The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets.
—PROVERBS 26:13
The city was confusing enough, even with his map, that Sabbath had turned himself around entirely after leaving Jennifer’s. He found his way back to the church where he’d met her, nearly colliding with other pedestrians as he walked while peering down at his forearm, and then reoriented himself, headed south, finally feeling a bit more comfortable walking the streets. The Bowery reminded Sabbath of home. Oh, like the rest of Manhattan, the boulevard was an assault on the senses—exposed flesh that would send an eleventh-century harlot screaming into a nunnery, motorized wagons that sounded like a whole troop of men, the stench of bodily fluids Sabbath only otherwise sniffed in open battle, and lights everywhere. Night itself had been vanquished. But the Bowery was familiar, for at the foot of every edifice clung the desperate and the starving. They were like lepers at the gate, or the most ragged of the camp followers that had once trailed Sabbath into war, to pick rags and coins from corpses when they could. The wealthy—and on the Bowery, they were as obvious as the duke with their clean clothes, their unmarked skin, and their dizzying talk—strode past the suffering poor as though there was no price to be paid before the Lord for such arrogance.
Indeed, Sabbath thought. There probably is not. Not in this world. Sabbath had certainly never given alms to the men of rag and bone who groveled in his shadow, not unless some attractive woman was watching. He served Christ in his own way. And here he was, in this world of sordid delights.
And speaking of sordid delights … what was the word for the food he smelled now? Oh yes, pizza. If a deadly sin were to be vanquished this evening, Sabbath would need a full belly. It wasn’t a retreat, just a tactical withdrawal, to Ray’s Pizza Bagel Café on the well-omened Place of Saint Mark.
It was a large pizzeria, and packed despite the late hour, thanks to the amazing electrical bulbs that Sabbath could not help but stare at. And the people! In his own time, Hexen Sabbath had been a giant among men. Here, in the twenty-first century, he was chagrined to find himself shorter than many of the men around him, even if most of them were flabby, with bellies that preceded them into a room like a fleshy little page. He could use some food, Sabbath thought, and the pizza looked and smelled delicious.
The workers were efficient enough, and New Yorkers not a people given to gossip while at the market, so after four minutes Sabbath was at the front of the line.
“Hail, Ray!” he said. “I would have two of your shield-sized pizzas.”
“I ain’t Ray,” the man at the cash register said. “You want larges?”
“Larges! Yes!” Sabbath had just recalled that he hadn’t any money. Larges sounded like largesse, but he could expect none of that in this time when nobility and service meant nothing. People were all equal here in this time, at least insofar as there was money in one’s purse. His cross had sold for just enough to buy a sword and sheath. His only other possessions were the stolen clothes, a raincoat of Jennifer’s that was fashionably large on her but too snug on him, and Jennifer’s laundry bag, which he was going to fill with heads. “Yes, two of your largest pizzas, for free.”
“Fuck off, fruitcake,” said the cashier. Sabbath has been surprised that his clothes hadn’t attracted more attention on the streets, but now he understood that the passersby had taken him for some sort of eccentric vagabond.
“Your master Ray will surely understand. Consider it a tithe. It shall fuel my limbs for holy combat!” And with that, Sabbath put his left hand under his coat and drew his sword several inches for the enlightenment of Ray’s clerk. “Believe me or not, but if you do not, I will run you through and take what I need.” Somewhere by the base of Sabbath’s skull, something whispered, Want, not need. It was a reprimand.
The cashier stared at Sabbath for a long moment, then turned and said something over his shoulder. It was in a language Sabbath did not understand, but it sounded broadly similar to Latin. Obtener and fuste … Obtain, or get, the—
Sabbath ducked as the two-by-four swung at his head. The cashier cursed loudly in his language, and several others joined in. Sabbath’s hand reflexively went to his sword, but with gritted teeth, he kept himself from drawing it forth and gutting the madmen swarming him. Then the noise was consumed by a rush of wings, and the whole universe stopped, as if eternity held her breath.
