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The glint of the edge of our pikes rose and all down the line the men flagged, stepping away in awkward keel and collapsing. Soldiers on horse back whipped them up and some lay there taking lashings as they curled on the hard rock. The rest of us went down on the porous stone, raking across this edged quarry on the prison shores. Collecting gravel. Making an even mass for expansion, as they wanted.
“You’re going fast, Virgil.” A prisoner said, face muddied black. Maybe I was, I couldn’t notice. The shimmering figure of the men disappeared in my eyeline, losing form and vanishing in the glare of the midday sun. Water splashed against my legs. The stray lashings licked and went numb against my flesh. Sense went diminutive, my eyes kept up to the spiral towers in Shrieker’s Veil attached patch-work like with swerving wooden and roped bridges. Giant obsidian, cone-topped masses gorged at their base with swells of ocean water and the very stone we spent all dawn breaking. A slam. A chunk of sharp rock fell to my feet, blade-like and black, like a dragon’s tooth. It could fit in my sleeve, against my waistband…
The albatrosses scattered, a trumpet sound across the plain had us turning our heads. A guard had his pursed lips against a conch shaped to a horn.
“Break for lunch!” I dropped my pike and it teetered and lay flat, raising brown clouds in the wet pool it fell from. Around me, the ring of black stone like I’d been digging underground. The men looked, eyes straining and visored, looking at my ring of destruction.
“I guess he hates them rocks.” One said.
I came into line and skipped men when the guards weren’t looking, slipping in and out as we came onto the bridges and many caverns and many tunnels leading to the cafeteria. Disappearing in corners of darkness, reappearing against the torch. Waiting for the sunlight from cracks in the walls to blink from some flag or creature or cloud, then showing up once again. Further up the line. Further up. Up.
I came behind him at last, we were midway through Shrieker’s Veil. The man with the scar on his face who Chaucer had entrusted. One of the two, the bigger one. There was a guard near us, in front of us. He was seven men’s length away.
“Psst.” I said “I need to talk to you.”
He turned his shoulder, but not his face.
“What’s there to talk about?”
“It’s about Chaucer.”
“He’s dead. We’re done. There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Oh buddy, I think there’s plenty still left on the table.” I said. “Come speak with me.”
“I’m busy.” He smiled. “I’m busy walking, fuck off.”
“Just a few minutes, that’s all.”
“Sure.” He said, almost laughing now. “If you manage to get us a few minutes, I’ll talk to you.”
I turned around and looked at a man with hollow eyes and darkened flesh, shambling, making a whole demand of his body just to take his steps up. His shirt darkened around his chest and armpits, the beads of sweat rolling down his face.
“Sorry about this.” I punched him right in the neckline. He straightened a bit. Eyes went wide. Then collapsed.
“Someone fell!” I screamed to the guard in front of me. “Heat stroke, someones fallen!”
It wasn’t long for the circle to form. And I pulled the scarred ‘friend’ out with me until we were in the gawking perimeter, then further until we disappeared into a nearby hall. A hall with empty slotted prison cells, some with doors ajar and hinges retarded and slacking off their brown-iron nails and rusted to squeaking decay. Spots of hay darkened with the shapes of penitent people. The curled shape, like at the rocks.
“What’ya want?” He crossed his arm.
I smiled and moved my head, repeating the words, ‘What do I want?’. A rhetorical question. A stupid one, really. What do I want of this massive nearly two feet taller than me?
I punched him across the chin. He fell to his knees. His voice opened, I shot a knee at him like Sylas had taught me. Hips out, breathing fast. The mans head crashed against the back of the wall. He slid down, teeth shattered and I covered his mouth and put the sharp stone against his neck.
“Scream and I’ll kill you.” I said. “Say the wrong thing and I’ll kill you.”
And in slow trepidation, I moved one finger after another until my palm was out and away. His eyes shook, his body was still. Mouth frowning, nose bleeding wild with his burst lip.
