The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (50 page)

Alex changed tack. If the witch was
sentenced to the Wall this morning, then she would be where all the new witches
were interred. Doubtless Janus would backfill the cells as prisoners died and
space grew short, but the weasel said there was plenty of empty space further
along. Actually, he implied it … right before the Red Knight threw him from the
Wall. Still, it was something.

Was Oversight the lady of dark
November? Was that Jack’s riddle, the reason he left him Oversight’s knife,
asked him to give it back to her?

He raced along the walkway, alcoves
filled with spindly, malnourished scarecrows, skin weathered and bruised, dirty
from self-neglect, broken out in blisters and sores, rampant with parasites …

Alex felt himself on the verge of
being sick, and retreated further into himself, pulling the red in front of him
like a shield. And the red spared him—spared him on the promise that no one
else in all of Janus would be spared. He was the promise of fear. He was the
covenant of pain. He was the blessing of death.

The Red Knight has come.

People scattered in the street below,
gesturing, shouting. The injured were left where they fell, whimpering and
screaming or bleeding with dead abandon. His actions would not go unnoticed.
Eventually, they would try to stop him.

That’s what the guns are for.

He found the section the weasel man
spoke of, a place near the Wall’s farthest end where the newest arrivals were
being interred, still struggling, still unbroken, a din of crying and
screaming, pleas for mercy gone unnoticed by the men imprisoning them.

Four stories above the road and a
dozen yards from a handful of bricklayers, Alex stopped short, shoulders aching
from the effort to hold himself back, his fists white from gripping the pry
bar, temples throbbing, every pulse a tight twist of an invisible, knotted cord
that wrapped about his skull. He knew he could end the pain simply by releasing
the red, by giving himself over to it. Worse, he suspected that if he didn’t do
it soon, it would burn him alive. Then nothing would hold the demon in check.

Beyond the workmen, rows of
unfinished stalls waited to be filled, waited on the conclusion of more mock
trials that would land all their victims here, or the street of endless
gallows. The wall gaped at him, hundreds of empty holes, eyeless sockets,
vacant pits of once-teeth, blaming mouths opened in screams.

They must never be filled! Never! End
it here! End it now! Whatever you believe yourself to be, whatever or whoever
you are or were, you are the Red Knight. And the Red Knight will end this!

He felt his grip tighten on the pry
bar, his free hand drawing out the long-handled war hammer as he started
forward, a delicious sense of purpose washing through him, erasing his pain.
The bricklayers turned, stares of confusion that might be the fledgling moments
of fear as one reached absently for a smoldering cigarette and missed, the butt
falling away to extinguish itself in a single dance of sparks.

Have you the savagery to plant the
sharp end of a war hammer into another’s skull?
the red asked.

Let’s find out.

*     *     *

Leland stepped from the pawnshop to
find Lindsay leaning against the cab, hands clasped in front of her, staring at
the sidewalk. “What’s with you?”

“Did you sell the watch okay?”

“Of course. It’s what I do.” He
wasn’t about to add that he settled for a fraction of its worth. He was short
on both money and time, and had no idea where he would get another offer, much
less a better one. “So long as we’re not traveling too long, we’ll be traveling
in style.”

“We won’t be traveling long.” Then
she looked up at him. “I’m hungry, Mr. Quince.”

Leland looked at her and rubbed his
chin. A day’s worth of stubble and a morning of bruises, but he thought he
could eat, too. The idea of being able to lay money down in an honest exchange
for services rendered had an appeal far greater than simply satisfying his
hunger. No begging or pleading, no searching for compassion in the eyes of
strangers. Money created wants. And where people had wants, Leland had control.
People would be polite to him for money, do what he asked for money, put sugar
in his coffee and cream on his table for money. Yes, something to eat might be
in order … so long as it was soft—and it wasn’t runny eggs with pork sausage
gravy!

“Okay, what do you say you and I see
about getting us something to eat?” he said. “There must be a restaurant or a
diner around where we can get ourselves some breakfast. Then we’ll fill up and
hit the road. Sound good?”

Lindsay considered his suggestion
very deliberately, head tilted in that childlike way of deep concentration.
“Okay. But we have to hurry.”

“Why?”

“We started out last, so they’re
ahead of us,” she said. “If they reach the door and we’re not there to open the
other side, they’ll be trapped forever. And so will we.”

*     *     *

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the
head mason said, staring evenly at the man in the gray overcoat and red scarf,
a vicious assembly of weapons hanging from belts across his back and waist. The
man heard him, he knew, but he kept coming, his defiant swagger and hateful
expression, eyes flat windows of rage.
Fuckin’ pilgrim
, the head mason
thought darkly.
Pissed about everything, don’t know shit about nothin’. But
what’s with the weapons? Crusader maybe?
“This here’s a work zone. Whole
section’s off limits. Ya gotta go back that way.”

It was the last order the head mason would give.

Alex swung the war hammer around and
under the man’s jaw with bone-crushing force. There was a loud
crack
as
the blunt end broke the man’s chin and slammed his teeth together so hard that
they shattered, small chips like porcelain fragments flying from his lips with
a spray of spittle and blood; so hard that it actually lifted the man’s feet
from the walkway and knocked him backwards. He collided with a wheelbarrow of
mortar, and both toppled from the tier, thick gray cement splattering the
walkway below. The wheelbarrow banged the lower tier, fracturing tiles and
scattering gray through the air before cart-wheeling down, clanging and
slamming from one narrow shelf to the next until it finally came to rest on the
street below, a trail of sludgy gray splattered in its wake.

The head mason fell to the next
immediate tier and never moved again. In that respect, he was not unlike the
wheelbarrow.

