The Edge of Everything(23)

"Well done, guardsmen!" he shouted. "Well done!"

X stared openly at Dervish now, anxious for his punishment to begin. He knew the lord would still be boiling with rage. Yet the creature continued to ignore him. X had not expected this reception and it worried him.

The light had left his body now. The reality of the Lowlands-the way it sucked all the hope and happiness out of you, the way it stank like the mouth of some enormous beast-flooded into him instead. His anxiety deepened. Still no blanket. Still no bread.

X stood and waded into the river.

Stan continued to battle the current. He was red-faced and panting, wailing about the cramps in his legs. X grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him over his shoulder yet again. Even without supernatural powers, he had no trouble lifting a knot of wire like Stan.

He carried him to the side of the river.

"Thank you, superfreak," said Stan, shouting to be heard over the rushing water. "I don't like anyone here so far." 

The guards jeered when they saw that there was no more fun to be had. But even this was a comfort to X because it meant that life, such as it was in the Lowlands, would lurch back into motion.

He laid Stan on the ground, and waited for the guards to descend on the terrified new prisoner.

At last, Dervish sliced the air with his long, taloned forefinger and screamed, "SEIZE HIM!"

But something was different.

Something was wrong.

The lord was pointing at him.



The guards raced at X from all sides, like lions on a fallen deer. Their merriment at the river had been a ruse. They had been waiting for the lord's signal all along.

They stripped X of his purple shirt. He saw it pass through many hands. He saw it fought over, bartered for, and, finally, carried off triumphantly like a newly captured flag.

Dervish instructed the guards to carry X to the tree on the plain. There was some grumbling at this-the men were as small and round as hobbits and unaccustomed to true labor-but they did as they were told.

X did not resist. At least now his punishment had begun, which meant that someday it would end.

It was a long march through foul, humid air. The guards groaned angrily under their burden-why had this traitor's punishment become their own?-while Dervish strutted in front of them. The guards pinched and poked X as they bore him along. When they saw that the lord not only did not object to X's mistreatment but rather whooped with pleasure at it, they accidentally dropped him to the ground and dragged him a dozen feet at a time.

The souls in the lowest ring of cells sensed something was afoot. They could see from the tattoos decorating X's arms and from the bruises on his face that he was a bounty hunter. It was unusual to see one punished-and thrilling. Word was passed up to the top ring of cells and out to the farthest edges. Soon, the great black wall seemed to shake as prisoners hollered in the tongues of a hundred countries and thousands of years. All X heard as he passed was a storm of hate and anger. Occasionally, one voice could be heard above the others: "What the hell have you done, boy?"

Ripper and Banger recognized X as he was carried across the plain. Ripper was so upset she twirled manically in her cell. She wept and spat, and cursed her fingernails for not yet being long enough to tear out. Banger suggested that she take a "chill pill," which only confused her, and tried to shout down the souls who surrounded them, calling them haters and tools.

The procession finally reached the tree. It was 30 feet tall, ugly and bare and elephant gray. Its trunk consisted of a dozen tortured, intertwining strands. Its mottled branches bent and swerved in every direction, as if in search of something they would never find. Its roots sank into the dirt like veins.

The guards thrust X against the tree and bound him to it, which brought a wave of applause from the cells. The rope sawed at X's skin, but he knew better than to complain. When the guards had finished, they stepped away and Dervish approached.

"Lovely to have you back among us, X!" he said brightly. "I may call you X, I hope? As all your pretty new friends do?"

The lord circled the tree, testing his men's work.

"I fear this rope may not serve," he said. "Be a dear, X, and ask the guards if they might be so kind as to tighten it. I do very much want you to feel its embrace."

There were four guards, but they looked like a single, multi-headed beast. They were foul and pocked. Their clothes were a bizarre patchwork for, like the lords, they dressed in whatever they could steal from the prisoners. They wore frayed vests, ruffled shirts blackened with dirt, pinstriped pants and jeans, as well as a scarf or two, despite the heat. One of the guards-he was the shortest and stoutest of them, and his nose had been broken so many times it was nearly flat against his face-appeared to be the chief. He wore a white turtleneck and a red tie.



