by J. Rock
1.
Going about my day, acting as if nothing of significance had occurred the day before, proves to be the challenge of my life. As always, I leave the Manse and make my way toward the Glass Gardens an hour before my shift starts at the sixth hour. The sunvisor from my bedroom window fell out and broke two days ago, and so I’d barely slept with the sun’s constant glare in my room. I'd only had a few thin sheets to hang up as a replacement. Adrenaline, mixed with fear from the day before, still lingers, but I'm groggy as hells.
The streets of Krakelyn are a foggy blur as I walk, all my attention focused on getting one thing: my morning cup of coffee. Coffee is a relatively new thing in Krakelyn, imported from one of the southern cities. It was hard to get (and expensive as hells) for years, but then a new passage through the southern Bleaklands was discovered that was both passable and breathable; a rare combination. Coffee started to flow more readily into Krakelyn. I was hooked instantly, finding I had trouble starting my day without it. My Father likes it too–another rare occurrence–considering he tends to be wary of new things. He always has to know exactly where something comes from; to be sure no mutant had a hand in its creation.
But he was the one who led the expedition that discovered the new passage through the southern desert, and had been to the cities where the coffee comes from, so he knows that it's safe to drink. He tells me it grows on a vine, like a bean, but the idea seems funny to me. Not that it matters. I just thank the gods everyday that my Father and his Deacons found that passage–and by sheer dumb luck to boot.
They'd been trying to locate a rumored land bridge across the Great Desert Canyon, finding themselves in a low lying area with little air to breathe. There are many such places in our world. We call them Bleaklands. My Father says they are a result of the Great Cataclysm that brought the Forerunners to their ultimate destruction. It was to such a place my Father led his caravan. When the men and their horses began to black out from lack of oxygen, he called a retreat. But they were waylaid by a vicious storm, forced to seek shelter inside the canyon itself. The next days found them following the dry riverbed at the canyon’s bottom, their way out washed away by the storm. They emerged near Apollyon, a southern port city, nearly a week later. So uncharted are the Bleaklands that no one knew that the canyon could be followed in such a way before! It’s not exactly easy to map out places you can’t breathe in!
“Morning, Juno!” a breathless voice calls to me, breaking my reverie. I blink my eyes and force them to focus on the approaching form of Rayanne Nedaris, a girl I’ve known my whole life. I guess you could say that we’re friends, though we kinda run in different circles. But ever since she got on at the Glass Gardens a year ago, we’ve been kinda forced together.
I meet Ray’s russet eyes, noticing that she's had her hair undercut like mine. I smile. “Morning.” I look down and see two wooden cups of simmering coffee in her plump digits. Since when did Ray drink coffee? She’s sweating too. Did she run here?
“I got you a coffee!” Rayanne blurts, thrusting one of the steaming cups of liquid into my chest, droplets scorching me as it sloshes. I don’t want to take it–there’s no way she’s mixed it right. But it’s then that I realize I’ve forgotten my cup at home and will either have to go back and get it, or buy a new one at the coffee shop.
“Thanks, Rayanne,” I say, taking the cup, “but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ll see you at work.” I push past the plump girl and steal down an alleyway.
I can hear Ray’s voice echoing after me: “Okay, see you at work!” Without looking back, I dump the coffee before I make it to the other end of the alley, coming out on Mainstreet with the cup still in hand.
To my right, the morning traffic is abuzz with the sounds of street vendors, peddlers, performers, gawkers, and shoppers, all spread down the length of a long granite bridge marking the entrance to Krakelyn’s business district. A farmer with a cart, laden with supplies, trundles past me. I don’t recognize the man and my heart begins to flutter. Instinctively, I look down at his feet, but they’re covered with thick leather boots.
I can’t tell if he has six toes or not.
Stop it! You’re being paranoid! I tell myself, driving yesterday's images of the six toed footprints molded in the beach sand out of my head. I want so badly in that moment to go and tell my Father about it, but I can’t after what happened to Jude when he touched the silver box...
“Did you hear? They caught a mutant in the city last night!”
I’m trotting down one side of the crowded cobblestone street when I stop dead in my tracks. I spin on the spot to see old Mrs. Cromarty chatting with one of her girlfriends in front of a fruit vendor, inspecting apples, oranges, and melons, placing them in burlap totes.
“No, I never heard anything,” Cromarty’s friend replies. I slip back against the flow of people and move toward them.
“Morning, Mrs. Cromarty!” I say, greeting the elderly woman warmly.
“Oh, well, hello there, Juno Quinn!” Cromarty returns. “You’re just the girl I wanted to see!”
I cringe at Cromarty’s affectation of calling me “girl” (I’m eighteen, for the sake of the gods), but I brush it off.
