The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (47 page)

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.”