“Were you the one who sold Chaucer out?” I asked.
“No. No. No. Never.” He extended both palms and shook his hands. “They came to me Virgil looking for answers and I gave them nothing, I promise you.”
“Why weren’t you caught then?”
“I-I figured if they were asking questions that they already knew! I told Chaucer, I warned him.” His hand clenched to a finger and he wagged it like a mother disciplining children. “I saids to him, if you continue you hazard not only your life but our own. But he said no, no. The plan must go on. He just…he just wanted to be free so badly.”
“So you didn’t go through with it? You didn’t warn me?”
“I. I.” His eyes slipped away. “I thought you knew. I thought all of us did.”
“You thought wrong. You didn’t tell me, I could have convinced Chaucer. Which makes you culpable.” I said.
“But I didn’t squeal. I promise you that at least, it was not me.” He pushed away with his feet and went straight-backed against the stone tunnel.
“Then who did?”
“Well? Who else was at that table!”
I put my finger on my chin, to the small bristles taking shape on my chin, rubbing some hairs between my fingers. Off my hams, I stood and my knees cracked like a statue finally come to life.
“You’re not going to tell anyone about this.” I put the knife on my waist. “And you’re going to speak to me next chance I get.”
“For what?”
“We’re escaping, that’s what.”
“Still? After all this?” He went mad with his hands. “Are you insane?”
“Not yet.” I said. “There’s work to be done here first, but once that’s handled. Yes. We’ll escape.”
“You’re crazy Virgil. You’ve got Chaucer’s madness in you.”
It’s what I inherited, surely. I walked away, into line. A few moments later, so did the scarred man. I tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped up and shrieked like a mouse.
“What’s your name again?” I asked.
“B-Balder.”
“Be smart, Balder and put your money on the winning horse.” I said.
“What the fuck does that mean?!”
“Hello. Virgil? Are you there?” Ritcher asked.
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
“Of what?”
“Everything.” I sighed. “Justinian. Chaucer. Life.”
“That’s too much to think about.” Ritcher drank from a gourd. “The universe wasn’t meant to be shaped in one man’s small head.”
“Not the universe. Just my universe. The more I read about myself the more I realize how miserable it might have always been.” I said. “Whatever happy moments; dinners, conversations, jokes, daily happenings, disappear to me now. Now I remember is the misery. And if that’s the case, could it even be said that my happy times every existed?”
“I’m sure you remember something good about the Flock.”
“Chet once told me a joke. How many Ishvallan's can a maneater eat.” I looked down at my knees, my legs flattened out against strewn hay. “I forgot how it went.”
“Virgil.” Ritcher said.
“Virgil.”
“Virgil.”
“I told you I was thinking.” I said. “You told me you’d help me escape, right?”
“Once I know where my brother is at.”
“I know, but who’s team are you on?” I asked.
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean how far are you willing to go to help me?” My head looked up.
“I don’t like that look on your face.” He said.
“You will get your answers, Ritcher.” My knee hitched up against my chest, I put my arm down on it and laid my head on top of that. “But not now, not today. Or tomorrow. There is something else that supersedes your vanity.”
“You gone insane or something?”
“I’ve been asleep in this dream of death. My whole conscious life, five months of it and here I am just waking up and it took a gallon of blood to splash me from the slumber.”
“You’re not making any sense.” He said. “Why don’t you open that book and read a little?”
“How far are you willing to go?”
The gourd went up to his lips. He kept it suspended with his hand, eyes focused on me. A lashing outside, further down the hall. A shout. Ritcher drank, then set it down.
“I’ll go to hell and back for my brother.” Ritcher said.
“Good.” I said. “Then we’re both going the same way.”
I opened the book.
“I’ll read. We need to wait for midnight, anyway.”
“What’s happening at midnight?” He asked.
“I’ll tell you all about it…in time. In time…”
