~ DAVID ~
Tonight, there was just one—waning—moon, a pale green demon hovering over its domain. If David squinted, it almost looked like this demon had eyes. That was just an illusion. The night air was brisk, in stark contrast to the heat of the day, and he made the journey from his chambers clad in a thick overcoat. It wasn’t far to go, but he didn’t want to run the risk of a chill.
Giant and Redlips had the reception tonight. Both nodded at David as he entered. “Good evening, sir,” said Giant. “Do you have your pass?” Her real name was Disley, but she was the shortest of the Constabulary by a good few inches. The nickname was inevitable.
He pulled his card from his pocket, and held it on the reader in Giant’s hand until it beeped and a cyan light flashed. She waved him past. The stairs to the cells were in a room of their own at the back of the jailhouse. Most of the lights here hadn’t been hooked up yet. Deprived of sight, his only sensory accompaniment was the loud rap of each step on the oaken planks.
That turned into a hollower sound as he reached the stairs. They’d been hewn into the rock, and they went around and around in a gentle spiral for a hundred paces or thereabouts before coming to a halt at a huge wooden door. It was too big to have been carried down the stairs. A service tunnel had been cut, down which timber had been lowered using pulleys. With the jail now finished, the tunnel had been partially filled in; at the height of the day, a tiny strip of sunlight might creep down to the bottom of the stairs, to prove that the hole had once been there.
The door didn’t creak as it opened, but it moved ponderously slowly, and he was sweating lightly beneath his coat as he stepped through. Beyond, there was a sort of office carved into the rock, a near-empty room intended for processing new arrivals. To get to the cells, one had to pass through this chamber, past a heavy steel gate.
Already the floors of the jailhouse had been browned by tracked-in dirt. They were grimy anyway, passages carved into the rock, and they weren’t likely to get any cleaner. The cells were nothing more than tunnels dug into the ground, exposed to bare stone and heavy with the smell of shit. They had no windows. The only ventilation was in the form of narrow slits which led to the surface. From the correct angle, it was possible to see the sky through these slits, but no sunlight made it this far. The only light was from the flaming torches in iron sconces between each door. It flickered red and orange.
David avoided coming down here in daylight hours. He hated the momentary blindness that always followed when he returned to the surface and his eyes had to adjust to sunlight. When he did have to pay the cells a visit, he preferred to come at night. That way he could wake the inmates from their ill-deserved rest—and when he was finished with them, the light outside was what his eyes were expecting.
The last he’d heard, Anna Bennett had been weeping. She’d stopped now. Yarwood said she’d not made a sound in hours. “She just sits there, staring,” he’d said, sat across from David in his office, filling the room with the smell of musk and stale dirt. “The torchlight catches in her eyes sometimes. Makes her look like some sort of demon or something.”
David had assured Yarwood that Bennett wasn’t a demon. He’d headed for his chambers a short while later, and advised that Yarwood too take the rest of the day off. He couldn’t have his soldiers believing in demons.
Sergeant Poulton was the man at the gate tonight. He was softly spoken, with a trimmed beard and brown eyes set behind kindly wrinkles, and he could swear better than anyone. David found him leaning against the elm bars of the gate, idly picking at his fingernails, and coughed to get his attention.
“Oh! Captain Clifford, I...” Poulton’s eyes widened as he fumbled with his tongue. “I didn’t...”
“If you didn’t see me coming, you’re not being a very good sentry.” He didn’t have the time or the inclination to reprimand Poulton, and the old sergeant seemed to see it in his face. He nodded microscopically, his head bowed.
David pressed a single coin into Sergeant Poulton’s hand, one of the gold-and-jade ones Chris had given him. Twenty bushels, he thought. Worth about as much as a yearly wage, apparently. Enough to buy a man’s silence in any case. “You didn’t see me coming, Sergeant Poulton, because I wasn’t here tonight.”
“No, sir.” Poulton dropped the coin into the breast-pocket of his jacket.
Anna Bennett’s cell was the nearest one to the gate. There was no particular reason for it, it was just where she happened to be flung. She was sat on the floor, staring at the door, just as Yarwood had said. Her face was streaked with grime. It combined with the mute lamplight to give her a bloody complexion. She reached out a hand to grab at David as he walked into the cell.
“Let me out,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Let me out and I won’t say a word. I’ll be good, I swear it.”
“I’m here to talk, not to set you free.”
“Why am I caged up? Captain, tell me what I did wrong.”