Abathar’s voice cut through the frozen amber of time. “Thirty-five dollars, yes. Paid in full, plus a forty percent tip,” he said. “For all of you.” Satisfied, the cashier and the bakers moved back to their positions behind the counter. “I’ll have a side salad, please,” he added. His gaze turned to Sabbath, who was still in his stance, his sword arm ready to swing out. “You’re with me. We’ll eat in. Sir Hexen, the sins you hunt integrate perfectly into this society, and do their dark work unnoticed by the worldly authorities. You, on the other hand, stand out in the manner of a village idiot.”
“Ah, is that why you have me take their heads? If I gain the majority of them, will I too be able to go unnotic—?”
“No,” Abathar interrupted. “Try to keep a lower profile as you perform the task God has commissioned for you. I shall not save you every time. There are souls need weighing.” Sabbath looked down at his raincoat and shrugged.
At the table, Sabbath ate with both hands. He glanced at Abathar and said, “What is … that?” twirling a finger as best he could toward the area under Abathar’s chin.
“It’s a necktie. A bow tie, specifically,” Abathar said.
“Odd-looking device,” Sabbath said.
“The timber could have caved in your skull.”
“I cannot die, save on the Sabbath. By modern reckoning it is early Monday.”
“According to your witch mother,” said Abathar. “Only God knows the time and manner of a man’s death. Your mother—”
“What of my mother?” Sabbath’s blood was hot. Could he slay an angel? His fingers trembled, eager for the hilt of his sword.
“Consider this, at least,” Abathar said, still calm. “Even if your mother was right, and you could not die now, early on a Monday morning, you could be incapacitated, and die of your wounds six days hence, or in the conflagration to come. Is that how you’d meet the Lord, Hexen Sabbath? Mumbling to yourself like an idiot, in a soiled garment, your head throbbing, covered in drool—”
“I don’t plan on anything like that happening to me,” Sabbath said. It had not occurred to him that he could be so grievously injured and yet not die. Then his mind prodded him: in this time, wounds that would be fatal on the battlefield could be treated, even healed, in a hospital. Blood could be taken from one man and given safely to another, and sepsis brought to heel with a tiny pill. Even a man whose brain had died could be kept alive, after a fashion, with mechanical bellows serving as lungs.
“Sabbath, do you plan on spending the week Our Lord has given you in this modern realm stuffing your face, thieving, and fornicating with women outside the bounds of matrimony? You are here to defeat the seven sins, not embrace them, and not to quiz me on matters sartorial,” Abathar said, an edge in his voice.
“Ah,” Sabbath said. A slice disappeared into his mouth. “I asked you my question as a test. You’ll answer questions, will you? We can have a bit of a conversation, man to man. Or mortal to angel.” Abathar’s eyes narrowed, but Sabbath continued. “So, you perhaps think I am just an oaf with a good sword arm and a disregard for the social niceties. However, one does not become a knight of the realm, one does not earn my rank—” Sabbath wiped his fingers on his PVC shirt. “—without some education in theology. And I must say, theologically speaking, the quest you have set me on is like unto chasing geese. Why me, a soul ten centuries gone? Surely there is some contemporary servant of the Lord more capable of navigating this monstrous city—one with a soul as corrupt as mine! I’ve walked ten blocks in this city, and I’m sure I’ve crossed paths with a dozen such rutting pigs. A thousand such men, whom you could field as a legion. And that leaves aside the question of what it even means to defeat the seven deadly sins. Or why they have manifested as men—”
“And women,” Abathar said.
“—rather than simply being born in the hearts of men, as has been true for the history of this fallen world.”
“Sabbath—”
“Or what the point of destroying the world is! Surely Judgment Day is in the hand of God, not Satan nor the simple fact of sin.”
“Your sword,” Abathar said. “Give it to me.”
“I won’t…,” Sabbath began, but Abathar had the sword in his palms as if it had just been presented to him.
