Well of Sorrows

by Benjamin Tate

  They couldn’t hang him. Not for something so stupid. They couldn’t.

  But that wasn’t what he saw in his mother’s eyes.

  He stopped breathing.

  And in the sudden silence, in the stillness of his heart, the stillness of the crowd, he heard his father’s voice clearly.

  “Yes. I’ll lead the expedition to the east.”

  The stillness held for a moment longer, as if the crowd had expected a different answer, and then the Proprietor said, “I thought you might.”

  Colin’s heart shuddered and started beating again. He choked on air.

  The Proprietor turned toward him. “Colin Harten, for attacking Walter Carrente, a member of the Carrente Family and my son, I sentence you to a day in the penance locks.”

  He waved a hand dismissively, and the guard at Colin’s back stepped forward, taking him by the shoulder and shoving him toward the edge of the platform, toward the locks that stood in the dirt to one side. He stumbled, numb with a dull sense of relief, then caught Walter’s expression.

  The Proprietor’s son was pissed.

  Colin grinned. He couldn’t help it.

  The grin held until the guardsman sat him down hard on the stump behind the lock and untied his hands as another guard—the unshaven guard, Colin realized—unlocked the top bar and raised it. Taking hold of his hair, the first guardsman shoved Colin forward, bending him at the waist, and seated his neck in the half circle that had been cut into the lower part of the lock. Two other guardsmen grabbed his arms and placed his wrists in the smaller half circles on either side.

  And then the top half of the penance lock settled down over the back of Colin’s neck and wrists, the lock snapping into place. It was mildly uncomfortable. The edges of the wood beneath his neck and wrists cut into his flesh slightly, and his back was bent at an awkward angle, but it didn’t seem that bad.

  The guards stepped back, but they didn’t move far. The Proprietor had already left for the docks, and those from Portstown had begun to disperse. Some lingered, a few staring at the gallows, others staring at him with pity or contempt, but they didn’t stay long. The priest Brindisi stood to one side with a look of regret.

  Nearly all of those from Lean-to remained behind. Straining his neck, Colin could just make out Karen and her father near the front of the crowd. She tried to come forward, but her father held her back, and she bit her lower lip in frustrated concern.

  His mother knelt in the dirt before him, brushed the hair back from his face. “Colin.” He struggled to twist his head far enough to see her, felt tears burning in his eyes, brought on by the mixed relief and distress in her voice. And because somehow he knew he’d hurt her. Hurt her in a way he’d never hurt her before.

  He’d disappointed her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and was surprised when his voice cracked, surprised at how thick and dense it sounded.

  “Hush. There’s nothing to be sorry about.” She kissed his forehead. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  “No food,” one of the guards said gruffly. “And no water.”

  His mother shot him a glare. Colin couldn’t see it, but he could feel it in the way her hand stilled against his face.

  And then his father pulled her back, crouched down on his heels and took Colin’s chin in his rough hands, leaning far enough forward that Colin could meet his eyes. “You’ll be fine, Colin. It’s only a day. Remember that. It’s only a day.”

  Colin couldn’t read what else he meant, what he sensed his father was trying to say, but he nodded anyway, blinking back the sudden inexplicable tears.

  His father released him and stood. Without saying a word to the rest of those gathered, he put his arm around Colin’s mother and led her away, heading back toward Lean-to. The rest mumbled amongst themselves, shaking their heads or narrowing their eyes at the guards, before breaking away.

  Karen was dragged away by her father.

  Colin kept his head raised for the first hour, so that the wood didn’t cut off his breathing. But his neck and shoulders began to ache, until eventually he couldn’t hold his head up any longer, and he slumped forward, turning so his throat wouldn’t rest on the lock itself. His wrists began tingling, the lock cutting off the circulation to his fingers. He twisted them in place, the holes large enough he had room to wriggle, and that helped. But the armholes were raised slightly, not quite in line with his neck, and soon he could feel his upper arms tingling with numbness, the sensation gradually seeping down toward his elbows.

