IT IS morning, a cold miserable day. The ride back from the Factory was spent trying to keep warm in the rags they are given for clothes. Duncan would have tried to sneak out one of the horrifying beaked suits if they didn’t smell of death and shit. The sinners are not allowed to huddle for warmth. The guards are wary of uprisings and plots these days, as if plotting is done anywhere near a guard. Duncan did not find a weapon this day. Everything went in the mixer too quickly, and guards have increased their patrols. They suspect something.
Duncan stands now in the hospital, having been dropped off for his daily visit to Gran. He stands in her doorway in shock, looking at the empty bed, the empty room. His heart spikes and then sinks. His breath shortens, and his insides turn to jelly.
“Where is she?” he whispers to no one. “Gran?”
“She is dead, the poor dear.” The head doctress stands behind him. He has heard nothing but his own thoughts for a few minutes and so did not hear her approach. Selective hearing. “It’s for the best,” she says. There is a slight strain in her voice. A picked chord.
Duncan floods with ice. “Where has she been taken, miss? Please…” He is facing her now, his mouth a quiver. “Please, doona let them…”
Deirdre raises her eyebrow to remind him of her supremacy, then gently pushes him backward into the room. “Listen to me,” she says sternly yet quietly. “Doctress Sara waits for you in the Thorn Fields.” She stares through him with her one good eye.
“But I need to find Gran before—”
“Doctress Sara waits for you,” she says each word emphatically, “in the Thorn Fields.”
Duncan is confused. What is this new expression the doctress seems to be wearing? Concern?
“You must go to the Thorn Fields at once and help her. Do you understand?”
He thinks so. He thinks he understands.
“Do you understand?”
“Y-yes. I think so. The Thorn Fields.”
“Yes. The Thorn Fields. Out back, a nurse driver is ready to take you in the wagon. She knows the way. But that is all she knows. That is all she’ll ever know.”
Duncan wants to thank the doctress, but words do not come and an embrace would be cause for alarm.
“Get going,” she says. “But go slowly.”
The Thorn Fields are just that. They start ten miles to the rear of the hospital and from there encircle the entirety of the ninth ring, a barrier and a trap to any escapees fleeing toward the ninth-ring wall or the end of the world beyond it. The Fields start out as rather harmless briar bushes, but within a mile, they grow thicker and taller, with thorns that could impale a man… and have. A few, however, know of secret paths through the thorns, and it is on one of these that Doctress Sara is waiting.
Duncan is not taken all the way into the thorns. The silent nurse driver halts quite suddenly and stares blankly forward until he realizes he must walk the rest of the angry path alone. Though it is a dreary day, he feels confident he can find his way. If it were night, he would be a dead man. The thorns would strip him of his flesh.
Lawl had told him a story as they were cuddled up in bed one night years ago. It was a children’s tale he’d heard from Gran about a little boy named Alex who chased a white boxyboo through a thorny thicket and down a burrow. “Are ya the boxyboo?” he asks Doctress Sara as he comes upon her in her white coat.
She smiles, apparently familiar with the tale, then looks down at dear old Gran who is lying serenely on a wood plank, an old discarded door. One hand is on the silver doorknob, as if she is ready to give it a turn.
Duncan puts a hand to his forehead. He is trying not to get very emotional. He is trying to beat back the guilt and regret. He grins above it. “Not quite the pyre ya deserve…” He collapses to a crouch and sobs. Sara waits patiently. She does not look away. Here in the ninth, this emotion is something rare and beautiful to see.
Duncan collects himself and kisses Gran on the forehead. “I’ll bring your Lawl here to say good-bye,” he whispers. “I promise ya.”
And as they bury her, Duncan makes mental notes of the surroundings. Of the shape of the vines and thorns. Of their thickness. Of their curvature and color. And as he and the doctress make their way back to the wagon and the nurse driver, he tries to commit puddles and small jumps in the path to memory. Sara helps him, pointing out odd anomalies of outcroppings and large boulders. Otherwise, she is silent. The ride back to the hospital past the noon hour is hushed one. Duncan does not want to be distracted or think of anything else but the way back to Gran. He plans to write it all down once at the barracks.
As the wagon pulls up to the hospital, there is static in the air. The foregrounds are a flood of silver and black made up of Kingdom Guards and horses, woolly bulls and wagons. And they are still pouring in from the long orchard path. How will the ninth ring hold them all? Their number is numerous. Or perhaps it is just the black and silver that make the whole thing seem so desperate and dangerous.
