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

by Mark Reynolds

  Turning, he disappeared back inside the building, and Oversight and the others were led in after him.

  The world outside drew away.

  Marched down flights of stairs to a corridor of doors, they huddled while guards consulted with functionaries before being herded into a small, tiled room, lime-crusted showerheads sprouting from the walls and ceiling. They were stripped and locked inside, left with only the rope around their necks and the shackles on their wrists, their tattered belongings swept away. Then water blasted from all sides, scalding hot and hard enough to bruise before a milky liquid sprayed down from above, the air thick with a chemical stench that burned the eyes and throat. When the door finally opened, the guards dragged them out, half-blind and soaking wet, skin raw and red, noses dripping snot, eyes running with tears. They were crowded into a dimly lit cell—one of the many doorways off the corridor—unchained, and presented with white shifts.

  As her hands closed on the simple garment, Oversight thought, Now; if I’m to be free, it must be now.

  No! They’ll hurt me!

  It was impossible to ignore the terrified voice. A moment’s peace, a respite from the torment, was all she wanted. And while it would cost her freedom and maybe her life, the opportunity was too great. Do nothing; an imperfect solution, but all she was capable of.

  Despairingly, Oversight sat upon the floor, scrubbing the chemicals from her eyes and face with the shift before pulling it over her head. Beside her, a woman stared fixedly at empty space, eyes swollen, nose running. The woman’s gingery hair was plastered against her head as she sat there, non-responsive, folded shift clutched to her sagging breasts.

  Oversight looked at her a moment then used the cuff of her shirtsleeve to gently dab the other woman’s eyes, trying to wipe away the chemicals. Then she slowly took the garment from the woman’s fingers. “Put this on or you’ll get cold,” she said, helping the woman slide her arms and head through the simple covering.

  “You hear things,” the woman whispered. “You think you understand, but you don’t. You can’t.”

  Oversight shook her head uncertainly.

  “They just don’t care,” the ginger-haired woman continued. “They’re afraid and they’re angry, but I didn’t think they’d be so … cruel. We’re human beings. Doesn’t that matter?”

  “I doubt they allow themselves the luxury of conscience,” Oversight replied grimly.

  “They deserve to be in here for what they’re doing.”

  Oversight did not disagree. “What will happen to us?”

  The ginger-haired woman looked cautiously around the crowded room. “In the morning, they’ll take us before the Court of Fathers. I’ve heard sentencing starts after vespers and runs until noon.”

  “Sentencing? For what?” She knew nothing of this world before the night in the swamp, nothing to incur the wrath of these people. There was only the spell, that one little spell that made the stump water glow. Harmless, really; she knew better ones—how, she didn’t know, and none would serve her here—and compared to a wizard like Kreiger, her talents were beneath notice, sleight-of-hand trickery and misdirection. Nothing more.

  But the other woman’s expression suggested otherwise. “They think we’re witches. That’s all the Court of Fathers needs.”

  “But why,” Oversight said.

  “You must be from far away to not know that. The entire city is terrified. They know Armageddon begins here; know the Red Knight will come to Janus and begin the great war, and that war will end the world. It’s in their scriptures, their teachings. It’s all they know. But the Red Knight is supposed to need the help of a witch to bring about Armageddon. They don’t know who the Red Knight is or when he will come, so the only thing they can do to deter the end of the world is gather every witch throughout the territories and bring them here to Janus for sentencing.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  The other woman shook her head. “A witch will be the beginning of their end; she will help the Red Knight bring about Armageddon, and it will begin here. The texts are very clear on this. As to the identity of the witch, the scriptures are less specific.”

  “They don’t say at all, do they?”

  The ginger-haired woman only shook her head.

  * * *

  As dawn turned the sky over the canyon walls to a pale, stippled gray, Alex shook Brother Bartholomew awake, pushing the man’s shoulder repeatedly until he awoke, grumbling and upset.

  “It’s likely the city gates haven’t even opened,” Bartholomew complained.