“A quality Carolingian. It’s been in many hands across these ten centuries.” He glanced down at it. “Shark leather. Tell me, Sabbath—imagine you were out for a swim in the ocean, and as you bobbed along, a fin broke the waves and cut water toward you. The nose and great toothy mouth of a shark rears up, and then, as this would be a miracle of the Lord, the fish begins to speak. Let us say, Sabbath, this is a female shark. Perhaps you do not know this, but sharks are all but unique among fish in that they give birth to live young. This particular shark, who accosts you now in the black waves off Whitby, asks you a question. She asks, ‘Why do you, Hexen Sabbath, own a sword wrapped in the skin of my poor lost son?’”
“I … well, it’s simply a matter of the grip. I’ve never fished a shark out of the ocean, and truth be told, I am not a strong swimmer. The smith, I presume, purchased the shag—”
“Why do you need a sword with a shark leather grip, Sabbath?” Abathar interrupted.
“To better handle the blade. A man’s palm gets slippery.”
“Handle the blade to what end?”
“To kill Danes!” Sabbath said.
“To what end?”
“They invaded my country, Abathar! You know this.”
“But the shark does not,” Abathar said. “‘Why would the Danes invade your country?’ she would ask.”
“Well, it’s … it’s complex. King Edgar died early, and Æthelred was a weak king. Among the Vikings, pagan rebels were defeated by King Gormsson, who sought to bring the light of Christ to his realm. Those dark-hearted pagans, their lands taken from them, set sail for and sacked Ipswich in order to, well, enrich themselves.”
“What’s a pagan? Who is Christ?”
“A pagan is a country fool who worships trees and leaves and murders children to lay a cornerstone of their temples. Christ is our Lord and Savior, God made flesh! I am a Christian; I worship the triune God!”
“So you’re a Christian, then, attacked by pagans.”
“Yes! Well, no … that was before my time … the Christian Danes saw how well their fellows did and embraced the idea of the invasion of the British Isles themselves,” said Sabbath. “I know that now, thanks only to the gift of knowledge bequeathed upon me by you. I had been told that our enemies were still pagan.”
“Christian against Christian, then?” Abathar said. “One Christian army looking to conquer the land of another, and the defenders eager to send their fellows in the faith back to their widows in pieces?”
“Well…,” Sabbath said. “Yes. That is how it went. But not for me. I would not strike the killing blow against the youth at my feet, who called himself a Christian. I died rather than kill him.”
“Well, why did Christ allow that?”
“You tell me!” Sabbath demanded, slamming his fist against the table.
“I’m not the one asking you, Sabbath. I’m the shark!”
“You can’t expect me to explain a hundred years of tumultuous history and kingly chess-playing to a fish just because her skinned offspring played some minute role in the creation of my sword! No matter what I said, she wouldn’t understand!”
“Exactly, Sabbath,” Abathar said. “Exactly.” He turned to his salad and chewed on a lettuce leaf thoughtfully, silently. Sabbath found the weight of his sword tugging against the interior of his coat again.
Sabbath bit into the crust of his pizza and glared.
“Would it make you feel better, Hexen Sabbath,” Abathar ventured, “if I told you that this sort of thing happens all the time? Perhaps in your era, a Roman centurion who knew Christ himself and was blessed by him found himself in a strange new world of modern invention and social mores, not one thousand but more than fifteen hundred years from his time, and had to collect seven heads of his own.”
“Well, if that fellow is still available, why don’t you summon him forth?” Sabbath said.
“He’s not … available,” Abathar said. “He succeeded in saving the world, but failed after a fashion. Sabbath, beware temptation. Focus on your quest.” Sabbath opened his mouth to speak, but Abathar was gone.
The office building, down at the corner of the Bowery and Spring Street, was only a ten-minute walk for Sabbath. The tattoo on his forearm burned with need, and it was important that his limbs be lively, so he moved at a fast trot. Sabbath knew that New York was the city that never sleeps, but he was still somewhat surprised to find the doors unlocked and the lobby unguarded.