Two guards approach the wagon. “Get down from there, ya piece of shit,” says one, grabbing Duncan’s arm and pulling him to the ground.
“What is the meaning of this?” Sara shouts. “He has been helping me in the Fields.”
“Aye. We know,” says the other guard. He takes hold of her arm and pulls her off as well. “Ya need to come with us, miss,” he says. “Ya be under arrest.”
“For what?”
“Conspiracy and heresy against GOD the Almighty.”
Duncan is on his feet. He looks up to the hospital cupola where stands Doctress Deirdre looking down on them. He cannot see her face, but he knows it is her. The woman is as shadowy a figure as a ferryman.
CAYDEN LOOKS back over the bedraggled revolutionaries. The sinner’s march stands in the bitter winds of the eighth ring in front of the Silver Sea. They shiver from the chill, but also from the dread of proceeding any farther. The army is silent, each individual staring down what lies ahead. The wind steals away any whispers, taking them into the domed and hardened crawlers’ nests that cover the valley. This be not a sea of water, but of spun silver thread from giant arachnid-like creatures—ancient experiments that resemble humankind with flesh and torsos—which have claimed every tree and boulder in the region. The webs glitter and pulse in the wind as if alive.
“We must venture through,” says Rossa. She is standing beside Claire with the bridle in her hand. Key rides the horse. “It’d take too long to go around. Old Man, ya say ya know a path through? A safe path?”
“Aye,” Old Man says, his back as straight as a soldier. “The crawlers abandon their cathedrals every ten years and move on to another, building and adding anew. There’s such a one just there.” He points to the opening of a tunnel beside two silver-shrouded willow trees.
“These crawlers look to be somethin’ terrible fierce,” says Lawl. “And Passions know, we done faced enough monsters already. How ya gonna get this lot through the caves without a panic?”
“They’ve got me and me scythes,” says Cayden. “Besides, if these tunnels are abandoned, we should have naught to fear.” He stares at Old Man with a challenging glare.
“Will ya be my hero, then?” Lawl gives the ferryman a teasing smirk.
“Anytime, handsome,” says Cayden. He delights in the looks on the faces of those around him. “Aye,” he says. “The ferryman is learnin’ to joke.”
“He’s got a point, though,” says Lorien from his steed. “None look ready to head in, but we cannot wait around. GOD’s Army is on our tail. If they don’t get us, the hungry men will.”
“Well, then,” says Gemma, who has remained silent for some time. “Let’s give them courage.” Without a pause, she starts down the hill toward the abandoned crawlers’ nest and waits for the others there.
Cayden smirks and gives a short “Ha!” then he follows her. The entire march is now filing into the crystal cathedral. They are silent, in awe and fear. No one dares take a deep breath. The Silver Sea is beautiful but laden with peril. Even the horses and hounds seem to sense the danger. Hooves and feet echo as loud as drums in the dark corridors of the crawlers.
Cayden allows himself to wonder at the sight in front of him. The trees, so high and majestic, are shrouded in silvery twine. It is as if the entire valley were blown crystal glass, as if the march was venturing into the largest palace that has ever been built, stretching on and on for miles. Old Man is in the lead. He knows what paths to take. He listens for hisses and scurrying. Cayden lets him to it, though he does not trust this new marcher yet. He will be ready if needed, but until then… such beauty and such danger…
“Some courage you’ve got,” Cayden says to Gemma. He has wrested his eyes from the magnificence around him to see her walking nearby. They are in a narrower path now where it is wise to walk in twos and threes at most. “You’re a small thing. A crawler’d eat ya right up.”
She smiles at him. “No. Nothing will happen to me. Not in here. We had to get through it, and I knew they’d follow me if they were going to follow anyone.”
“So, you’re finally playin’ your part.”
“With hesitance.” Madden is shaking behind her. “It’s okay, boy,” she says to the hound. “We’ll get through it.”
“For a big dog, he’s a big baby, eh?”
“He’s still a puppy in most ways, I think. How long do you think we’ll be walking the Silver Sea?”
Cayden shrugs. “I didna see an end to the gleam when we came upon it. I have a feelin’ we’re gonna be in here a while. But by my countin’, we should be at the ninth ring very soon. It won’t be long now. What do we plan to do then?”