  “Then we’ll wait there until they do,” Alex replied stiffly.

  “We can wait here just as well,” the other retorted.

  “We can wait at the gates just as well,” Alex said.

  Bartholomew stopped his efforts at wiping the crust of sleep from his eyes, his voice dropping to a papery whisper. “Is it today?”

  “Is what today?”

  “Him.” Still whispering. “Is he coming today?”

  “Who?”

  “The Red Knight, Alex! The Red Knight!” Bartholomew’s voice broke on the verge of shouting and Alex glared. The man’s eyes shifted ruefully, looking to see that no one had heard, then whispered, “Is the Red Knight coming today?”

  Alex swallowed. Was he supposed to know? Was he supposed to tell if he did, or was it a secret that would reveal itself in time like most prophecies? Jack might have inserted him into this life, but insight was apparently not part of the travel package.

  Janus holds the answers.

  “Come on,” Alex said. “We can wait at the gates for the city to open.”

  “But what about breakfast?” Bartholomew protested.

  Alex stood up and walked away, heading in the general direction of the gates. “We’ll get it in Janus.”

  A moment later, the large man came jogging up behind him, medallions and crosses batting and clinking as he moved. “Yesterday, you talked as if you didn’t even know where this city was. But today you have to be inside at the crack of dawn. What possible reason?”

  Alex stopped abruptly and Bartholomew collided with him. He turned, exasperated, and said, “You’re going to have to trust me on this, Brother Bartholomew. Call it a matter of faith.”

  The rebuke left the friar chastened. “I have witnessed the Lord’s mysteries and deigned to question. If you need to get into the city then, by all means, we will get in even if we have to scale the walls. Mine is not to question, but to hear the Lord’s will and follow as best I am able.”

  “Can we just go and wait by the gates?” Alex said uncomfortably.

  “My faith shall not falter again,” Bartholomew beamed. “Ask anything of me you like. Whatever I can—”

  “Brother Bartholomew,” Alex interrupted, afraid the man would launch another tirade renewed religious conviction. “Can you tell me what happens in Janus at dawn?”

  “The usual, I expect. The markets open following morning mass. People attend prayer, cope as best they can, go about their day. Why do you ask?”

  “Is there nothing particular to Janus? A city like this,” he gestured to the massive walls and the looming towers beyond. “In times like these, it must do something no other city does.”

  Bartholomew shrugged as they joined the wide earthen street leading to the city gates. “Well, they sentence the witches, but that isn’t really much of a thing anymore. It’s been going on for years, every day following morning vespers.” Bartholomew halted, realizing that Alex had come to a stop a few paces behind him. “Is that it? Does it have something to do with the witches?”

  Alex’s mind was racing, trying to force a connection. It was there, he could feel it … tenuous and filmy and somehow eluding him. “They sentence witches?”

  “Certainly.” Then Bartholomew stopped, hands coming up suddenly as if trying to grasp threads from heaven, and smiled. “Now I see. You are from beyond the wasteland, one of the gray warriors, solitary soldiers of light and goodness, ignoran
t of evil and its many faces. Yours is an innocence born of God. Where you’re from, they know nothing of witches or malefica, evil and the exile of criminals. No wonder this is so confusing for you.”

  “Where does this happen? Where do they try the witches?” Alex asked. Find the witch! Find the center! Find the gateway that gives the city its name! Hurry! Before it’s too late!

  “The Court of Fathers,” Bartholomew said. “The Sons of Light bring witches into Janus from across the territories to receive sentencing by the Elders. The Council is well aware of its responsibilities in the battle with the Enemy, and its significance to end times.”

  Alex turned to the stone-faced city, gates already opening to reveal a blackened orifice grimly amused, glowering over the pilgrims surging upon the roadway, eager to be swallowed up. They were ants parading about an elephant’s foot, insignificant and beneath notice.

  You must change that. Find its heart. Make it … afraid!