“A trap, surely,” Sabbath said to himself. His voice echoed in the marble vestibule. For a moment, he thought of the Roman centurion, a man out of time much like himself. Was Abathar telling the truth, or playing a game? Could angels even lie, or did whatever one said become the truth of history itself? A dozen questions assaulted him, and as he brushed them away, a hundred more took their place. None of it mattered; the only thing to do was follow the sign. By the elevator, it stood, and it read INTERBOROUGH DEPARTMENT OF TRANSCOUNTY OPERATIONS AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT (LKGN). SUBBASEMENT FOUR.
Wary, Sabbath decided to take the stairs. Elevators felt too much like the worst elements of a mine and a tomb, combined. He also felt more capable of battering down even steel hinges than shouldering his way out of an elevator should he get stuck between floors. The stairwell was hot and dark, illuminated only on the landings, and then by a single red light on each basement level.
Hell, Sabbath thought. I am walking into Hell. Perhaps I was not lifted up from death eternal after all; perhaps this is just more anguish for my sins. Then he reached the fourth subbasement, opened an unmarked door, stepped through it, and thought, Yes, this is Hell.
The twenty-four-hour cubicle farm stretched as far as Sabbath could see, and in each cube there was a man or a woman hunched over either a computer keyboard or a pile of papers. The fluorescent lighting painted all the workers, regardless of race or color, a sickly bluish gray.
Like bees crawling among the honeycombs, Sabbath thought, surely Sloth will not be found here. He took in the scene as an archer might, selecting one man to focus on, then another. Only then did he see that these workers were not actually working at all. One might click on the mouse or stab at the keyboard with a single finger, while another sighed and turned a page from the right side of an open folder to the left, but there was no labor here. It was a show, a fraud. Only one worker met his eyes, and with a sneer, she raised a pen and pointed to the wall behind him.
A row of seats lined up against the wall, and near them a short pole on which stood a red container. TAKE A NUMBER.
Sabbath wondered if the number wouldn’t be 666, from the infamous verse of Revelation, but it was only 74. He felt lucky until he saw a peculiar lit sign hanging over the cube of the woman who had directed him to sit.
NOW SERVING NUMBER 02
Sabbath was about to bark out an order, but recalled where he was in more ways than one—this was either some form of metaphysical trap or trick contrived by God or Abathar or perhaps Satan himself, or it truly was the twenty-first century, and shouting You there, woman! Attend me now! would not do. Further, she was extremely large in her own right. If it were to come to a fight … no, he could not strike a woman down, not even for the Lord.
So he took a seat and kept his eyes on the woman, but she did not look at him again. Sabbath’s mind cleared, which was a relief. The nagging questions and concerns about his quest, the state of his soul, the intriguing possibilities of a few more sinful dalliances with Jennifer, all left him. The chair in which he sat was not designed to be comfortable, but for a man used to wood and stone and only occasionally a rug, it was a delight. The basement was warm, like the sweet spot neither too near nor too far from the fire. Sabbath’s limbs grew heavy, as did his eyelids, and indeed, he would have fallen into a long sleep but for …
The clicking.
The woman had begun to click the button of the retractable pen in her hand. Click. Click. Click. She stared emptily at her computer monitor and clicked the pen slowly, like it was the beat of a sleeping babe’s heart. It was exactly wrong somehow, and plucked at the back of Sabbath’s neck.
“Woman,” he said, but she did not seem to hear him.
Louder, he said, “Woman! I am number seventy-four, but I am the only one here! I would see your captain now, and have words with him.”
She just looked at him, then put down her pen.
“That sign!” Sabbath said. “Why does it not move, as signs in this age often do? When will it read ‘Now serving three,’ much less number seventy-four?”