Alex stared down at the man lying
motionless, lifeless, looking like nothing more than a broken dummy of wax and
wood splattered in red like fake movie blood. Only it wasn’t fake; everything
was real! And he knew with a kind of cold certainty that if the man had not
fallen out of his reach, fallen beyond the hammer’s lethal range, he would have
hit him again.

And again.

Anything to stem the crimson rage
storming inside him, burning like a fire, a savage beast starving for blood.
And he would feed it, and feed it well. Let Janus be awash in blood until it
ran clean of its evil.

Workmen fled in a pell-mell dash,
upsetting a second cart, bricks spilling across the walkway, bouncing and
flipping end over end to crash upon the street below, small squirts of red dust
bursting from them as they smashed apart. Dangerous; someone could get hurt.

Who would care?

Bystanders ran in fear, or fell to
their knees, wailing and praying and rubbing their talismans and beads and
nonsense juju. One or two simply collapsed into tiny, quaking lumps, blubbering
inconsolably.

The Red Knight has come.

Alex looked ahead, new bricks and wet
mortar already in a dozen stalls; a hundred more where the mortar had been dry
for no more than a day. So where was the lady of dark November? Time was of the
essence. So far, he had not encountered any real opposition, but Bartholomew
said there were those who would fight him—fight the Red Knight. Fear of him was
not absolute. The legendary grim warriors he unwittingly impersonated would
stand against him. And if they proved no more than wishful folklore, the Sons
of Light were only too real. Sooner or later, the fanatics would come; a few at
first, determined to verify the ramblings of fleeing degenerates. But once
done, once it was known, more would come. What then? Fight off an army with a
few grisly weapons? Unlikely.

He stared across the tiers, trying to
get his bearings, trying to think straight. The Red Knight needed to find the
witch. He needed to find Oversight. There was a witch sentenced that morning
named Ariel November. There was a legend of the November Witch.

Think, think, think! Remember,
remember, the lady of dark November.

Alex stopped, the toes of his boots
poised on the edge of the walkway and empty space, and closed his eyes, trying
to remember everything he could about the woman from the wasteland, the woman
who had taken an interest in him, the woman he loved from the first moment he
laid eyes on her though he did not know why or even if she felt the same way.
He would do anything for her. Anything. But all Jack asked him to do was
remember. Remember her dark hair and sun-browned skin, her eyes like dusky
jewels. Remember her narrow waist and slender form, hands both delicate and
deadly, artful and strong. Remember the way she smiled, infrequent and
off-guard. Remember the smell of her skin as they embraced that one night, sweet
like vanilla and chocolate, but something deeper than that, older; a smell like
secrets, clean and powerful and preternatural like the wind before a storm.

And there it was!

He leaned back and rolled his head,
taking in a deep breath of air, forcing all of the smells of the Wall of
Penitence into his lungs. Amidst all of the atrocities of Janus, it was there,
a smell he would recognize anywhere, as unforgettable as it was maddeningly
desirable.

“
Oversight!
”

And in the strange silence of the
brick and tile canyon along the darkest part of the city, he heard it, a word
so softly spoken he could almost have believed he had never heard it at all.
“Alex?”

His eyes snapped to the direction of
the sound, an empty stall past the workmen’s abandoned tools. There on the
ground, next in line to be imprisoned in the Wall, a woman craned her neck to
see him, struggling against the ropes that bound her hand and foot, left her
helpless. Though beaten and disheveled, there was no mistaking her.
Oversight!

He ran to her, dropping the pry bar
and hammer, and scooping her up, holding her to him, amazed at how light she
felt to him, how small the feeling of her as he cradled her, wanting to comfort
her and finding himself unable to speak, holding her head to his shoulder as
she repeated his name over and over.

He seated her gently against the wall of the empty alcove, drawing a
knife from his boot and sawing at her bonds, all the while rambling. “I thought
I’d never find you. I wasn’t even sure if you were here, or if you’d already
been put in the wall, or what. I’m …”
He
stopped, realizing her skin was ice-cold, her body trembling. He looked into her
face, saw the tracks of tears, saw bruises, old and new, her suffering like a
brand across his heart.
In the Wasteland, Oversight had been as eternal
as stone, the desert whirlwind, the burning sun. Janus had committed the most
unforgivable of sins: it had broken something meant to last forever.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner.
Maybe I could’ve … I mean, maybe I—”

She placed her fingers to his lips,
offering him a gentle smile. “It’s okay,” she said, slowly taking the knife
from his hand. “I can cut myself free. Can you get us out of here?”

He looked at her a moment, trying to
work it through, trying to make sense of everything. He wanted to nod and say
yes. He wanted to get her free of this city, this world. But he didn’t know the
way; Lindsay never said; neither did Jack.

And the
Red Knight wanted retribution; blood for blood paid
back a thousand, thousand times over.

Barely an inch from his head, one of
the tiles exploded in a shower of dust and fragments, struck by a lead ball the
size of a penny. Alex spun around, crouching tight against the narrow corner of
the stall in front of Oversight, shielding her. Down on the street, men in
black, red crosses emblazoned upon their chests, were pointing pistols at him,
old matchlocks more at home in a museum than a gunfight
.

(
Now!
)

The Red Knight pulled his guns and
opened fire.

*     *     *

“Where are we going?” Leland asked.

After breakfast at a diner—
scrambled
eggs, thank you very much, and lots of coffee with cream and sugar
—he
filled up at a gas station on the edge of town; $4.37. Wherever they were,
whenever they were, there was no such thing as an energy crisis or OPEC or even
inflation.