The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (49 page)

“You’re just confused.”

“Actually, I’m feeling very lucid at
the moment,” he replied.

“You’re tired, hungry—”

“Fasting brings wisdom.”

“You don’t understand evil!”
Bartholomew shrieked. “Yours was a sheltered life of isolation. You don’t
understand. When the signs began, crops withered, livestock died. Starvation
and disease led to death and killing. God challenged the Guardian City. Here is where it would begin, so here is where it could be stopped. Everything that
you’ve seen, everything that was done here was done to save Janus, and in doing
so, save the future and the
world!
The end justifies the means.”

“Nothing justifies this. No measure
of apocalypse or its prevention can justify anything I’ve seen. Those who
confess are hanged outright; those who don’t are imprisoned where they will die
from neglect, or worse, torture at the hands of perverts masquerading as the
righteous.”

“The people in the Wall turned their
backs upon God and their fellow man. Their punishment is exclusion from God and
His love. They chose their path.”

“I can see people of this city on the
wall raping prisoners!” Alex said, barely able to control his revulsion, his
hatred. “Are those goodly citizens more worthy of God’s love than the helpless
women they’re—”

“They’re
witches
!” the friar
protested, genuinely perplexed by Alex’s reaction. “They refused God and are
attempting to bring down creation—”

“So let them,” Alex interrupted
icily.

Bartholomew stared, his face drained
a doughy white, mouth gaping like a fish plucked from the safety of the sea and
cast upon the dry, choking earth.

“Let it die,” Alex pressed. “Let it
be buried and forgotten.” He stood up before the friar, his stance a challenge.
“For what it’s done, your world deserves to die. And for its savage disregard
of life, it deserves to be damned.”

“
Blasphemy!
”

“God will not save Janus!” Alex
shouted back, “Because there is nothing here worth saving. Your fear and stupidity
have turned you into what God despises most. At least,
my
God despises
this. If your God does not then he isn’t worthy of my shit.”

“
Blasphemy!
” Bartholomew
shrieked again. “How can such atrocities spill from the lips of a gray warrior?
The Wasteland was to have purified you, protected you from sin and corruption.
You … you—”

The friar’s tirade halted abruptly,
his eyes fixated upon Alex, concentrating on some fact buried deep beneath
layers of religious insulation. When the words came, they spilled from
Bartholomew’s trembling lips in a strangled whisper. “What have I done?”

Alex stepped back uncertainly, hands
moving instinctively towards his guns.

(
Not yet
)

“I let you in! My God in Heaven,
I
… let … you … in
! You made a mockery of me, pretended to be one of the
prophesied ones, one of the grim warriors come to help the righteous in their
struggle. You knew that was what I believed, and you delighted in your
deception. Deceiver! Defiler!”

“Stop raving!”

And suddenly the man was at his
throat, hands grabbing the red scarf in double-fists of rage. “
And I let you
in! I brought you to Janus! I have brought it all down!
”

Alex slapped him, the blow knocking
the friar to the street, then readjusted the scarf, fingers still shaking with
adrenaline. Bartholomew had lost his mind.

But the friar only looked up at him
accusingly, the expression of a man looking at something made of fire, or
dripping poison. He remained where he was, one trembling hand brushing a thin
line of blood from below his nose as he backed slowly away like a man facing
down a wild animal; afraid to turn away, afraid to hold his ground. When he was
a dozen feet away, he turned and started to run, screaming as he fled:

“The Red Knight has come! The Red
Knight has come!”

*     *     *

Ariel November was taken to the Wall
of Penitence. A part of her, thin and failing, thought she must try to escape;
reasoned that she did not want to know what it was that frightened so many of
the accused into choosing death over the Wall. But that fragment of her was
drowning, centuries-honed ferocity surrendering to indecision and terror as she
became less of Oversight and more of Ariel November, the new reality dragging
her in, changing the rules, making her its own.

And neither was capable of escape
anyway.

Within an hour of being sentenced,
Ariel November was laid out like a carpet roll in an empty alcove, awaiting
imprisonment in the Wall of Penitence. She could see the rows of the others,
the ones that had come before her: the morning before, the day before that, all
the days before that turned the Wall of Penitence from a means of torture into
an unparalleled atrocity. But she could only see them from the waists down, the
part of them left outside the wall, ankles tied to iron rings bolted to the
walls, bare legs covered in dirty shifts, many soiled, some indiscreetly torn
away.

