Her speech finished, she placed a motherly hand on X’s cheek. Her palm was raw, yet he felt its warmth.
“I have enjoyed our conversation,” Ripper said. “It’s been years since I spoke so many coherent words in a row.”
“Thank you for your counsel,” said X.
He smiled gratefully, and found he was not ready to let her go.
“Ripper,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to say,” he began awkwardly, “I wanted to say that I very much like your dress.”
“Well, thank you, kind sir,” she said, looking pleased and brushing some dirt off the decaying embroidery. “In truth, it was never particularly dear to me. But I did not know, when I laced it up on that last morning, that I was dressing for eternity.”
The Russian twisted the key in the door and entered the cell. The lantern threw a faint light on his powder-blue tracksuit.
“Is time,” he said. “Party over. Now ve cry, boo-hoo.”
Ripper gave X a final nod, then contorted her face into the mask of insanity she had invented for the Lowlands. It was as if someone entirely new inhabited her body now.
X watched in admiration as she spun around, hissed at the guard like a feral cat, and swept back to her cell.
The days passed, but X’s bruises were slow to fade—his skin remained a landscape of purple, yellow, and blue. Soon, though, he was strong enough to pace in his cell and do simple exercises. He still daydreamed about Zoe constantly. But he managed to divert his thoughts, as a town might divert a river, from losing her to finding her again.
One day—as usual, he could not have said if it was morning or night—X awoke to the sound of a rusty key scraping in the lock. A squad of guards stood huddled outside. They were the same ones who had abandoned him on the plain. The squat chief in the turtleneck and red tie stepped forward, and helped X off the ground.
“Been meanin’ to apologize, I ’ave,” he said. “Me and the men behaved poorly with respect to you. Cowardly, like. You deserve betta.”
The guard was only groveling because he’d learned that X’s mother had been a lord. Still, X had no appetite for cruelty.
“Thank you,” he said. “I could not ask for a more sincere apology.”
“Been practicin’,” said the guard.
The guard gestured for X to follow, and steered him toward the wide rock staircase. The prisoners rattled their bars and hollered as they passed.
“Where do you take me?” X asked.
A cloud passed over the guard’s face.
“Promised I wouldn’t tell,” he said.
“I understand,” said X.
“But seein’ as how you been so gracious ’bout the other matter, I’ll tell you anyway,” said the guard. “The waterfall what feeds the rivva—you know it?”
“Yes,” said X.
“Well, behin’ it,” said the guard, “there’s a tunnel, an’ at the end of the tunnel there’s a kind of meeting hall, like. Very grand, it is. The lords do their business there—their shoutin’ and lawmakin’ and whatnot.” He paused as X negotiated the first step down. “I’m told they’re all waitin’ for you. They been handlin’ assorted matters all day, but you’re to be their main course.”
The waterfall rained down so fiercely that X could hardly penetrate it. Finally, with the help of two guards, he emerged into a long stone passageway he had never seen before.
No one spoke. The only noises were the crackling of torches, the echoing of boots, and the dripping of garments as they walked. X knew they must be drawing close to the meeting hall. So many lords congregating together sent out an unmistakable energy—a pulse, like a hive of bees.
As if to confirm X’s suspicion, the passageway began to transform. The walls had started out as ugly, rough-hewn rock. But the farther the company walked, the more polished the tunnel became until it shone like silver. There were enormous gems embedded in the wall now, too. They flickered and winked as the guards passed by with their torches.
At the end of the tunnel, there was an ornately carved blue door. Two sentinels with terrifying black rifles stood in front of it.
The sentinels were a higher species than the fleshy, bumbling guards and barely acknowledged them. They turned to the door with choreographed precision and pulled it open without a word.
X passed through the door, and was hit with a burst of light. He and the guards had entered a stunning white amphitheater made entirely of marble. The lords—hundreds of them—sat in a circle around a small stage, their clothes so colorful and fine they looked almost liked plumage. They stopped talking when they saw X. They watched as he was led down the steps to the stage.
The stage was empty except for a single stone seat and a podium. The guards, trying to impress the lords, pushed X roughly into the chair, and streamed single file back up the steps.
X’s eyes slowly adjusted to the light. The walls were like the inside of a pyramid—carved with thousands, maybe millions, of words and drawings, as well as an immense map that seemed to represent every inch of the prison. The ceiling was a huge, transparent dome, above which the Lowlands’ wide river rushed without a sound.
X hadn’t been seated long when the stone chair began to revolve so that no matter where the lords were seated they had a chance to inspect him. The crowd quickly bored of this, however, and broke into a hundred conversations. The chair continued to turn. It moved slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. X listened to the belligerent shouting, the jagged laughter, the angry stomping of feet. He watched queasily as the faces streamed by in a never-ending loop. He was waiting for the trial to begin, and then it struck him…