finally returned to his table, loudly bemoaning that the domino game was getting too rich for his blood, he and the teen had ordered a plate of food and discussed Doc’s conclusions while they waited for news on Krysty’s condition.
“The truth of it is,” Doc began, “I do not think anyone hereabouts actually knows what the dickens that towering doohickey is for.”
I N THE UPSTAIRS ROOMS, Mildred and J.B. were looking at each other while Ryan gently eased Krysty away from him so that he could see her face.
“What did you say?” Ryan asked as though he disbelieved his own ears.
“I just want to know why everyone is screaming,” Krysty said quietly.
Mildred spoke up, her question holding no challenge, no judgment. “Who’s screaming, Krysty? Are we screaming?”
“No.” Krysty breathed the word, shaking her head. “Not you. Out there. Outside. Can’t you…Can’t you hear them? The screams?”
J.B. addressed the room. “Krysty’s always had real sensitive hearing, ” he stated. But Krysty was shaking her head, her vibrant hair falling over her eyes.
“What, Krysty?” Mildred asked. “What is it?”
“It’s not far away,” Krysty told them, unconsciously biting at her bottom lip, tugging a piece of skin away. “It’s right here, all around us. You must be able…you must be able to hear it. Tell me you can hear it. Tell me.”
No one answered, and the room remained in silence for a long moment, the only sounds coming from revelers downstairs. Krysty’s breathing was hard, ragged, and it was clear that she was trying to hold back her frustrated anger.
Finally, Mildred reached across for her, and Ryan moved out of the way, stepping from the bed. “You’re okay,” Mildred assured Krysty. “It’s nothing, I’m sure. It’s nothing, Krysty, I promise you.”
Quietly, J.B. led Ryan into the adjoining room and pushed the door between them closed. “This ain’t nothing,” the Armorer told Ryan flatly in the darkness.
Ryan half nodded, half shook his head, the leather patch over his left eye catching the moonlight from the window. “What do we do now, old friend?” he asked quietly.
“She’s not one of us and no more crazy right now than that old coot downstairs,” J.B. said, the trace of a smile on his lips. “We’ve carried Doc when he’s been ranting and raving and vision questing all over time and space. You know we have. We’ll take care of Krysty.”
J.B. turned to the window of the darkened room, looking out at the street. There was a party atmosphere out there now, maybe fifty or sixty people milling around. Street vendors had appeared, selling roasted nuts from open barrels of fire, hunks of meat on sticks.
Ryan joined J.B. at the window, taking in the scene. “Quite the party ville we’ve found ourselves in,” he said, not especially addressing the comment to the Armorer.
J.B. nodded. “I wonder how much of it is connected with that,” he said, and his index finger tapped at the glass, pointing to the towering scaffold in the distance.
Ryan turned to look at him, concern furrowing his brow. “You think that tower thing could be connected to Krysty?”
“It’s all connected, Ryan,” J.B. assured him, as he continued to point at the unmoving tower outside the ville walls. “You just gotta connect enough of the dots.”
D OC, R YAN AND J.B. jostled through the crowds as they made their way along Fairburn’s main street. Night had long since fallen, and with it the temperature, turning their sweaty afternoon trek into a distant memory. Though the sky was dark, the street was well-lit by oil lamps and naked flames atop haphazard lampposts.
More than seventy people milled around, and tense excitement was in the air as they waited for the dogfights to begin. People were still arriving, out-of-towners on horses that they weaved through the crowd toward a corral set up at the end of the dusty street.
“You know,” Doc pronounced as the companions joined the forming line outside the large, circular shack at the end of the street, “I am starting to conclude that this is not such a bad place.” Ryan and J.B. looked at him quizzically, until he continued. “The people seem friendly and well-nourished, they have food and they’re making a go of entertaining folk, too. Mayhap a nice place to settle, build a shack.” He shrugged.
Ryan’s expression remained stern. “And the price is Krysty?”
Doc sighed. “She’s getting better, Ryan. She’s going to be fine, I’m sure.”
Ryan nodded.
J.B. spoke up as the line finally started to shuffle through the entrance to the circular barn. “Just keep alert, see what you can find out about the thing out there,” he reminded them, referring to the towering scaffold.
The group had had a hasty meeting after Krysty had woken. They had been in Fairburn for three hours, and the purpose of the tower had nagged at J.B. the whole time, rattling in the back of his brain like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Doc’s findings, or lack thereof, had only served to worsen that feeling in the Armorer. Mildred had determined that Krysty would be fine; other than the auditory hallucinations—acousma, Mildred had called it—Krysty seemed normal now, just exhausted. The latter was probably down to dehydration, and, Mildred argued, that may even be causing her acousma.
“A dose of bed rest and you’ll feel much better,” Mildred had assured Krysty, though she had insisted on staying at the woman’s side, just in case. Jak had agreed to stay with the women while the other three went off to speak with the locals.
“Roll up, roll up,” the barker at the entrance called as Ryan’s group reached the front of the line. He held out a rubber stamp glistening with dark ink and asked them for the minimal entry fee. Doc paid with some of the jack he had received at the bar.
The atmosphere inside the circular building was stuffy, despite an open skylight at the center of the roof. In the middle of the room was a round pit, twelve feet in diameter with a floor covered in straw and sawdust. Two mastiff dogs were held in cages at opposite sides of this arena, and they growled at each other meanly through the metal grilles of their holding pens. A low wooden fence surrounded the pit, thin struts acting as bars to prevent the animals from getting out once uncaged. The rest of the room was built with a regular incline, raising the floor from the pit to the outer walls, providing the standing crowd a good view of the action without obscuring the people behind them. Two men worked through the crowd, money and stubs exchanging hands.
“Which one do you like?” J.B. asked Doc and Ryan.
Doc craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the vicious-looking mastiffs. One of the dogs had an ugly scar across its flank, and a streak of white fur covered its left eye, while the other had a dark, dappled coat of fur, browns and grays and blacks, like it had been rolled in ash. “I am no expert in such matters,” he admitted, “but it seems that the one on the left is the spitting image of our esteemed leader.”
Noticing the white patch of fur across its eye and the scarring on its body, Ryan laughed in agreement. “That’s the one we should bet on,” he agreed, clapping Doc on the back.
J.B. went to speak with one of the bookies
