Halfway down, My Lord ran into Argeh. The priest stiffened on the stairs with a look of puzzlement. My Lord snapped at him, not pleased to see him anywhere near Wallick’s cell, especially now, “What is it, Argeh? Why are you here?”
Argeh gawked. Then the strangest look came into his face: a wondrous, dreadful, devious look. My Lord did not know what was going on and it frightened him. He pushed past Argeh abruptly. “My presence is required.”
At the bottom of the stairs there were no attendants, no guards, outside Wallick’s door. My Lord sighed his frustration. Upset after upset, as if it were not enough to have to deal with what was waiting for him in that room.
“I’ll go in alone,” he told Decher tersely, and pushed open the door.
Kobinski could smell the presence of death. The cell felt somber and oddly respectful. Wallick’s rasping, uneven breath was like a broken machine turning its last few cycles. He had been left completely alone, but he was still alive. My Lord was greatly relieved. That look from Argeh—My Lord had half expected Wallick to be dead already.
My Lord crippled his way to the table and looked down at the devastated mass of tissue. The last time he was here, he’d caught a glimpse of the ruin that could come upon him if he allowed himself to see this situation in just a slightly different way, if he turned his mirror just a touch to the left or right and got another perspective on the two men, two enemies, facing each other over the years in this room. This time, standing here, the mirror was already tilted, and there was nothing he could do to turn it back. He could remember clearly what he’d felt like before, why he had done it, how it had been about justice, how he’d felt he was sacrificing himself for his son’s justice. But that rationale now felt as flimsy as—he looked at Wallick—a man’s life.
My Lord closed his eyes, willing forth the avenger. Isaac, he thought, willing forth his boy’s face. But the face had faded a long time ago. All that was left was the hate that had wrapped around that name, and he saw that clearly, too.
“Ko-binski,” Wallick said, his tongue small and hard in his mouth, the syllables distorted.
My Lord opened his eyes. Wallick, only one eye visible at all now, was looking up at him. That lone orb was bright and shiny, almost incandescent. He worked his reddened maw to form words out of some memory that it had once been a mouth.
“…dying,” Wallick managed, “…I know…”
The maw paused to swallow, to gum itself back to someplace capable of speech. I know. Know what? That he wasn’t already dead and that this wasn’t the afterlife? That this had been done to his living flesh? That the god that had judged him was none other than Yosef Kobinski?
“For-give me,” Wallick gasped, “as I for-give… you.”
My Lord bit his tongue, hard, to stop up the outraged tears that came to his eyes.
That single bright eye gazed up at him desperately, as if it could cling to him, force him to relent.
“For-give me…” Wallick tried again, “as I for-give…” This time, his speech was given a moment of clarity, just for an instant, the words coming out sharply defined. “You, Yosef…” Then the eye fixed itself in space and the light inside it faded.
My Lord looked at the face for a long time. Wallick’s had once been a handsome face, an Aryan ideal, perfect but cruel. Now it was neither. The body was already stiffening into something objectified, the raw, bloody aspect of it organic and terrible, terrible and cold, like an animal struck and left at the side of the road, like the shanks of meat in the market square.
Surprisingly, My Lord felt no triumph, no satisfaction, no anger, no remorse. As Wallick turned cold, it was as though the spark of life inside him were cooling also; an era was dying, a reason to go on; an entire history as dense and smothering as a blanket was being pulled away. What was underneath it? Rot. Nothing. He felt empty as a husk, except perhaps for resentment at Wallick for dying, for escaping and leaving him alone to face the void.
Forgive me, Wallick had said.
“I can’t, you son of a whore,” My Lord said softly. “Because if I forgave you, how could I ever forgive myself?”
On his way up from the cell, Decher tucked under his arm, My Lord heard something. There was a murmur bouncing along the stone walls. On this floor, the screams and cries were uncharacteristically absent; only the murmuring voice could be heard.
My Lord paused on the stairs, his knees trembling with pain, his armpit soaking the shoulder of Decher’s rough tunic. He was going to ask his servant what—or who—it was, but the look on Decher’s face stopped him, so he just listened for a moment, and then he knew.
It was the heretic. Somewhere down that corridor he was being held for execution, and he was talking—perhaps to his followers, perhaps to his fellow prisoners, perhaps to himself—and the whole ward had stopped its sobbing long enough to listen to his words.
His voice, guttural but soothing, swept across the stones like water.
18
Around the pious shall go eternal youths, with goblets of flowing wine. No headaches shall they feel therefrom, nor shall their wits be dimmed. They shall have fruits such as they deem the best, and flesh of fowl as they desire, and bright and large-eyed maids like hidden pearls, a reward for that which they have done.
18.1. Sixty-Forty Denton Wyle
Sitting on the riverbank under that purple-red twilight sky, Eyanna was so beautiful and so fierce she looked like a goddess, something beyond human, beyond Sapphian, beyond the laws of space and time. Denton just sat there more or less drooling at her, hoping that she had a better opinion of him than he had of himself at the moment and figuring that she must like him a lot to have braved the skalkits on his behalf.
She brought something out of a pouch she wore under her skirt. It was that photograph again. She did not try to foist it on him this time but sat with her long legs propped up, the picture between them. She spoke slowly, as if she had not spoken much in a very long time.
“I had a man also.”
“What do you mean?”
“My man. He wanted only me and I wanted only him. The people didn’t understand that. They didn’t understand why we would not go with others. That is why they sent us to the skalkits.”
Denton didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t big on monogamy himself, but it was hardly a reason to condemn two lovers to death, especially when one of them was as beautiful as Eyanna. Then again, maybe that was the point. Her monogamy must have really pissed the Sapphians off.
“I’m sorry the people did that to you, Eyanna.”
“I helped you for her.” Eyanna handed him the photograph.
“Oh.”
If it was possible, Denton felt even smaller. There was no point in disabusing her of the notion that the woman in the photo was his great love or that by saving him she had done this woman a favor. And then he thought about how weird life was. He’d given her that photograph thoughtlessly, on a whim. And if he hadn’t, he would just have died a horrible, gruesome death.
He put the photograph back in his wallet. His hands were shaking so hard he could barely accomplish it.
“How can they do it, Eyanna? How can your people send their own to the skalkits like that?”