  The afternoon heat began to settle in. He could feel the lock against the back of his neck, could feel the sweat gathering between his shoulder blades, sliding down the curve of his back, beneath his arms to his chest. It dripped from his forehead, from his nose, slid into his eyes where it stung and touched his lips with salt. Flies buzzed around his head, landed with tickling feet on his hands, on his face, and he couldn’t brush them away. A prickling sensation began in his shoulders, the sudden need to move, to shift position, to scratch or fidget, spreading from a tingling itch into an incessant urge.

  He began to struggle.

  A small movement at first. A shifting of the arms that sent sheets of pain up through his elbows and into his wrists. He’d left his arms hanging loose for too long. They’d gone completely numb. The sensation was maddening, and so he shifted his seat on the stump—

  And almost screamed, white hot pain flaring in the small of his back. He jerked away from it, his shoulders hitting the lock, rattling the bar over his neck. He hissed as his muscles protested, screaming from his neck all the way down to the base of his spine. He tried to straighten, to relieve the tension there, but was brought up short by the lock.

  He cried out, a short, sharp sound.

  And then he began to flail. Anger coursed through the frustration, through the stinging of the sweat and the ache of muscles. Anger at Walter, at the Proprietor, at Portstown, at his father for dragging them across the Diermani-cursed Arduon to this bloody coast. He gritted his teeth and thrashed in the lock, jerked back and forth, the wood creaking, a growl starting low in his throat, catching fire with the anger and growing, rising into a bellow of rage as he fought the lock, as it refused to budge. Fresh sweat plastered his shirt and breeches to his sides, stuck tendrils of hair to his forehead. He threw himself back and forth, tortured muscles seizing, cramping, sending white-hot flares through his calves, his sides, his neck and thighs. Jaw clenched, the bellow rose into a cracked roar, rose higher still as he heaved against his constraints—

  And then it broke, trailing down into broken sobs as he collapsed against the lock, heaving, exhausted, sweat streaming from his chin.

  When he’d calmed himself, he heard one of the guards chuckling, the sound low, barely audible. Colin tensed, breathing harshly through his nose.

  The niggling sensation in his back hadn’t gone away.

  He struggled with the lock twice more before sunset, tried to break free, to move, and each time he collapsed at the end in exhaustion, his roar of hatred dying down into painful sobs. When the guards laughed the third time, he didn’t even react. He was too tired. His throat was raw, his mouth dry. It tasted of dirt and sweat, sour with dust.

  Night fell, and with it the temperature. The patrol that had stood around him all day decreased to a single guard. Colin didn’t think he could sleep in such an awkward position, but around midnight he woke to someone whispering his name.

  “Colin. Colin, it’s me, Karen.”

  He moaned, blinked his eyes against the moonlit darkness, tried to shift his head but cried out at the twinge in his neck. “Karen?” he croaked, the name nothing more than a wheeze.

  “Yes.” Her hands touched his face, his cracked lips. She swore, her hands retreating, returning again with a wet cloth. She scrubbed at the sweat and dirt that had dried against his skin, the pressure increasing as she grew angry.

  “Guard,” he managed in warning, and heard someone else kneeling down beside Karen
, could barely pick out the second figure in the darkness.

  “I found her watching during the day, from the corner of one of the mercantiles,” the guard said, and Colin recognized the unshaven guard’s voice. “Told her to come back tonight, while I was on duty.”

  Colin would have wept, but Karen set the cloth aside and produced a skin filled with water. “Here,” she said, tipping it up and squeezing it, a stream of water splashing Colin in the face. “Drink.”

  Colin swallowed as much of the water as he could, greedily, most of it dribbling off his chin to the dusty ground below. He drank as if he hadn’t had water in months. It tasted sweet. Cold and wet and delicious.

  Until his stomach started to cramp.