  * * *

  With the morning, Oversight and the others were bound in a line and brought before the Court of Fathers. Marched through empty halls of monastic frugality built atop Baroque architecture, austerity and piety to suit both bureaucratic necessity and religious insensibility; a church that was once a palace; a monastery once a municipal hall. Papal excess and repressive authoritarianism mingled the divine and the corrupt, the spiritual and the actual, everything about it gnawing at her, peeling back her skin to expose the raw nerves to a searing blade. But she could do nothing save follow the line, and hope for an opportunity that might never come.

  They were led through a door, words chiseled over the entryway: The flesh must suffer that the soul be made pure, to an arena turned court, row after row of onlookers descending towards a central pit while overhead, vaulted ceilings of angels warring against demons, a savage battle of blood and dismemberment carried out in silent oil pigments. The room was crowded not with the pious or the hateful or the afraid, but the indifferent; expressionless and dead, the flat stares of wakened corpses regarding her and the others as they had every group of chained prisoners before. She was no different than the last, no different from the next. This was a drama performed a hundred times, a thousand times, its outcome not in question, its encore not in doubt.

  Oversight felt her feet dragging as she took in the enormity of it, felt it surrounding her, a sensation like being trapped at sea, lost in a desert, a wasteland of dead, merciless eyes.

  The chain around her neck went taut, pulled by the rest of the line though her feet would not obey. A guard shoved her from behind and she nearly fell; his only remark a flat, “No stopping.”

  They were marched before a raised dais, a dozen men impatiently waiting, decked out in black robes and colored sashes. Some wore powdered wigs; others were shaved bald, foreheads gleaming like oiled leather. Before them, a mountain of carelessly strewn papers, files and books spilling across the table and upon the floor, pages loose and lost, trampled into rubbish and forgotten.

  She knew this place for what it was, read it in the faces, apathetic and bored. Neither church nor court, this was theater. No solemn or lawful event, no justice for the innocent or condemnation for the wicked, this was an object lesson whose repetition had long ago dulled the senses of those around her, its meaning disappeared as it dogged on, performed by rote. Whatever was about to take place, whatever she was being dragged around by the neck for, beaten and taken captive for, these people did not care. Events registered like a movie against a white screen—a screen that took nothing from the experience, as empty when the film was over as when it began.

  Why, Jack?

  The flesh must suffer that the soul be made pure. But Jack wasn’t like that. She had seen Caretakers and Cast Outs beyond count, could read most at a glance, and while Jack was many things—much more than Kreiger gave him credit for—he was not cruel. It might well have been better for him if he was.

  A bailiff approached the seated judges with a folder, his arrival bringing a hushed order to the crowd. One of the seated scanned the contents, harrumphed and peered over his spectacles. Licking at lips both old and chapped, he said, “You will step forward each in turn and state your given name before this court.” It sounded like an order he had given many times, once with solemnity, now indifference.

  Starting from the far end, each woman stepped forward and mumbled something that may or may not have been heard, may or may not have been their given name. Truth was unimportant, the proceeding devolved long ago into something so routine that both meaning and repercussion were lost to procedure.

  When her turn came, she stepped forward, opened her mouth …

  … and forgot what she was about to say!

  Oversight closed her lips and concentrated on the answer, suddenly slippery and elusive. A simple question wanting a simple answer. She was Oversight, but that was not really her name, just a description, a label pasted on her not by her maker, but his minister at arms, Rebreather, a man whose own name was similarly invented, a means of self-deception. Her name was not Oversight, and when she tried to say it, the word slipped from her mind. If you are not Oversight, who are you then?

  One of the men at the table looked overtop his spectacles. “Please state your name for the court,” he repeated.

  But she could not. She did not know why, but her mind was now blank, even the label gone on the verge of being spoken.

  Another at the table snapped his fingers towards the bailiff. “Is she mute? Mutes are to have their names noted upon their shifts before being presented. Why is her name not on her shift?”

