“Poor sick wretch,” Josiah said. “I want to make you well. My penitents came to me riddled with corruption and I worked their mortal bodies to effect a cure. Some were harmed in the refinement of their minds, some were forced into painful new shapes, but mustn’t the sculptor crack the stone to pull from within it a more pleasing form? Must the surgeon cease his cutting at the first cries of pain?”

“We’re leaving,” Amy said. “We’re taking our friends and getting out of here.”

“I would be violating my oath if I let you go while you are still so sick,” the warden continued. “My patrons could apprehend neither my methods nor my mission, and so they tried to snatch my penitents away before they were cured. I could not let that happen then and I will not let it happen now.”

Amy looked at the water on the floor and a realization dawned. “What did you do?” she asked.

“You would do better to ask how I saved them. I made the ultimate sacrifice. My warders took them to the basement workrooms, and we locked the doors. The ones who would not cooperate were gently shut up inside coffins so they would not disturb the others. Then I opened the sluice gates and let the river sing them to sleep, as a mother takes a sick babe into her arms.”

“You drowned them,” Amy said.

“I hid them in the curtains of time. All three hundred and eighteen of them. I pulled the river over their heads like a veil, and then I opened my own throat and waited until I could bring them back and cure them. I understand it caused much inconvenience to my sponsors. I understand they could not find the bodies and had to pack coffins with river mud and bury them to quiet the mewling families. But I have outlasted them all. These sick men—sick with laziness, sick with misunderstanding, sick with lunacy, sick with deviancy—they shall be cured. I will not cease my labors until they are made whole, even if I must begin my work afresh every night until the end of time. Is that not a commitment worthy of celebration? Is not my mind magnificent?”

As he shrieked and crowed, Amy looked at the man-shapes surrounding them. Their faces were obscured, draped with filth and darkness, but she didn’t feel that they were evil. Instead she felt a profound sorrow for them. These prisoners had served their sentences long ago. These poor lost souls, never paroled, never resting, doomed to repeat the same pointless tasks over and over. They hadn’t put her in the chair because they hated her. They had put her in the chair because they didn’t know what else to do with her. Their guilt had kept them enslaved to this place long after their sentences had been served.