Elegy in Red

Two

Chapter 2

The sunlight hit him straight in the face, scratching cruelly against his eyes as he walked out of the inn and into the open. The thick July heat had permeated everywhere by now, slithering under clothes and roofs and sparing virtually no one from its clutches. With the sunrays dripping like molten gold over the whole of Myth, and the ground throbbing in indignation beneath the feet of its children, the air had become almost unbearably thick with the smell of cattle, food and spices. It was amazing how busy the town could be considering the temperatures. Dozens of people were still hurrying back and forth even in this heat, carrying buckets, baskets, mattocks and hammers, completely oblivious to the lone dark figure that had just emerged from Jack’s inn. And this was precisely how Jin wanted it.

Giving the main road one last glance, Jin turned around and headed for the makeshift stables attached to the inn’s back. It was nearing noon – the time of the day when the central pillory was usually put to use for all the angry mobs to relieve their rage on somebody. As far as Jin knew, the podium had been mostly unoccupied the past week or so, as the few culprits that were currently sentenced in the local prison were either on a death row which, when carried out, dragged on too long with its formalities and ended too quickly for the audience to enjoy, or had already gone through the humiliation of being exposed to the town’s wrath. Whoever had the misfortune to end up locked up to the crowd’s mercy these next couple of days, hardly stood a chance to surviving his punishment with the sun blazing hot and mighty above his head and the peasants wandering the streets with bloodthirsty and vicious looks on their faces.

So, naturally, noon was always a bad time to come downtown. He’d already taken a risk by coming here protected only by the deceitfully secure curtain of anonymity – if he overstayed his visit, he was running the chance of getting dragged into the mess when the central square got swarmed with people, driven by their perverse desire for justice. From aside, sure, it could be fun to watch the crowds seethe (he’d done it before, though the idea probably hadn’t been one of his best), but observing the roaring beast of human bodies that was gnawing at the pillory with its hundred hands and hundred mad eyes, had only convinced him to stay away from the square at such times. Mobs were a powerful and uncontrollable force. All it would take was for some embittered idiot to catch a glimpse of his face, and he would be looking at the possibility of being ripped to pieces before they even managed to lynch him.

He lead his horse out of the stables with one hand tangled in the reins and the other holding the edge of the hood lower over his eyes. The heat was viciously yellow above him, like a ball of fire that followed closely over his head, but even though most people who passed by him were either groaning or cursing the high temperatures, he found himself able to ignore it. Now that he was out of the inn, he turned around and slinked into the narrow back streets without really bothering to climb on the back of his stallion. The route he had chosen was longer than the one that went straight through the center, but it provided less unwanted attention. Besides, he wasn’t exactly in a hurry.

As he languidly made his way down the alley between two lines of creaky old houses, Jin felt the distinct itch of dissatisfaction coming back to him - an unreasonable, haunting thing that was only amplified by his rewinding the conversation he’d had with Jack. To say the day hadn’t gone as Jin’d hoped would be an understatement. The inn-keeper had only bored him, telling his choppy tales and choppy observations half of which were not even true. Jin had wanted more than that – it was hard to pinpoint exactly what that ‘more’ was, but now that he’d not had it, he was mildly exasperated.

The noises started fading behind him, swallowed by the echo of his own steps and the clank of the horse’s hoofs over the paving blocks, and soon enough he could clearly hear the creak of old windows being pushed open in the distance, and the scramble of invisible bare soles as children chased through nearby roads to fulfill errands. He stopped by a small fountain not too far away from the main road and let the horse drink while he splashed some cold water on the back of his neck under the hood. The alleys were empty and broiling around him, the houses almost disemboweled in their deathly silence, but although his skin was on fire just like every human skin would be in these conditions, Jin felt numb to the sizzling rays of the sun, apathetic. He allowed himself one second to ponder over what he was going to do once he got back home. His thoughts drifted to the slums and the skinny, badly made-up wenches he sometimes fetched for his bed, but today the pull didn’t come to him like it usually would, a sense of annoyance replacing the potential excitement when he recalled the way the women struggled to hold up their smiles, how they avoided looking him in the eye, how they shrank and cowered when he squeezed their throats or left bright, swollen bruises over their pale gaunt flesh.