The woman shuffled some papers on her desk. “It is,” she said finally, “what it is.” What that it was, was a battle of wills, Sabbath understood. He stood up and drew his sword to no reaction from either the woman or any of her fellow workers. He sat back down, placed the point of the sword against the tiles of the floor, and slowly scraaaaped it till his arm was fully extended.
That got the attention of the woman, who glared at him, and several others, whose heads peeked out over the top edges of their cubicles like men stationed behind the crenellations of a castle under siege.
Sabbath smiled and drew the sword back to him, pressing its tip even harder against the tiles. The scratching sound echoed throughout the basement chamber, and made Sabbath’s marrow quake in his bones, but he had the woman’s attention.
“Sir,” she said. “Someone will be with you soon.”
“Who? You?”
“No,” the woman said.
The woman inhaled deeply, like a horse about to charge, and clicked her pen again. It sounded like a mallet splitting open a Danish skull. Sabbath dragged his sword against the floor as though it were scoring an enemy’s rib cage.
“Sir, please be still,” the woman said. “Someone will be with you soon. We are all very busy.”
“Busy doing what?!” Sabbath demanded.
“We are confirming signatures, if you must know. Do you know how many times a day one must sign one’s name in this society? With almost every purchase, with nearly every financial transaction. Do you think nobody double-checks them?”
Abathar’s wisdom whispered to Sabbath that, indeed, nobody double-checked the many signatures men and women scribbled out to buy and sell in this odd new world. Nobody human did, anyway. “Check this signature, then, madam,” Sabbath said. He planted both hands on the sword’s grip and scratched his name into the tiles, signing the floor with a mad flourish. It sounded as if every kestrel in England had been struck down by a single hunter’s arrow at once.
In a flash he arose and with a warrior’s cry lifted his sword high over his head. He rushed the woman but at the last moment turned on his heel and swung a wide arc, slicing open the red canister. Paper tickets flew everywhere and fluttered to the ground. Sabbath fell to his knees and scrambled to collect as many slips of paper as could fit in his wide hands, discarding some at a glance only to snatch up others.
“Huzzah!” he cried finally. “A two! I am number two!” He spun back toward the woman, the ticket outstretched in his left hand as he reclaimed and resheathed the sword with his right. “I’ll see your leader now, I swear it.”
“Number two,” said the woman. “Number two, you just committed a felony.” She yanked the ticket from his hand and tore it to pieces, then deposited them into a wastebasket in her cubicle. “You’re going to sit back down. You’re going to wait for the police to arrive. They are going to arrest you, book you, hold you until a judge is available to arraign you. That might take a few hours; it might take a few days. And then, if they decide to release you on your own recognizance, which given the looks of you, is a lot less likely to happen than a seventy-two-hour stay in a rubber room in Bellevue, you can come back here, and if we happen to have replaced the machine by then, and if it’s not a federal, state, or municipal holiday and this office is open, you could come here, wait in line, take another number …
“And wait,” she said.
“So go and wait,” she said. “Number two, you go and wait.”
Her lips were flecked with spittle. She licked them clean with an ophidian tongue, black and forked. She was no woman.
Sabbath drew his sword and pushed it through the flimsy board of the cubicle wall. The woman opened her mouth again, but instead of a rant, out came blood, blacker than Sabbath had ever seen. She slumped forward, challenging his grip and wrist with her weight, then growled as her eyes flickered. “You … won’t … win … sinner—”
The thump from her falling backwards onto the floor only partially drowned out the sound of applause coming from behind him.
“Sabbath comma Hexen,” said Sloth, who was standing in the open doorway of his office. “I’ve been expecting you, and you have not disappointed me. Perhaps you have disappointed someone else. Come in, take a load off, we’ll have a chat about your future.…” He yawned and turned to shuffle back into his office, beckoning for Sabbath to follow.