She looks at him. “We bring it to its knees, Cayden, and then see what’s beyond. There are twelve rings, you know. Twelve, not nine.”
Twelve. Cayden feels that new desire curl up like a snake ready to strike. Some call it curiosity.
“Cayden,” Gemma says. “Promise me something. Promise me that no matter what happens, no matter who dies in the battle that’s coming, promise me you’ll take the march and you’ll go on. Promise me you’ll see the hidden rings.”
Cayden is silent for a moment. Gemma is watching him intently. He wants to ask what she knows. What prophecies has she heard to say such dire things? But he only nods his head and says, “I promise.”
He looks into her eyes, and he wants to kiss her. But he does not.
NIGHT HAS fallen. The sinner’s march has departed the Silver Sea, resting on large hills of grass high above. Rossa is watching Key as he sleeps soundlessly against Cruncher—who is not sleeping so soundlessly. Fire dogs, it seems, are gassy, grumbly sleepers.
Rossa is thankful they had no incidents with the crawlers on their passage through the Silver Sea. Not one monster in sight, nor one vicious bite. They passed a couple ancient skulls, but they did so quietly, trying to ignore their importance or augury. And if a crawler tried to snatch Key from Claire’s saddle? What then?
“I woulda chased the damn bugger down whatever tunnel it dragged him,” says Rossa to herself. “I didna come miles and miles to have the one thing I was ever truly after, the one thing what’s safety I care for more than any other, be snatched away by a demon with too many legs.
“So, why do ya keep goin’? I ask meself. You’ve got the boy, why not head on back to the city?
“And just what exactly would I be headin’ back to? I got no family there. Not no more. They gave me up, remember? Me own brother gave me up and then me father beats me and throws me out on the streets when that traitorous, dumbass brother of mine gets his arm scythed off by a ferryman. They’re probably all dead by now anyhow. They couldna stay out of trouble, me family. Always gamblin’ what little they had. From what little I hear, the whole Immortal City is fallin’ apart. The world be endin’ again. How many second chances does a species deserve? If it weren’t for ya, sweet child,” she said, smiling at the sleeping gypsy boy, “I’d say a plague on us all and be done with it. But ya give me hope, ya do. You’re like your mom in that way, aye.
“And what is all this riffraff we’ve gotten ourselves mixed up with, eh? Sinners and convicts, orphans and horsemen, a hero, and a ferryman. A ferryman! Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be marchin’ anywhere with a ferryman, at least not on the same side. I got a feelin’ in my core that once we reach the ninth ring, the whole blasted Immortal City is gonna collapse. We’ll have nowhere to go but out and what be out there beyond the last wall? Aye, that’s the question.
“My, my, little one, how you’ve shaken the world. But I doona mind it. My world needed some shakin’, I s’pose. All my old skin, the woman that used to be me, is done shed now, and I’m brand new again. A queen, they say. A fuckin’ queen. And of what? I’d laugh if it didna terrify me so.
“So, why di’nt I turn back once I found ya again?” She is silent for a moment. The camp around her is growing more still as the night takes it. “Because ya deserve a better life. Because we all do. And because GOD’s done pissed me off too many a time for me to back down now.”
She sees the child smile, though his eyes are yet closed. She hopes some of her words have made it into his dreams.
“Sleep with the Passions, my boy,” she whispers. “They be all we got now.”
GEMMA IS fascinated by the Silver Sea below. She stands alone on a hill, yards from the other marchers as they slumber, or try to. It is cold, yet Gemma is not guarding against it. Her arms are at her sides, and she is watching the beautiful light display in the great web cathedral, marveling at the bright bursts of white and green. Sometimes a burst of deep blue flares like a star and then dies away. Old Man has told her the lights were signs of birth and death. The crawlers glow white when feeding, green at birth, and dark blue at the moment of death. These colors are remnants of their ancestors’ souls from long ago when they were yet human. The Silver Sea is busy with its natural order this night. Gemma wonders if she will flicker as gloriously when she dies.
She hears a rustling in the trees behind her and knows before he speaks it is Old Man. “Is it time?” she says.
She turns to face him. He is dumbstruck by the question, though he does not lose his soldierlike poise. “Miss?”
“You’ve come to take me to my death, correct?”
“H-how did…?”