  “Careful,” the guard said, his hand pulling the skin away a moment before Colin puked everything he’d just drunk into the dirt. Spasms shook Colin’s body, aches shooting warning pangs through his stomach, back, and shoulders.

  When the urge to vomit subsided, the guard said, “Now let him drink again, but slowly this time. And not too much. He won’t be able to keep it down otherwise.”

  Karen wiped Colin’s face again, then let him drink again. She took the skin away before he was ready. Satisfied, the guard grunted, then stood. Colin heard him moving away in the dark.

  Water sloshed as Karen set the skin aside. He heard her settling back onto her heels. Her voice was further away when she spoke.

  “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?” he asked, his throat still raw, voice gravelly.

  “Did you attack Walter?”

  He would have shifted uncomfortably if he hadn’t been closed up in the lock. He wanted to lie to her, tell her it was a mistake.

  “Yes,” he said finally, and hung his head.

  He expected her to leave. He expected her to be disappointed with him, as his mother had been.

  Instead, she shifted forward, raised his head, and after a careful moment, leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

  It was awkward, and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

  When Karen withdrew, Colin blushed. He listened as she began to gather up the cloth, the waterskin, her motions quick, nervous. She stood.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, when they release you,” she said.

  She hesitated a moment, then left, footsteps receding in the darkness.

  He fell back asleep with his cheeks still burning.

  And woke hours later, abruptly, when someone punched him on the back of the head, hard. He cried out, jerked back, forgetting that he was trapped in the lock. Wood brought him up short, scraping his wrists, his neck, drawing blood. He spat a curse, one he’d heard his father using on a regular basis. Someone laughed, was joined by a few others. Colin listened carefully, picked out four people in the darkness.

  Walter and his gang.

  His eyes narrowed and he clenched his jaw.

  “Hello, Colin,” Walter said, flicking Colin’s ear with one finger. Colin flinched, but refused to react in any other way. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for you when I summoned the Armory. But my father needed something from your father, and, as usual, his needs came first. I wanted something more damaging, perhaps even more permanent, like what the others got.”

  Colin wondered where the guard had gone, realized that Walter had probably ordered the guard away.

  “Oh, well,” Walter said, standing with an exaggerated sigh. “It was fun watching you shake in terror on the gallows. However, Brunt and Gregor haven’t had their fun yet, so we brought you a little present.” He heard Walter retreat, heard fumbling, the rustle of cloth, low anticipatory chuckling.

  And then something struck him in the face, a stream of liquid, joined a moment later by another, then two more. He spluttered, tried to pull away, then realized it wasn’t water and pressed his lips tight, closed his eyes, ducked his head, and breathed in tight, infuriated heaves through his nose, hands groping the darkness uselessly. The laughter rose with the stench of piss, until all four streams trickled off and died. He shook his head like a wet dog, felt a momentary thrill of satisfaction when Walter and the rest cursed and leaped back out of range. But the satisfaction didn’t last.

  He thought they’d return again, try something else to humiliate him, but even as he tensed he heard their voices fading into the distance.

  The guard returned a short time later but said nothing, even though the reek of urine was obvious.

  No one else visited him that night or the next morning. When the time came to release him, his parents were waiting, along with Karen and her father, Sam and Paul, a few others from Lean-to, and Patris Brindisi. The guard who had allowed Karen to help him and the commander of the Armory released the lock, sharing a dark glance when they got close enough to smell the piss, the priest presiding over it all. Colin couldn’t stand, his muscles cramping. He cried out and fell to the ground, his mother at his side instantly. His father and Sam finally made a seat by clasping hands, lifting Colin and carrying him from the square back to Lean-to, his arms over their shoulders, escorted by a covey of grumbling supporters.

  Once home, his mother washed off the urine, the dust, and cleaned the wounds on his neck and wrists, the water burning the scrapes and cuts. She fed him, slowly, in small doses, and massaged his arms and legs, shoulders and back, until the cramps subsided. Colin moaned and cried out as she did so, and tremors shook his body.