He couldn’t meet her gaze. “You’ve not done anything wrong,” he said—except pick the worst moment to be an annoyance. “Unfortunately for you, General Bradshaw needs you to stay here for a while longer.”
Even in the near-darkness, he could see her eyes go wide at that. “General Bradshaw? I beg you, Captain Clifford, tell him I didn’t do anything. Whatever he thinks my crime is, I’m innocent.” Indeed you are, Lieutenant. It would be no good begging to Bradshaw. He didn’t know she was down here. He barely knew who she was.
What if he did? Part of David wondered whether the Governor had the right of it this time. If General Bradshaw were to learn of Lieutenant Bennett’s incarceration, he might have things to say. At the very least, he could hold the process up by a few days. By that time there’d be no more use in keeping Bennett here.
She was going to meet her death soon. The sentence had been decided, weeks ago. The ink was dry. Chris had wished it.
But had Chris wished it, or was that just what he told himself to make himself feel better about it all? Like as not, Chris had never heard of Anna Bennett. All he’d asked for was an extra body in the cells, somebody dispensable. It could have been lots of people. Only David’s arbitrary whim had picked Bennett over any of the thousands of others. Because she’d got on his nerves. She’d wandered into his office and made him cross.
If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else.
He couldn’t even remember what she’d done to agitate him. Perhaps she really did deserve to die.
“Please... Some water...”
David nodded. “Water. Yes.” He glanced around. There was an alcove across from Bennett’s cell, barely lit by the torches; a table had been carved into the rock, and on it rested a wooden jug. A large barrel had been placed beneath the rock table. At first David thought it was empty, but closer inspection revealed a small supply of water still left at the bottom. In the artificial twilight it looked like oil. He sunk the jug into the barrel, filling it, then carried it over to the waiting Bennett.
It was almost amusing to see her in such a pathetic state. Her hands reached like a beggar’s through the bars, seeking the jug. David shook his head. “You don’t get to keep the jug,” he said. “Open wide.”
Bennett opened her mouth on command, and tipped her head back. He poured from the jug into her mouth—stopping occasionally when too much went down and she started coughing and spluttering. She definitely couldn’t choke and die here. Chris would be furious.
When she was done, David tossed the jug aside.
“I have a few questions I’d like to ask,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
Bennett nodded. “Questions. Yes. Anything.”
“When I was last at Plateau Watch, several of the soldiers there reported that the area was haunted. Did you ever see anything unusual?”
Bennett shook her head.
David frowned. “Nothing at all? No strange lights, no screams?”
Bennett swallowed. “I never saw a thing, Captain, not with my own eyes. But the soldiers... Yes, now they were always talking about the things they thought they saw.”
“What sort of things?”
“Everything you described. Lights in the trees—like someone walking with a lantern, only there was nobody there when they went looking. Screams, not so much, but there were other things. I heard talk of shadows that were too long. Plumes of smoke on the horizon. Ancient carvings, from long before we came to Essegena.”
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“Carvings? Little wooden idols, perhaps?” As David understood it, the one he’d found in the Mettywood was the only one. Perhaps these weren’t the same thing.
Bennett elaborated. “I only heard the soldiers talking about them. Never saw anything myself.”
“Which soldiers?”
She thought for a second, then her shoulders sank. “I can’t remember. I’m sorry, Captain, please don’t think bad of me.”
Too late for that, David thought. But out loud he tried to sound cheerful. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said. “Thank-you, Lieutenant.”
“My soldiers,” she said. “How are my soldiers?”
“They’re not your soldiers,” said David. “Lieutenant Malleston is commanding Plateau Watch now.”
“Malleston.” Bennett repeated the name softly, a faint smile on her face. “They’ll be in safe hands. I would like to see them again, when you let me out. They were the best garrison I ever had.”
“I wouldn’t pin your hopes on getting out soon,” said David. “General Bradshaw wants you to be locked up for a good long while.”
That set her off into despair. “I never did anything,” she wailed. “Why me?”
He met her eyes, and for a moment felt only pity. “You were in the wrong place,” he told her, “and at the wrong time.”
Bennett started sniffling. She buried her face in her hands, leaned back from the cell door. “I was going to be the difference,” she moaned. “I was meant to be the one who broke the cycle. I was conceived in a cell, Captain. My parents were the lowest of the low. They gave up everything so I could have a chance, and I’ve fucked it.”
“Maybe Bradshaw will change his mind,” David lied.
