They put us outside for an hour after lunch. They called it “freshening.” The door was locked behind us and three guards were left to watch the thirteen. One carried one of the large barreled guns; the others had things attached to their belts that I could not identify.
The yard was stone and concrete, with short weeds growing where the stonework cracked. Three sides were exterior walls of the buildings, while the fourth was a wire fence looking out beyond the border of the State proper.
The other Unforgiven wandered slowly, talking in groups. I walked to the fence and stuck my fingers through, to the outside. We were still high up, maybe fifty meters above true ground. I could see trees and, beyond them, a lake.
It wasn’t our lake.
I remembered that day I was sick. I didn’t go to Abbey Spire. You went to the bakery, as always. Left at sunrise to start the ovens. Midmorning I thought I needed sun, so I took a canteen and made my slow way to the lakeshore. I was lying under a tree, dozing in the shade, when our heavy, grey blanket fell on me.
“It’s too cold out for you here today,” you said.
“How did you find me?” I asked, opening my eyes.
You laughed and sat. You would have cuffed my head if you didn’t know I was ill. “I had you watched.”
“What? How?” I asked, sitting up. Then, “Why?” That was probably the most pertinent.
“You honestly don’t realize you sit by the lake every time you get sick?”
“I do?”
“You do, metalman.”
You gave me tea and bread covered with herbed butter. You said the herbs would make me better. Then I slept with my head on your leg while you watched the breeze on the water into the afternoon.
*
I was still there at the fence, my fingers half free while the rest of me remained imprisoned, when Patches appeared. I felt him study me, but I did not want to come back from those memories.
He cleared his throat. “You’re making them uncomfortable.”
“Me?” I asked.
“It isn’t normal. Everyone else – except Kodiak maybe – hung by the guards when they got here. Or followed someone around. They were nervous, started looking for friends. For protection. You didn’t say a word all lunch, and now you’re standing here at the fence. It isn’t normal.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“So there’s two schools of thought,” Patches continued, leaning on the fence. “Some are saying you got whacked pretty hard by the greysuits on your way in, and you don’t know where you are. The others are saying you’re a crazed, homicidal maniac, and you’re planning how you’re going to kill us.”
I looked at my fingertips, still hanging over the expanse. I had always thought they were for building, for fixing. “Which do you think?” I asked.
“I think you’re planning to kill us,” he said. “But they voted me over here. If you go all feral and start eating me or something, then the rest know to scatter.”
I laughed. “I’m a janitor.”
“Oh right, you said that. And this place is full of mops and buckets. They make us clean once a week. Is that how you’ll do it? With two mops and a bucket?” He was smiling.
“I was looking at the lake.”
“Don’t,” he said, his tone shifting. “That’s not your life anymore. Better to face the wall. Then you won’t be disappointed when you wake in the middle of the night.”
I left my fingers poking through the fence. I breathed the air. I needed to remember. This was not my home.
“Why two mops?” I asked.
Patches laughed. “My imagination can run wild. Sorry. But are you a wizard with a mop? You could really help us out on Tuesdays. Not that we’ll be here any more Tuesdays.”
“I had people to do that for me.”
“Ah,” he said. “Head janitor.”
“Yeah.”
“Spire janitor?”
“Yeah.”
“What does the head janitor do in a Spire?”
“Anything. They’d keep us in the basement as much as they could. Plenty of pumps, batteries, and generators down there. But when a building is a kilometer high, you can’t stuff all the infrastructure at the bottom.”
He exhaled, a gentle laugh, as if to acknowledge how little he knew of such things. “Ever go to the top?”
It was always the question.
“Twice,” I said.
“Which one?”
“Abbey.”
His eyes moved, but we couldn’t see it from here. “What’s it like?”
“A spotlight went out. Just an aged-out bulb. I could have sent anyone, but I told them I’d do it myself. Foreman’s privilege. You get out there, in a harness, all ropes and clips. Doubled up. You wouldn’t believe the wind – so cold and so strong. It tugs at you; it tells you you can fly if you’ll just lean into it and… jump. And there’s a primal terror that no amount of ropes and clips can whisper away.
“It was maybe ten minutes before I took my first step. Another 20 to climb the infrastructure and find the bulb. A minute to replace the bulb. Then three hours to look.”
Despite his warnings, Patches now looked out over the trees with me. His eyes were distant, imagining.
“I swear the Earth curves up there. The whole State. Its Spires look like the tips of a mountain range. I saw the ocean. Water, right up to the curve. The other way, mountains. I’m not a poet; I can’t tell you what it was like. Just…I spent three hours, looking.”
“You said twice?”
I smiled at the memory. “I told them a bird had gotten into a circuit box. Pulled it apart and built a nest. That I needed more tools and parts. Went back up the next day.”
Patches barked a laugh. “That settles it. You aren’t a killer, just crazy.”
“Crazy?” I asked. “Yeah. I don’t like heights.”