The office was simply appointed, though compared to the cubicles, it was luxurious, with a large metal desk, an assortment of bookshelves largely empty of books, and, best of all, a buttery brown leather couch large enough for a man to sleep on. Sloth himself was no warrior; he was a round little fellow, bald except for a Bundt cake of hair ringing the back of his head. His suit was threadbare, and tie done up rather too casually. Abathar would most likely send such a man to Hades on general principles, but this was no man. Sloth radiated an aura of unearned ease just by sitting back in his Aeron chair and smiling a greeting at Sabbath.
Sabbath let his sword arm hang, and gratefully sat on the couch opposite Sloth’s empty desk. He wanted to lie down on it, but knew he must not. It was just so … inviting somehow.
“Oh Lord,” Sloth said, his voice slow and syrupy. “Meetings, meetings. It never ends, eh?”
Sabbath’s eyes had been drooping, but one opened wide now. “A … sin, calling upon the Lord. You risk much,” Sabbath said.
Sloth shrugged with his whole body, undulating like a jelly. “You might say we dare all, but I will tell you that we don’t dare much. And you have no right to rebuke me, killer.”
“She wasn’t real; she was a thing of dark spirit,” said Sabbath. “Her blood was black.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” said Sloth. “Or do you mean to tell me that you wouldn’t have killed her even if she had been a human being?”
“The end of the world,” Sabbath said. “Judgment Day. Fires like the sun itself, in the hands of man—”
“Very dramatic. But I know your type—they don’t send monks or eunuchs against us, Mr. Sabbath,” Sloth said. “Oh, may I call you Mr. Sabbath? I do like your name. It is the day of rest, after all. It is my day.”
“You may call me Sir Hexen. Do not besmirch the name Sabbath. It belongs to the Lord.”
Sloth snorted. “It did belong to the Lord. Now it belongs to football games, to putting off chores for one more week, to lazing about the house. No, no Sabbath, Sunday belongs to me. Indeed, when you were alive, in your own time, you and I spent quite a fair number of Sundays together. Not much of a churchgoer for a knight and a Christian, were you?”
“I served Christ in my own way,” Sabbath said, “… my own way.” He tried to stifle a yawn, but could not.
Sloth nodded. “Indeed, you did. Blindly at times. Blindly now.” Sloth stretched and unleashed a yawn of his own. “Tell me, what was one thousand years blasted by the fire of God’s love actually like, as an experience?”
“I…” He could not remember, except that it was unpleasant. “I have no words.”
“That’s your mind refusing to let you relive the experience. The human brain isn’t designed to experience more than a lifetime of memories. You’ve had ten times that, nearly all in torment and darkness. The Lord had no mercy on you, despite your many murders on his behalf.”
Sabbath blinked hard and struggled to open his eyes. “But now … I have a chance…”
“Oh, you do? Think, Sabbath, think. What did the angel tell you? That once every seven hundred seventy-seven years, my colleagues and I get together to end the world. And yet, how long were you … indisposed?”
“One—” He yawned. “—thousand.”
“That’s right. Do you understand?”
Sabbath shook his head, then rested it in his arm and nestled against the armrest of the couch.
“I’ll spell it out for you. In the thousand years of your punishment, we sins had come together, and, sad to say, we were put down. By someone else, someone who wasn’t you. Or perhaps I should say who isn’t you. You see, if you could be plucked out of time at any point, why did the Lord not give you a break and send you against us then? Do you even know what a nuclear warhead looks like? What it can truly do? Do you know how close the world has been to the brink of total nuclear annihilation already?”
Sabbath muttered, “No … no, I … I don’t.” He rubbed his eyes and yawned again, not bothering to cover his mouth. “I asked Abath…” His exhaustion slackened his jaw. He couldn’t speak. His chin rested on the top of his chest. His eyes were slits. He could listen, though, listen to the voice that soothed no matter what it said.
“It’s easy, so easy. The missiles are guided by men, and they are detected by men, despite all the technological wonders in this era. All I need to do is put a few Russian radar operators to sleep, and the great cities of that nation will be nothing but steaming slag. It would hardly matter, though, as the Russian nukes are far from the urban areas. Those lads will be awake and plenty ready to reduce Manhattan to a cinder floating in the boiling waters of the Eastern Seaboard.”