“It does not matter.” She approaches him and touches his face gently. “Let’s get on with it.”
His eyes are watering. “I’m sorry, miss,” he says. “I had no choice.”
The brush around them shakes and falls, and Mags Hensil and the Sisters of GOD surround her. They are in full white garb, Mags now wearing a fanning crown of gold and amethysts. “He’s quite right,” says Mags. “No choice. Bring her.”
Gemma is being led through a path to a clearing not far from where she was standing. Old Man holds to her arm. Mags leads, and the Sisters follow. Gemma says nothing. The night is hushed and breathless. Not a word is spoken until they arrive in the clearing. There they tie her to a large tree. Old Man objects, but Mags strikes him into silence.
“Poor Gemma Kerr,” Mags says, her face retaining all the emotion of an unhappy ivory statue. She stands before the tree with folded hands. “If only you had played the part GOD set forth for you, this would not be necessary.”
Gemma sees the Sisters drawing out their crossbows and arrows. Old Man’s jaw drops, his eyes widen.
“Your mother and father have failed, Gemma. They have both been torn apart by GOD’s dogs. Oh, yes. He let loose the hungry men into the manse and locked the door. You should have heard your mother screaming. Screaming for mercy. Begging for forgiveness.”
Gemma smiles. “You’re a liar, Mags Hensil,” she says. “I know the first ring is in ruins, and I also know GOD will soon be dead.”
Mags’s face twists like a cloth bag in a blinding wind. She gestures for a Sister to bring her a crossbow, and she then fixes it on Gemma. Without warning, she shoots an arrow into Gemma’s thigh. The girl cries out in pain.
“Stop this!” Old Man exclaims. “This is not what you said you were going to do with her. You said—”
He falls to his knees, an arrow from one of the Sisters’ crossbow buried deep in his back. He looks up at Gemma, his face one of deep regret, reaches out for her, and then he collapses to the earth.
“Even at your death you speak blasphemy, girl,” says Mags. “You shall find no release for your soul.”
Gemma refuses the pain in her thigh. She raises her head, even as the tears stream, and smiles, resting it back against the tree. “My soul is already released,” she says.
“Sisters,” Mags says with decisive nonchalance. “Let us strike this sinner down.”
One by one, the arrows pierce her flesh, but she does not feel them. They are but pebbles to her. Her eyes are on the sky. She is past the clouds and with the stars. And from that height, she sees her own body, that which she had for so many years called “Gemma Kerr,” slump forward riddled with arrows.
She sees how Mags Hensil lifts her head by the hair to make certain she is dead and say, quite unconvincingly, “Satisfactory.”
She hears the rumble through the brush, and sees the great white hound jump into the fray and tear one of the Sisters apart as the others scream in horror. She sees another Sister who starts to run felled by Cayden Lothair’s scythe. From both of their lifeless bodies, Gemma watches as screaming, confused souls rise, still clawing at their grounded forms, unwilling to move on. The horsemen surround the remaining Sisters of GOD and take their bows.
“We’re too late,” Rossa cries, horror-stricken.
Mags Hensil is bellowing, held still by horsemen. “You’ve killed two Sisters of GOD!” she screams. “Heresy! Heresy! GOD shall have His vengeance!”
Rossa knocks her out with her sword hilt, and the woman falls to the ground like a bag of Holy rocks.
Cayden Lothair unties Gemma from the tree and cradles her body to the earth. He rocks her. “She knew,” he whispers. “She knew.”
Rossa looks away, her face crumpling. The horsemen stare in disbelief. The Sisters of GOD huddle together. Madden looks beaten.
Gemma is with us now. She has done her part, and now it is up to the others. We smile at her. It is not a smile she can see, but instead a smile she can feel. There are but three hundred souls. That is all there ever have been. And Gemma is part of ours.
A PROPER funeral would be a pyre, but the march has no time. Gemma’s body is buried on the hill in the clearing above the Silver Sea. All one hundred and fifty-three of the surviving marchers have part in the burial. Each takes one claw of dirt from the earth and passes the pick on to the next. The ground is hard and cold. There is a fierce breeze. Gemma is wrapped in a long wool blanket once owned by Gol of the forest folk and lowered gently into her tomb.