She heard each stone the workmen
laid, the squelch of mortar, the knock of tools on brick as they sealed away
another. Ahead of them, a long row of fresh, unfilled holes like scars in the
blighted tiles, wounds left open to drain. Even through the wall, she could
hear terrified sobbing and screaming, petitions to God for help and mercy or
simply death. But none were answered. Abandoned, she and every other woman
doomed to the Wall of Penitence was given no more consideration than a stray
cat.

Why, Jack? Didn’t I do everything you
needed me to do?

There was no answer. What did she expect? Her world from before was one
of isolation, her against God. But Jack’s world was completely different. In
his world, God was the excuse for man against man.

Ariel began to cry. Strange that something she had never done before came
so easily. Like being afraid. She had never known fear before, and now wore it
as comfortably as her own skin, felt it crawling across her, destroying what
was Oversight. This was Ariel November’s world, a world strangled with fear
until everything and everyone succumbed. And the fear transformed to anger, and
the anger hatred. It was a world without compassion, and she its latest victim.

She became aware of a new sound, a
dull thumping, a sound she realized was her own skull falling repeatedly
against the tile beneath her, slow steady thuds of her head upon brick, the
sharp pain blossoming out into duller and duller regions of ache. She persisted
until the center went numb, victim of her own self-inflicted punishment, an
avenue of escape not considered until the full malady of the Wall of Penitence
was realized. Just the dull pounding that reached her ears, growing ever more distant:
thud, thud, thud
.

“Don’t do that. You’ll hurt
yourself.”

She turned her gaze, a blur of pain
and fatigue, and saw sitting beside her a young girl with a bushy halo of
curls. “Lindsay?”

“Uh-huh,” the little girl said.
“Don’t hit your head anymore, okay? They’ll hear. They have collars that
they’ll put around your neck if you do. It’ll make it worse.”

“Lindsay, please help me. Please!” She had so many questions, but would
gladly forego them all if Lindsay would just help her get free.

“Everything will be okay. Jack’s taking care of us.”

“He … he’s not doing a very good
job,” she said, her words shaky and desperate. “Lindsay, you have to help me!”

The little girl smoothed the hair at
Ariel’s temple. “Jack’s the Caretaker. It’ll be okay.”

“Lindsay, please! Help me get out!
Don’t let him do this to me, please!”

Lindsay was fidgeting, her hand
withdrawing, her gaze turning away. “I don’t have much time.”

“No, Lindsay, wait! Please!”

“He’ll get lost without me.” She
stood up slowly, moving like a sleepwalker—a sleepwalker leaving!

“Lindsay, please don’t leave me
here!” Ariel struggled against the ropes tied around her arms and wrists, but
could not even snag the edge of Lindsay’s shift—
so like the outfits worn by
the condemned
. “Please don’t leave me, Lindsay! Please!”

“I can’t help you,” Lindsay said, not
knowing what else to do. Like her thoughts, the words were not her own; they
belonged to another, left behind for her to read when the time was right.

And that time was now.

Oversight—no, her name was Ariel November
now;
Ariel November
—was crying hysterically, fingers clutching for her,
straining against the ropes until they wore into her skin. “
Lindsay, don’t
leave me! Please! Please, I need you!
”

“I have to go,” she said, moving
slowly. “I can’t do anything for you. You need a hero.”

And it was happening again. Lindsay’s
mind was drawing back, back deep inside of her head, leaving her to look out
from her eyes as if she were at the bottom of a deep well looking up. Her mouth
was moving, lips speaking words that she heard and understood, but did not
truly
know
, her thoughts not her own.

“He’ll come, Ariel November. There’s
nothing I can do for you. But he can. It’s his destiny, just as it’s yours to
trust him. I’m sorry I couldn’t do better, but this is all I have. I promise
you, you have not been forgotten. You are a part of me now; I will never
forget. Find the center. Find the doorway out. Go as deep into the darkness as
you can. There you will find a way through to the light.”

The little girl leaned forward,
placing her lips to the woman’s forehead as a parent might to calm a frightened
child, and kissed the dark-haired woman from the Wasteland.

And then she was gone.

Ariel looked about, thinking she
could still hear her in the distance, but realized it wasn’t the little girl at
all. It was someone else, someone shouting the same thing over and over: “The
Red Knight has come! The Red Knight has come!”

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 gushing 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.