Lewis is not sure what happens next, only that he is on the floor without any breath after a fist or a foot pounds his stomach. His vision is returning, and when he clutches himself and gapes for breath and struggles upright, he sees the man walking to the far side of the bunkhouse and cranking a metal handle attached to the wall. An unearthly wail sounds, rising and falling. A siren.
The man cranks the handle another few seconds. He has a face like a knotted piece of driftwood. He wears a gray sweater with one sleeve coming unstitched. He kneels and collects the revolver from the floor and starts toward Lewis.
His progress halts when a body drops through the trapdoor and knocks him flat.
The lantern above wheels and the bunkhouse alternately glows and dims and Lewis barely has time to process the two bodies tangled on the floor before Colter climbs down the ladder. He lifts his prosthetic claw above his head and brings it down on one man, then the other, stilling and silencing them.
“This isn’t going well,” Lewis says.
“Time to run.”
They pound down the staircase and out the door and into the sea spray. There they see the red line of dawn brightening the horizon and hear the thudding footsteps of the dozen people running toward them.
Chapter 54
THOMAS NEVER WEARS black, but he does today. Everything—from his calfskin boots to his cotton pants to his silk shirt with silver buttons that jangle when he walks and embroidery curling like vines along the collar, the shoulders, the sleeves—is a shade of midnight. The hat, too, that perches on his head like a crow. He believes it fitting, given his duty this morning.
He departs his chambers and follows the staircase to the main level, his hand hissing along the railing. Many servants hurry down the marble-floored hallway framed by dark wood and festooned with oil portraits. They bunch flowers into vases. They fill lanterns with linseed oil. They climb ladders to pin streamers from the ceiling. They are getting ready for the ball, the costume party he will throw this evening, the first he has hosted since his inauguration. It will serve as an inoculation, just the dose of goodness they need, with enough liquor and water to drown in. And dressed as they will be—as swans and wolves and dragonflies and devils—they can happily pretend themselves away from their troubles and come together as a community.
The servants do not greet him. Their eyes fall and they stiffen when he moves past.
Vincent approaches and rattles off a series of questions about where he would like to set up the stage for the band, about hors d’oeuvres and drinks and any number of other things that Thomas waves away.
“I can’t be bothered with that now.” He has other business to attend to.
He finds Slade waiting for him outside. A hot wind stings his eyes and the sun instantly reddens his skin. A single wispy cloud dashes across the face of the sun and for a moment filters the light, making the Sanctuary go from sandy yellow to wintry gray. And then the cloud is gone and all the metal and glass seem to blaze even brighter than before.
Slade holds out the whip, coiled around his hand like something alive. Thomas takes it and his hand drops with the weight. “You’re sure this is a good idea?”
“As a show of force, yes.”
A pod of deputies escorts him through the Dome’s gates and into the streets he has not visited for weeks. People stop to stare. No one says anything, not yet, but he can hear them muttering and can feel their eyes flaying him to the bone.
It is only a short walk to the whipping post. He is relieved to find it shadowed by the museum, some reprieve from the heat. Only a few dozen huddle around it. The news was announced this morning: a terrorist would be punished. No mention was made of Thomas’s appearance—they didn’t want to tempt a mob—so the crowd buzzes when he takes the platform.
A boy is chained to the whipping post. He kneels before it, his arms and body held upright by restraints, because his legs are swollen, blackened, broken from his fall. Thomas feels a twinge of pity.
Slade addresses them all. He points to the boy chained to the whipping post. The boy caught trespassing in the prison. A terrorist, Slade calls him. A terrorist who intended to release those jailed there. “He will be justly punished—by none other than our mayor.”
Thomas feels their eyes on him now. They despise him, he knows. They want him dead, he knows. They want his brains dashed out, his bones broken, his eyes gouged. They would sever his head and tar it to slow the rot and parade it through the streets and cheer when the birds roosted and shat upon it. He is serving himself, of course—there is no other way to justify his baths, his clothes, his meals—but so is he serving them. He is doing the best he can. He does not punish unless someone gets in the way of his vision, the vision for which they elected him into office. Until the rains come, this is the only way they can survive, strictly. Why can’t they understand that?
He hears someone call out the name Meriwether and he can’t help but think, and not for the first time, this is Meriwether’s Dome, this is Meriwether’s city, this is Meriwether’s place, not mine. He stares up at the museum—Lewis’s museum—and thinks he sees a face in the window. As if his old friend has returned to mock him too. He tries to look closer but is quickly blinded by the sun cresting its roof. It spills its light like a splash of magma across the platform where he stands. The temperature spikes.
His discomfort hurries him along, reminds him of his task. With a shake of his wrist, he uncurls the whip. He will do his duty. By whipping the boy, he will whip them all. The sooner he is done with this, the sooner he can escape the heat, the sooner he can return to the Dome, the sooner he can bathe the dust and the blood from his skin, the sooner he can forget about this moment and focus on the next, the party.
The whip is heavy in his hand. Its tip looks like a frayed nerve ending. The boy twists his face to look at him, his face pinched with pain, and Thomas says, “Turn around please.”
A fly lands on the boy’s face, tasting the corner of his mouth, and he blows it off.
“I said turn around, boy.”
“My name’s Simon.”