  The bailiff stepped towards the table, whispering, “There was no indication she was mute when they brought her in, Eminence. A clerical error, perhaps—”

  He waved away the rest of the excuse. “Unlikely. You there,” he snapped his fingers at her, pointing sharply. “Tell the Court your name.”

  “Ariel November.”

  Ariel November? Why did I say that?

  (Because that is your name.)

  Glad to have the routine of the proceedings restored, the judge nodded and carried on. “Having been found guilty of witchcraft and consorting with evil, you are to be punished, your sentence to be carried out immediately before the eyes of God and those goodly citizens whom you have wronged with your wickedness. Those who confess their crimes freely and repent shall receive …” The man’s voice trailed away uncertainly as he looked up and saw her, still standing forward and, of all things, smiling. “The accused may step back.”

  Ariel November! I have a name! I am Ariel November!

  The judge flicked an annoyed gesture to one of the guards who immediately grabbed her collar and pulled her back in line.

  “My name is … Ariel November,” she repeated softly, stunned by its brilliance within her mind, its feel upon her tongue, upon her brain. It was all so clear now. That was her name; had always been her name. As far back as she could remember, she had always been Ariel November. Not an entity sentenced to walk the Wasteland forever; she had a name, an identity, a real life and an existence. She was not an oversight, not just some construct, but an actual person. She was Ariel November, the witch.

  “Yes, we heard you the first time,” the judge said, annoyed. “Now if we can proceed? Those who confess their crimes freely and repent shall receive mercy. Those who do not, those who insist upon loyalty to the dark forces that conspire against God’s people, shall end their days in the Wall of Penitence.”

  Some of the women began to cry. One started screaming, loud braying peals that were all the more pitiful for their ineffectiveness. The crowd only looked on, the drama unfolding the same way it had the day before, the week before, the month before. One of the judges picked absently at his nose. The central magistrate looked nonplused. “Who is prepared to confess and receive absolution?”

  One woman: “I confess! Just don’t send me to the Wall. I confess I…” her voice fell to a whisper, “… I am a witch.”

  The judge nodded
to a pair of bailiffs who stepped forward to unhook the woman from the long chain that bound them one to the next, escorting her away while gushing an insensible stream of gratitude.

  Emboldened by her success—or fearful of the alternative—others in the line began confessing, half-whispers and desperate shouts of ludicrous acts and preposterous details regarding their culpability in non-existent crimes. Even the ginger-haired woman, silent until now, cautiously stepped forward. “I confess; I’m a witch.”

  “No,” Ariel said.

  “I repent my sins,” the ginger-haired woman persisted. “I confess to my part in the conspiracy to aid the Red Knight and to help bring about Apocalypse, or Armageddon, or … or whatever. I confess to everything.”

  “Stop!” Ariel said fiercely. “This won’t help.”

  But the magistrate simply nodded, a bailiff coming to escort the ginger-haired woman away; a woman whose name Ariel never learned.

  What was the Wall? What terrified everyone so, that they would confess to such lies?

  The flesh must suffer that the soul be made pure.

  As the guards detached the ginger-haired woman from the chain of those that remained—those that did not know what the Wall meant, or were too addled to understand—she turned quickly to Ariel, her voice low, her eyes desperate. “Whoever you are, it won’t matter in the Wall. What’s real don’t matter. All what matters what’s believed, and they believe you’re guilty. Take what mercy they offer, ‘cause the Wall won’t offer none. Not ever.”

  Then she was pulled away and dragged from the room.

  The magistrate looked absently at her. “Do you wish to confess and repent your wickedness?”

  Why, Jack? Why give me a name only to see it marked with indifference in a papal ledger? What little she had seen of Janus suggested that mercy would not come from confession, but after eons in the Wasteland, was it all to end here like this?

  (Child of the Wasteland, things are different here in this world. As you are different. But you are still who you are. You are Ariel November now, but you were Oversight once. You have not forgotten.)