Meritorium (Meritropolis Book 2) (22 page)

He knew the next few minutes could be a very combustible mix. If he didn’t do something to calm things down, and soon, they might not even make it into the arena to face the czar.

Drawing up closer, he realized that what he thought was angry shouting was in fact some kind of preaching. Charley snorted quietly: the two things could sometimes sound so similar, almost as if the preachers who ranted and raved about hell actually wanted their audience to go there.

Peering over the shoulder of a tall, lanky boy, Charley saw that the preacher was the same spindly-legged old man they had encountered outside the city limits.

He had survived, and now his voice boomed out with the same fervor. “Woe! Woe to those who are at ease in Meritorium—the notable men and women—those who feel secure in their iniquity. Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches.” He reached his bony arms wide, gesturing to the Low Scores tentatively drawing closer. “Woe to those who devour lambs from the flock.”

Charley thought back to the crowd in the arena: their flagons of wine sloshing, soon to stain their teeth red, and their ravenous screams for violence against the innocent. His eyes narrowed. Maybe some things were worthy of a little angry shouting.

“Woe to those who have turned justice into poison, the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.” Spittle flecked his beard, and he bobbed his head up and down in time to the fevered pitch of his jeremiad. “The Lord God has sworn by himself that he abhors the pride of those who sit in lofty places.” He turned in the direction of the amphitheater, shaking both fists in the air, head lifted to the heavens.

As one, Circumcellions and Low Scores alike followed his gaze, almost in a trance. Such was the power of the prophet’s oration, even Charley found himself turning toward the silhouette of the amphitheater, shrouded with an early-morning fog and rising like ancient stone jaws.

“Behold, the Lord God commands the great house shall be struck down into fragments, and the little house into bits.” He lowered his fists and slowly turned to face those in the pen. “For behold, I will raise up against the evildoers a great nation.”

The crowd murmured in agreement.

Rico and his cousins pushed their way past a group of Circumcellions who had jostled into the Low Scores’ personal space. They seemed to be contemplating whether this was their foreordained time for martyrdom. With the spell now broken, tension crackled in the air.

Hank ran up, breathing hard. “We got the armor. Grigor and Orson have it right over there.” Charley turned to see Hank gesturing behind him. Wisely, Grigor and Orson stood well back from the fracas, each holding an assemblage of gear for a Meritorium Honor Guard.

Charley melted back, slipping over to Grigor and Orson. Quickly, he draped the ring-mail armor over his head and wiggled his way into the chain-mail shirt. Grigor helped him with the breastplate, which was slightly too small. Strapping on the protective leg padding, sword belt, and shoulder armor, Charley stood upright. It was a little heavy, and not really sized for his frame, but it was manageable.

“What exactly are you going to do, Charley?” Hank asked.

“I only need to stall them for a little while.” Charley tugged on the breastplate shoulder strap. “If I can just keep the Low Scores and the Circumcellions separate for a little longer, then we can all make it into the arena in one piece.”

Orson crammed the helmet onto Charley’s head and stepped back for a quick appraisal. “Not too bad, actually.” He came forward again, flipping the visor down and rotating the cheek-guard flaps inward. He nodded. “There, that’s as good as you’re gonna get.”

Grigor handed Charley a small, light shield and a dirk for close-quarter combat. “You want these, I’m guessing? Whatever you have planned—be careful. Remember, the goal is to calm things down, not stir up even more conflict.” Grigor lifted a warning eyebrow.

Charley grinned, only his chin and mouth visible beneath the visor. “Will do.”

Orson shook his head. “Oh, here we go.”

“Well, you better get going.” Grigor nodded over his shoulder to where the unconscious guard lay underneath a heap of tattered bedding. “I’d estimate you have about ten minutes before you need to make sure you ditch that armor and are nowhere near it.”

“Got it, thanks.”

Charley took a deep breath and turned toward the percolating crowd. Beads of sweat were already bubbling up on his forehead. There was minimal padding on the interior of the helmet, and the metal rotated freely over the dampness of his slick hair, sliding and slipping from side to side.

He jammed his hand down on the top of his helmet, avoiding the plume that jutted rooster-like straight into the air. He forced himself to walk in what he hoped was the confident manner of a soldier, but he felt ridiculous—and now wasn’t sure this idea was such a brilliant one.