She looked up at him with doleful eyes. “Nobody will tell me what I did wrong.”
“Don’t dwell on it,” said David, turning to leave. He was getting bored of talking to former lieutenant Bennett, and worried her questions would expose an inconsistency. “You should sleep. It’s midnight.”
All of a sudden, Bennett reached through the bars again. She clutched at his trouser leg, tugging and pulling until it slid down his legs. “What do you think you’re doing?” He wheeled.
“I’ll do anything,” she said. “I blow better than any officer the Unity wide, anyone’ll tell you. My mum was a whore in the Rum Wash, she showed me all the tricks. Watch.” Her hand was on his cock, guiding it towards her mouth. The fingers which rubbed along the shaft were coarse with dried mud. He shuddered, a visceral tingle down the back of his spine, and lashed out with his leg. His foot connected with her jaw, and she went to the ground. “My teeth,” she said, between moans, holding a hand over the point of impact. She spat a mouthful of blood and teeth into the open palm of the other hand. “Why?”
David stood for a second, shaking slightly, his trousers back in place but just barely. He hadn’t meant to kick her. She looked at him with a face that was half bewilderment and half a scowl, and his face hardened. There was no woman cowering in front of him, just a base beast. Whatever she had coming, it was fully deserved. “There’s your crime,” he said. “You’ll die a rapist.” He was steadying himself with every word. His voice seemed to go twice as deep as it normally did. Strange.
Bennett was shaking her head. “No, no,” she sobbed, “I’m not. I’m good.”
He turned his back on her, so he wouldn’t throw up at the sight of her. “See she’s locked up tight,” he told Sergeant Poulton, at the gate, “and let her go hungry for a bit.” Forever, even. It would be Briar on the gate in the morning, to relieve Poulton. Briar would ensure she didn’t eat before her big trip outside.
David left Sergeant Poulton to tend to Bennett, and walked deeper into the dungeon. Skerrett was being held in the furthest cell from the gate. There were two dozen metres of narrow corridor between it and all the other cells, and among those metres was a corner, ninety degrees, so the cell was quite invisible and quite inaudible from the rest of the jail.
In this cell it was almost black. A single candle was lit on an inset platform high in the wall, beyond Skerrett’s reach. It was a window with no daylight, only the gentle flickering of a solitary flame. Once every three days, the candle would be replaced. If it were to go out in the meantime, Skerrett would have to settle for darkness. And yet he called himself Lightness.
The title was only that. They’d learned on his first night of incarceration that his body had no luminescent properties. David would have been unable to see Skerrett clearly through only the light of that lone candle. He took a torch from a sconce in the corridor, just so he could be sure he was actually facing Skerrett.
Most of the cells were of a uniform design, but not this one. Skerrett was here because David didn’t trust him not to try and make a break for it. There were two solid oak doors separating it from the rest of the block; the outermost door had to be bolted shut before the other could be unlocked, and two guards had to be present for the inner door to be opened at all. For most purposes, a small grate would suffice. It had been measured specifically so that Captain Mannam’s face would be level with it, when he was sat on a three-legged stool. David was slightly taller than Mannam, so he had to sit hunchbacked slightly in order to best make use of the grate. It was made of the same thick oak as the rest of the door, but with an iron border and a panel of plywood on the outer side. The plywood was just so David could see it easily.
Skerrett didn’t come towards the grate when it was opened. He had the first time, no doubt hoping for some respite or a morsel of food, but he’d quickly learned to be cynical. Nobody ever came to question him. There was no need. His crimes had been public, and everybody in the valley knew he was guilty. What answers could he give? So when he drew the attention of one of the guards, it was to be spat at, or abused. Some were worse than others, David knew. Colne knew Molly Bradshaw from before Essegena, and had made it his personal mission to make Skerrett’s imprisonment miserable. Gold-tooth Webster had no particular connection to the dead girl, that David could fathom anyway, but always enjoyed an excuse to talk shit towards an inmate. Both had been rotated out of cell duties. The others weren’t much better.
David had always been civil with Skerrett, tempting as it would have been to instead put a knife in his belly and leave him to bleed. All the same, he could hardly blame Skerrett for lingering at the back of the cell. The Lightness was a mess, far removed from the spick-and-span preacher who’d stood on that dais and stained Molly Bradshaw’s white dress red. His beard was matted with dirt, and a scar beneath his eye had become a weeping wound. That eye, puffy and inflamed, barely opened halfway.
