s feet from the walkway and knocked him backwards. He collided with a wheelbarrow of mortar, and both toppled from the tier, thick gray cement splattering the walkway below. The wheelbarrow banged the lower tier, fracturing tiles and scattering gray through the air before cart-wheeling down, clanging and slamming from one narrow shelf to the next until it finally came to rest on the street below, a trail of sludgy gray splattered in its wake.