It was too late to go back now. The crowd was parting to let him through; every eye, both Circumcellion and Low Score, turned toward him.

Charley came to a stop, directly in the middle of the no-man’s-land between the two groups. There was a hush. Even the prophet ceased speaking and turned to face him.

“Attention!” Charley lowered his voice a timbre, lifting his arm into the air. “It’s time to prepare to enter the arena. You will be going in shortly.”

He turned toward the Low Scores. “Please move back toward the fence.” Hesitantly at first, the Low Scores, conditioned to follow orders from authority, walked back to the fence on the far side.

He turned to the Circumcellions. “Please move b—”

“Stop,” the prophet interrupted, jutting his own scrawny arm straight into the air. “Why do you presume authority that only belongs to God?”

Charley faltered. The wild eyes of the prophet unnerved him. Even with the visor hiding most of his face, it seemed as if the prophet could see inside not just the helmet, but his soul.

The prophet raised his voice, a slight quaver echoing across the pen. “Hear this, all who trample on the needy, and enslave the poor of the land, dealing deceitfully with false balances, buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—you.” He pointed a bony finger directly at Charley. “You will perish in the rubble, the rocks will consume you!”

Charley took a step back, just one in a chain of mistakes he felt he had made since awakening. The pronouncement had unnerved him. The prophet was pointing at him because he was wearing the armor; the prophet couldn’t really be talking about him. But suddenly, Charley didn’t feel so certain.

The prophet stepped closer.

Flustered, Charley attempted to regain his calm. “Silence! Move back calmly against the fence as we prepare to enter the arena.”

The prophet continued speaking as if he hadn’t even heard Charley. “The end has come. The songs of the arena shall become wailings by the end of the day.” The prophet took another step closer, this time followed by his band of Circumcellions, buoyed forward by the fervor of their leader’s speech.

Charley’s hand drifted down to his dirk.

For the briefest moment, Charley understood what it must have been like to be a guard in the System. He even felt a slight pang of sympathy; when in uniform, facing a potentially explosive encounter, uncertain, scared—maybe even after all of the training—you react just like any other human. You do what you can to protect yourself.

Charley unsheathed the dirk.

A collective buzz crackled in the air, a sound like a wasp’s nest. In the background, Orson let out a sharp string of expletives that carried above the rising drone of the Circumcellions. Charley lowered his hand, but it was too late; Charley realized belatedly that once you draw your weapon, you can’t exactly just put it back and expect things to go back to the way they were.

“You lover of violence, you come against us with your weapons of steel, thinking that you can force us to do your evil will, but you cannot.” The prophet took another step toward Charley. “We do not fear death by your sword.” His eyes shone brightly. “We welcome it.”

Charley knew he had misjudged the situation, perhaps fatally: how exactly was he now to take on a mob of religious zealots who actually wanted to die for their cause? Charley fought the urge to turn his head toward the sound of Orson’s cursing, hoping that they might come and help, but he forced himself to look resolutely ahead.

A strapping man pushed his way past the prophet and ran up to Charley. He spread his arms wide, butted up into Charley’s personal space, and jutted out his neck. “Kill me now. I am not afraid to die. Just kill me now.” He slammed himself against Charley’s chest, his arms flailing.

Up close, Charley’s eyes widened in recognition. Without thinking, he blurted out, “Carter? What the—what are you doing here, with the Circumcellions? Why aren’t you with Marta?”

Confusion rippled across his wan features, but squinting closer at the narrow eye gap in the visor, Carter blinked rapidly. “Charley? Is that really you? What in the blazes are
you
doing in that armor?”

“Never mind that. Why aren’t you with Marta?” Charley tried to keep his voice low.

“Marta.” Carter spat out the name. “She booted me out, was going to try to sell me, but I escaped, and ended up with this lot somehow.” He looked over his shoulder at the Circumcellions behind, who were watching their encounter closely. “It took some doing to convince them I was one of them.”