       
         
       
        

"Guards," said X, "might you be so kind as to tighten my rope?"

The men laughed, as if he had told a bawdy joke.

"Of course, luv," the stout one said. "'Twill be an honor!"

The guard fussed with the rope, which, in truth, could hardly be made any tighter. Dervish tested it once more-X's blood was beginning to leak out from under it-and nodded his approval.

The lord faced the vast wall of souls, who were still shouting oaths at X. He motioned for silence.

"BEHOLD A MAN WHO THINKS HIMSELF BETTER THAN YOU!" he bellowed. "BEHOLD THE BOUNTY HUNTER WHO CALLS HIMSELF X!"

The cells began to rumble once more.

"Perhaps he is THE VERY ONE who ripped you out of your life and ferried you here!" the lord went on, animated by the screams. "Even if he is not, I daresay he would have done it gladly. Now, it seems, our noble bounty hunter has grown BORED of our company. He has attempted to flee-for he has FALLEN IN LOVE! What say you, souls of the Lowlands, shall I let him go?"

Not even Dervish could have predicted the violent gust of profanity that emanated from the cells now.

He turned to X, his eyes wild with delight.

"My heavens!" he said. "It's as if they don't like you!"

The lord looked back to the wall.

"I believe I shall let you punish this man yourselves," he shouted. "WOULD YOU ENJOY THAT?"

The cells erupted yet again.

Fear slipped its cold hands around X's heart.

Dervish called to the guards patrolling the wall. He ordered them to release some prisoners from their cells.

"A hundred or so, shall we say?" he said. "Let them come down here and mete out whatever justice they see fit!"

X could not just hear the prisoners' bloodlust now-he could smell its sour odor drifting down from the cells. Out of nowhere, he remembered Zoe telling Jonah that "pungent" meant "someone who likes puns." He was warmed by the memory.

Dervish noticed.

"Look how he smiles!" he shouted. "THE BOUNTY HUNTER DOES NOT FEAR YOU!"

Cell doors clanged open. Prisoners thundered toward the steps. The wall was in a frenzy, chanting for X's blood.

"I must take my leave," the lord told him. "I do so abhor violence."



The first wave of souls pounded toward him across the plain. The whole hive seemed to shudder under their feet.

The guards hastily fled.

"I don't get paid enough for this shite, do I?" said the stout one with the red tie, as he ran.

"You get paid?" said another. 

"It's a figger o' speech, innit?"

The first souls to reach X merely spit at him or dealt him a single blow. He looked each of them in the eyes. He refused to so much as bow his head.

The beatings soon grew fiercer. X forced his mind to drift. He remembered building the Lowlands out of snow and toys. He pictured Zoe, Jonah, and their mother crowded around him in a yard fringed by waving pines.

He was jolted out of his reverie by a voice he recognized.

"Dude, wake up! This shit is nuts."

It was Banger, peering worriedly into his face. Ripper stood next to him. She was swaying in her filthy golden dress as if she were at a high-society ball in London.

"Why should I wake?" said X. "I wake only to a nightmare. Nothing can stop these men from doing what they will."

"Shut up," said Banger. "That's just negative thinking."

"Shut up, indeed," said Ripper. She stopped midtwirl and fixed X with her eyes. "You are dousing what promises to be a quite thrilling rescue!"

X had always suspected that Ripper's mania was largely a pretense. It was as if she still expected to be put on trial for murdering her servant with that boiling teakettle, and planned to use madness as a defense. Despite the flights of lunacy, X could see in Ripper the steely woman who had trained him. A dozen bounty hunters stood close by her now, their faces all wounded like X's from the lords' fingers. Ripper had mentored them all-and they had come when she called.

"I am grateful for your friendship," said X. "But if you free me, you merely postpone my punishment till another day-and endanger yourselves. I will endure this now, and be done with it."

"Don't be so bloody noble," Ripper said. "You'll bore the arse off me." She paused, her brain spinning in search of a plan. "If you won't let us free you," she said, at length, "then we can at least place our bodies between you and the threat. You are one of us, and we will not stand by while they make pulp of you."