  But he did not weep. He buried that urge beneath the anger, beneath the hatred.

  He buried the tears deep.

  5

  NIGHT FOUND COLIN SITTING ON THE ROCK that offered a view of the plains, his satchel and sling resting on the stone beside him. He’d used the sling to hunt rabbit and squirrel and prairie dog since his day in the penance lock three weeks before—had hunted that evening in the dusk after his father sent him to warn everyone to prepare, to be at the wagons in the morning, ready to go—but the intensity of the hunt had died. He no longer felt the dark thrill of excitement when he touched the cords or held the smoothness of a stone in his hand. That thrill had come from the anticipation of using the sling against Walter, and he had no intention of doing that again. He hadn’t even been down to Portstown since the Armory had dragged him there and Sartori had put him in the locks.

  He was done with Walter, with Brunt and Gregor and Rick. In the morning, he’d be on the plains, heading far away from Portstown, its Proprietor, and his son, passing beyond the farms, beyond where even he had hunted. The thought stirred something deep inside him, a prickling in his chest, a quickening of excitement that tingled against his skin.

  He sat in the moonlight and stared out across the silvered grass, his knees pulled up to his chin, his arms wrapped around them. In the distance, he could see the eight covered wagons, already loaded and ready to go, like black stones against the plains. A few guards wandered around them, mostly Armory mixed with a few of the chosen settlers from Lean-to, there to protect the wagons from the dissidents and conscripted prisoners who’d banded with Shay. Crickets chirruped, and something small rustled in the grass nearby. Wind gusted against his face and brought with it the smell of earth, sea salt, and the smoke from the tents in Lean-to. He breathed in those scents, held them, exhaled slowly as he rested his chin against his knees and smiled.

  He heard Karen approaching long before she arrived, her dress swishing in the stalks of grass. Resentment stabbed through his exhilaration—he’d come up here to be alone—but that died as she reached the rock. Karen and her father had become part of the main group intent on heading into the plains and establishing the town everyone had started to call Haven. She and Colin had stolen away more than once while their parents and the others argued over what was necessary for the trek and what was not, who to allow into the party and who to leave behind, and how to protect everyone. Those excursions—down to the darkened beach, or more often here, to the edge of the moonlit plains and the flat stone—leaped to the forefront of Colin’s mind as she settled down beside him,
her legs folded beneath her.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” she said. She brushed her hair away from her eyes, tucked the strands behind her ear. It had grown long since he’d first stumbled into her at the stream, but it was still wild. In the moonlight, it appeared black, her skin a pale white. “Our parents are discussing—”

  “Food,” he said, cutting her off. “I know. That’s why I left.”

  “They don’t think we have enough, not for as many people as are going.”

  “We’ll have to hunt as we go. The wagons won’t be able to move that fast, not without a road to follow. We’ll have plenty of time to scout ahead and forage for food.” The words were his father’s, and he said them with the same curt tone. Beside him, Karen stilled, then shifted position, adjusting her dress as she too pulled her knees up to her chin.

  After a long moment of silence, she said, “Aren’t you afraid?”

  Colin turned toward her, brow furrowed in confusion. “Of what?”

  “Of what’s out there.”

  “Oh.” He relaxed. “No.”

  “But it’s so open. So . . . empty.”

  “It will be better than the trip here to Portstown, trapped in the hold of the ship, only coming up on deck an hour every day, crammed in there with all the other people, with goats and chickens. I hated the ship. I hated the ocean. And I hate Portstown.”

  Karen flinched, and Colin suddenly remembered that she’d lost her mother, brother, and sister on the voyage here. Grimacing, he added, “Besides, it can’t be empty. There’s got to be something out there.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, but the other expeditions—the ones the Proprietor sent out before us—went somewhere. Something had to have happened to them.”