“So that’s what you’re doing? You don’t really have a death wish? Because I could accommodate you.” An evil grin twisted Charley’s mouth beneath his visor. “I’ll help you earn their trust.” Pivoting his shoulder like a striking snake, Charley whipped the flat of his blade against the side of Carter’s head, and then kicked him in the stomach, using his heel to knock him back on his rump. Charley thought he deserved at least that for his part in their enslavement.

Striding to stand above Carter, he got an idea. Lifting his dirk above his head, as if to plunge it down into Carter’s heaving chest, Charley’s voice boomed out. “I will grant your desire to die as a martyr.” He extended his sword straight out toward the other Circumcellions. “I will give each of you the sweet bliss of death you so richly desire. But …” He lowered his blade slightly and looked directly at the prophet. “How do I know that once I have killed some, the rest of you won’t change your minds and decide to avenge their deaths?”

The prophet began to speak, his wily eyes darting back and forth. He was quickly drowned out by the clamor of the other Circumcellions, each trying to prove their commitment to the cause with shouts of “We would never! We seek death! Grant us death now!”

“Good!” Charley’s voice carried across the pen. “Then let us bring chains that we may bind you so that I can make sure of your promise. Then I will grant you the bliss of death by my sword!”

The prophet’s eyes bulged. He licked his dry, chapped lips furiously, seemingly at a loss for words. The Circumcellions surged forward. “Chain us! Let us prove our commitment—we rejoice in the binding of chains!” Two Circumcellions began to self-flagellate themselves with a length of chain. “Bind us now so that we might prove our resolve and be freed by death!”

“Sit down!” Charley commanded.

Turning quickly, Charley motioned to Grigor, Orson, Hank, and a cadre of other Low Scores who were already gathering chains, slave harnesses, and other instruments that had been used in their capture and transport into the pen.

Charley pointed at the Circumcellions, now seated on the ground—all except the prophet. “Bind them!”

The prophet’s knobby knees bowed outward. He shifted back and forth, swaying side to side, as if unable to decide if he should sit and join the others. His commitment to the cause appeared now to waver. Charley grunted in disgust. Like many cult leaders, the prophet’s loyalty to the cause, when peeled away to its rotten core, was revealed to be really just a commitment to himself.

“I said sit!” Charley took two quick steps forward, treading on Carter in the process, and then pushed the prophet to the ground.

Before the prophet could scramble up, Hank had already begun looping a length of chain around his skinny waist. Wisely, Orson stuffed a balled-up old shirt into the prophet’s mouth and quickly subdued his gaunt and emaciated body.

Grigor walked by Charley and spoke quietly out of the side of this mouth. “They’re all tied up.” He hesitated. “You aren’t really going to kill them, just sitting there like this, are you?”

“Nope,” Charley said, trying to make his voice sound flippant to mask the jolt of surprise from Grigor’s question. He wondered if Grigor really thought he was capable of the mass execution of a bunch of seated innocent people. He thought back to some of the horrific things that he had done and wondered what he was capable of. Who exactly was he becoming: someone out to protect the innocent by zeroing the System or someone intent on revenge at all costs?

“Okay …” Grigor said, his face still inscrutable.

“Do you have anymore of that candy?”

“What?” Grigor asked, taken aback.

Hank had walked up. “They’re all restrained.” He looked at Charley, his nose wrinkling up. “What’s the matter with you, Charley? Now is not the time to have a sweet tooth.”

“Not for me, you idiot.” He turned to Grigor. “Please?”

Grigor extended his massive bear paw of a hand. Charley sheathed his dirk; prompting shouts from the Circumcellions bound on the ground, and accepted the candy from Grigor. Just one of Grigor’s enormous handfuls of candy filled both of Charley’s cupped hands.

Charley rubbed his hands together, crunching the hard candy pieces together into a fine, sugary dust.

A smile began to play on Grigor face. “For the ants?”

Charley smiled in return. “Yes. The Circumcellions will still want martyrdom in the arena, I’m sure, but I think after an hour or so on the ground with the ants, they might be a little more prone to want to die fighting anyone in armor.”

He walked to the seated Circumcellions and began sprinkling the candy dust on the ground in a circle surrounding them. Some of the less steely-hearted Circumcellions began to shake visibly, as if Charley was a witch doctor preparing a sacrifice.