Key is standing with Lawl and Rossa. He knows what part to play. When Cayden nods to him, he beats a song of mourning. Not a whisper disturbs the ceremony. Even the captive Sisters stay silent. Key is certain this has nothing to do with any respect they feel toward Gemma, but rather for fear of being gutted by Cayden Lothair or Queen Rose. Key has that desire himself. He wishes the Sisters would say something. His anger is nearly interfering with his playing.
After the ceremony, the marchers begin to stir. “What do we do now?” some are asking. “Where do we go? Our hero is dead.”
They are heartbroken.
“We go home,” some are answering. “We have lost.”
“No,” Cayden says. His voice carries over the march. They turn to him. “We keep goin’.”
“Why?” a man of the original sinners says. “So we can lose more? I have been with the sinners since the beginning. I stayed with them after Colm Archer was captured, after Usker Lance was slaughtered, after the hungry men and the fire dogs, I stayed. But this… she was our last hope.”
“She still is,” says Cayden. The crowd is staring at him, listening. “Ya would turn your backs on her? On all she stood for? If ya turn back now, this will all be for naught, all the sacrifices your friends and families have made, then GOD wins. The Immortal City is crumblin’ around us.”
Mags Hensil gasps. Her hands are tied as she stands between the horsemen and the original sinners.
“Ya can go back, aye,” says Cayden, “but to what? Ya will surely die when ya return and your death will have no meaning then. But if we keep goin’, if we keep to Gemma Kerr’s vision… yes, ya still may die. But at least you’ll die fightin’.”
Key looks up at Rossa’s face. She is stirred by the ferryman’s speech and breathes deep.
“When we were in the Silver Sea,” says Cayden, “Gemma says to me that whatever happens I was to keep goin’. She wanted someone, lots of someones to see what lies outside the Immortal City. Ya can all go back if ya want, but I’m headin’ on. I’ll fight the whole bloody ninth ring if I must. And what’s that say about ya if a ferryman desires to fight on, but ya sinners don’t?”
“You’ll not fight alone, ferryman,” says Rossa, approaching Cayden and putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be comin’ with ya.”
Others slowly take up in agreement.
“Aye,” says Lawl. “The love of me life is in that wretched place. I plan to be his hero. And I know just what smirk to wear, too.”
The original sinner nods. “Forgive me my doubts, Brother Cayden. I wavered momentarily. Of course, I will march with ya. But what about the Sisters here? What do we do with them?”
“Feed ’em to the damn crawlers,” says Lorien.
A chorus of approval resounds in the circle. Rossa walks into the center and stands by Gemma’s grave. She raises her hands, and the marchers hush. “We shall take the Sisters with us,” she says. “We shall show them mercy, and then we shall show them their GOD… dead.”
The marchers like this notion even more. The forest erupts in raucous cheers.
“All of this is folly!” hisses Mags Hensil. “How dare you speak thusly of GOD. It is repugnant. And after all He has done for you.”
“He has done nothin’ for us, dear Sister, but eat our souls while we yet walk. He builds enmity between people where none should exist. He be a greedy, jealous demon who must be cast down. We have built His perch too high. We have given Him too much power over us. His words be only words, and yet with one of them, He can end the life a sweet child, of an entire district, no questions asked.”
“Heresy! Heresy!”
“Saying the word alone will not light me afire, Sister. Ya need a spark, and I’m afraid you’re all wet.”
“Give up,” shouts Mags. Her white makeup is cracking, showing decay. “Give up now. The ferrymen are on their way.”
“The ferrymen are here,” says Cayden.
“You? You are no ferryman. You’ve abandoned the way of GOD. I curse you, Cayden Lothair, and I spit on the grave of this whelp you’ve just buried.”
“I wouldna do that,” Cayden warns her.
But Mags is not listening. Key watches as the Sister coils back and spits forth the largest ball of phlegm he has ever seen. It lands just short of the grave. Mags is smiling and content with her actions… for a very brief moment.
“What?” says Mags to Cayden. “Are you not man enough to do anything about that?”
“It wasna me I was warnin’ you about,” he says.
Mags is caught unawares as Rossa rips her crown of gold and amethyst off, taking with it great clumps of hair. Then Rossa strikes the mad queen across her face with the abrasive headware. Her mouth snags on the gold corner and rips clear up her cheek. She falls to the ground in screaming agony, crimson painting her white robe.
Key is astounded, his mouth agape.
“Bandage her up,” Rossa says with the crown still in her hand. “We need to be movin’ on.”