“I thought you might,” I say. Mrs. Cromarty can never resist a juicy piece of gossip, especially one concerning mutants. And with my Father being the High Deacon, well, I’m often privy to rumor. I say, “You want to know about the mutant, right?” acting as though I know something.
“So, it’s not a rumor then?” Cromarty asks, her expression wanting.
“Well...what did you hear?” I reply, acting coy.
Cromarty frowns. “Well, nothing really. Just that the Nightwatch caught one last night scrambling over the city walls. First one in quite some time. The kicker is: they say the thing was helped by someone inside the city!”
It’s my turn to frown. Someone in the city helped the six-toed mutant get in? That would be considered treason to the human race! The penalty for such an act is, well, no one really knows anymore because no one is stupid enough to do it! And yet, I’m stupid enough not to tell my Father what I know! The Deacons would consider that treason too.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I say to Mrs. Cromarty, then pretend to have my attention caught elsewhere. “Oh, sorry, I have to go!” I slip back into the throng on Mainstreet, ignoring Cromarty’s protests that I haven’t actually told her anything.
I’m still planning on getting my coffee, but I have to make a detour first. I slip down a nearby alley, disrupting a group of boys playing Fox Eyes, and work my way toward the center of town. Judgment Square. If there was a mutant caught in the city last night, Judgment Square is where it will end up. I quickly look up at the Clock Tower–the center of Judgment Square and so tall as to be visible from anywhere in town–and am dismayed to see that it is already quarter past five. I only have forty-five minutes to get my coffee and go to work. I’ve been late twice this week already, and unfortunately being the High Deacon’s daughter doesn’t afford me immunity from that offence.
I push through the crowd faster.
Five minutes later, I emerge from a narrow brick alley–I have to move sideways to slip through it–and into Judgment Square proper. To my surprise, there is already a crowd gathered in the shadow of the Tower. A large one. Judgments are not generally advertised. In most cases, nobody knows one is happening until they hear about it through the rumor mill.
My view of the stocks at the center of the Square is impeded by the throng, and so again I push my way through the people of Krakelyn, something I’ve learned to do well in my eighteen years. I finally emerge from the pack like a lost explorer in a dense forest of sentinel pines. When I look up, I see a man fastened to the center of the trio of stocks here, all standing upon a raised stone platform. He is entirely naked, his enormous and hairy gut thankfully covering that part of his body to which my eyes want to automatically drift. Without thinking about it, I continue to let my gaze fall until it comes to the m
an’s feet.
His toes.
“What’s he up there for?” someone asks behind me, echoing my own confusion. Why indeed? I count his toes again.
“No one knows yet,” another person answers. “We’re waitin’ on the Thesis. It’s a helluva fall from grace though.”
It’s at these words that my heart flutters and I look up into the stockaded man’s face for the first time. If my jaw were not securely attached to my face, I could have expected to hear it clatter to the cobblestones in that moment. The man is Thomas Whiskeyjack, the Second Deacon, my Father’s understudy and closest friend. Thomas had kept his head hanging since I got here but, now, almost as if he feels my gaze upon him, he looks up, pushing his neck forward through the stocks to do so. He locks his eyes with mine, and I cringe at the bruised and purple state of his face. The Deacons had been to work on him; men whom this poor man had once commanded under my Father.
My heart pounds. Does my Father know about this? The High Deacon has the final say in all Judgments…so he must! Did my Father really sentence his best friend to death? He has a reputation for being a hard man, earned after he passed Judgment on my Mother, but since then he’s been more lenient on those close to him. I think it’s ‘cause he feels guilty. Just look at how he coddles me! If I wasn’t his daughter, he would’ve had me flayed and sent to the stocks ages ago!
“The Thesis!” someone in the crowd bellows, breaking my train of thought. A man, dressed in a black hood and cowl, emerges from the Basilica at the base of the Clock Tower, carrying a thick scroll rolled up under one arm. My gaze is glued to the man as he approaches, unrolling the scroll when he reaches Thomas. The man, whom we call an Abdicator, pulls out a hammer and a metal spike from his cloak, nailing the Thesis to the post of Thomas’s stock. The words written upon it, large and easy to read are:
For Aiding and Abetting a Mutant
My mind reels.
Thomas is not the mutant (which I kinda figured out when I saw he only has five toes), but helped one break into the city! I want more than anything to talk to Thomas, to ask him about it, but I know the crowd won’t allow it; they’re getting riled up as the words of the Thesis are passed on to those who can’t read or are out of eyeshot.
There’s nothing I can do.
“Scum!” I hear a familiar and high pitched voice call as a rotten red tomato sails out of the crowd to explode on Thomas’ exposed head. My anger boils and I whip about to see Traylor, my obnoxious little brother, smiling devilishly and attempting to hide the rest of the rotten fruits and vegetables he has in his hands. My face melts into a snarl and I’m about to advance on the little bastard, but it’s too late.
The Judgment riot has begun.