Skerrett grinned at David, his head cocked sideways. “Come to let me go?”
“If I had my way, you’d be dead,” said David. “As it is, you’re to be executed the morning after next. I suggest you get far away before then.”
“That’s not as easy you make it seem.” Skerrett raised his hand, pulling on the chain that bound him. It was locked around a cast-iron eye in the floor; unimpeded, Skerrett might have made it halfway down the cell block before he ran out of chain.
David sighed. Chris always had a plan, he knew that, and every instruction he received was in service to that plan. But this all felt wrong. He’d never make a leader. He didn’t have the eye for strategy that Chris had, to see this as the best option. He trusted Chris, though. He’d trust Chris with anything. Never taking his eye off Skerrett, David reached into the pocket of his jacket, and pulled from it a small key, silver, with a fleur-de-lis hollowed into the bow. It jangled against the others he carried as he took it out, and this drew Skerrett’s attention. The Lightness got to his feet.
“What’s this you have for me?”
David pushed the key through the grate. It landed with a soft ping at Skerrett’s feet. “That’ll get you out of your chains. You need to take the key with you, or I’ll change my mind and come after you—and if you’re in this cell by dawn’s light you will burn.”
“Is this a trick, Lord Constable? You want me to run for it so your guards by the stairs have an excuse to shoot me dead, is that it? A show for my friends in here?” Skerrett wasn’t the only member of the Faithful in these cells. Half a dozen of his would-be-rescuers were incarcerated here, as a warning to the rest not to try anything. They’d be free to go soon enough. Just as soon as Skerrett was brought to justice.
Of course, Skerrett wouldn’t be receiving that justice. But they weren’t to know that.
“That pendant you wear around your neck. What is it?”
Skerrett’s hand reached for the necklace. “This? It’s Nameth’s Wheel. Nameth, the Overlord. It was he who created it all, in the beginning. The planets, the stars, even the other Gods. I wear his Wheel to receive his blessing.”
“Hand it over.”
“Why should I?”
David leaned in as close as he could, looking beforehand to make sure nobody was close by. “Because it’s your ticket to freedom.”
“Freedom?” Skerrett held out his hands, palms raised. “What is freedom? We’re still consigned to these earthly bodies, are we not?”
“Freedom is you getting out of this cell,” David grunted, “unless you want to keep being smart with that mouth.”
Skerrett sighed, but reached round to the back of his neck. He unclipped the chain of his pendant, and slipped it through the bars of the cell, dropping it into David’s reaching hand. David stuffed it into his pocket.
“There’s a tunnel built into this cell,” he said. “Not well-disguised, I’m afraid, but then you’re normally all in darkness. Wait until I’m out of sight, until you can’t hear me anymore, then make your escape. There’s a soldier waiting at the other end. Onslow. She’ll shave away your beard and give you clean clothes, and take you to one of the new forts. The Shallows, it’s called. Sergeant Coburn will look after you, so long as you follow her orders.”
“Why should I follow some Sergeant’s orders? I’m no soldier, remember.”
“I assume you want to live,” said David. “The Governor has a plan, and you factor into it somewhere. He’ll find you. You need to keep your head down, Lightness. Don’t go thinking you’re a free man. You’re still reviled here, even if the Governor has a use for you. If you show up in the valley, you’ll be dead within the hour.”
David turned to go as soon as he was done speaking. He didn’t want to see Skerrett’s face again, not ever. Before he could make it as far as the outer door, Skerrett called him back.
“I had to do it, you know.”
“She was a child,” David spat. “Nobody needs to kill a child.”
Skerrett laughed. “There’s more going on here than you realise, Lord Constable. We aren’t playing morality games here. There’s survival at stake. The dead don’t always like to stay that way. It’s just as the stories said: the old rules don’t apply here.”
“I’d shut up now if I were you, before I take that key back.” David didn’t turn back.
“The encroaching night is coming,” Skerrett called. “The breaking tide. It’ll swallow you up, Lord Constable.”
David slammed the outer door hard, and Skerrett was left in silence.
I hope Chris has got this one right, he thought.
He walked back through the cells to the jeers of Skerrett’s incarcerated cronies, never looking at them. Nor did he look when Comestine Argent begged for her freedom. And Anna Bennett’s tears didn’t move him. He nodded at Sergeant Poulton at the gate, and climbed the stairs.
The feel of fresh air, when at last it came, was as ecstasy for him.