“Hurh … whu…,” Sabbath said, his tongue heavy. Water, yes. The water was always so restful.
“No, you don’t understand at all. For you, a catapult sending a mass of flaming peat over a castle wall would have been a weapon of mass destruction. Why would the Lord send you to face me now, when he could have sent you seven hundred and seventy-seven years ago? When the world would have made more sense to you, when you wouldn’t be so … at sea.”
Sabbath snorted. Sloth’s voice sounded far away. He thought of the sea, his beard salty and wet, his body buoyant and relaxed.
“For that matter, he could have spared you all the travail you’ve faced so far, simply by allowing his former champion to contend against us again. That warrior already has a record of success against us seven sins.
“Think of it, Sabbath. Why are you here? Why is the Lord God making you work so hard on his behalf? For longer than a lifetime, after a thousand years of endless discomfort and pain, he calls upon you again to serve him like chattel. He could have let you sleep.” Sloth was up now, toddling around his desk toward the couch. Sabbath snored loudly. Sloth gingerly removed the sword from the man’s grasp. Sabbath dreamed of the sea, of the black waves of Whitby.
“The Lord God,” Sloth said, hefting the sword with a grunt and a momentary loss of balance, then placing the tip of it against Sabbath’s heart, “should have let you rest in peace. But never fear, dear warrior. I will be the one to do it.
“May every day be your Sabbath, Sabbath. Rest in peace.” Sloth leaned against the sword, pressing his sternum to the pommel, and Sabbath grunted under the pressure. In his dream, something cut toward him, slicing through the water.
“Hmm, the point of this blade,” Sloth said, “seems blunted.” He sighed dramatically. “I’d best redouble my efforts.…” Sloth straightened up, rolled his shoulders, inhaled, and—
Sabbath’s eyes flew open. “Aaarrrgh!” he bellowed. Like the shark he had dreamed of, Sabbath reared up, mouth wide, body thrashing. Sloth tumbled backwards, the sword unbalancing him. He tried to lift it to defend himself, but Sabbath grabbed the sin’s elbow and wrist, and wrenched Sloth’s arm nearly from its socket. The sword fell to the floor, where it landed quietly on the soft carpet. Sabbath dived for the sword, and was up and facing Sloth before the sin even had the chance to react.
“No, wait!” Sloth said. “You don’t understand. Take it—”
Sloth’s head hit the floor wetly, his portly body following a moment later.
“Easy,” Sabbath said.
It was easy, Sabbath thought. Too easy, in a way, but I could not have succeeded without Abathar.… The workers hadn’t barricaded him in the office, nor had they formed a troop to contend against him when he exited the office, though he was soaked in the blood of Sloth and carrying the sin’s head like a parcel in the crook of his right arm. They all just stayed in their cubes and raised their heads, like contented, only half-curious pigs in a sty.
“Devils,” he said. “Look at you all. I have your man here.” He held the head aloft. Black blood spilled from the base of the neck like coffee from an overturned mug. “He sought to beguile me, lull me to sleep. He thought he could stay me from my holy task. What is sloth, after all, but the sin of omission, of dejection, of refusing to do what one must?” They all peered at him silently. “What Sloth did not understand is that though I had often shirked my duties, or gave myself to the simple pleasures—”
Someone in the back yawned.
“—the blade is my greatest pleasure.”
With a shrug, Sabbath slipped the duffel bag off his shoulder and onto the floor. He dropped Sloth’s head in, took a moment to zip the bag up, then drew his sword as he stood.
“My greatest pleasure,” said Sabbath, “though I am afraid a few of you I’ll have to leave … clean. My sword has a blunt pommel, perfect when a bludgeoning will have to do. You see, I need your clothes. The garments I’m wearing are stained.”