by A. M. Manay
Shiloh made her way down the hall. She passed a dingy washroom containing several tubs and a row of privies. Small rooms lined the corridor on either side, open doorframes offering no privacy. Each room contained a pair of beds wide enough to sleep two each. The small bedchambers were lit by a single magical lantern, and a solitary, high slit of a window. A trunk at the foot of each bed and a stand with pitcher and basin completed the furnishings.
Oh, Gods. No one will be willing to sleep with me, she despaired. I'll wind up on the floor.
Women glanced at her as she passed by, then quickly turned away. She recognized several. They had attended Queen Zina. Esta is having her revenge.
At last, she came to cell thirty-seven. She heard loud crying from within. Steeling herself, she stepped through the doorway.
A girl with clouded eyes raised her head. “Shiloh! Finally! We've been waiting for you for weeks.” The other girl’s weeping decreased markedly in volume.
Shiloh cocked her head to the side until recognition dawned. One of the soothsayers of Mount Tarwin! “Sister Bluebell? What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, like I just said,” the girl replied patiently. She was no longer clad in the sky-blue robes she had worn when Shiloh first met her. Bluebell looked otherwise unchanged.
“No, I meant, why would they arrest you, a sister of Mount Tarwin?” Shiloh asked.
“They caught me not wearing a purple patch while on a mission for my Mother Superior,” Bluebell answered, eyes crinkling mischievously. “I asked them how I was supposed to know I wasn't in compliance with the Cleanliness Laws, being that I’m blind. That did not go over well.”
“I wager it didn't.” Shiloh laughed.
“Of course, the real reason is that the Patriarch wants to show Mount Tarwin a display of his power,” Bluebell elaborated. “Come, sit,” she commanded. “You will share my bed.” She patted the patched woolen blanket beside her.
Shiloh smiled. “Thank you. Truly. I feared no one would have me.” As she sat next to the seer, she dropped her sack to the floor and looked for the first time at their other roommate.
“Lady Hana!” Shiloh gasped.
The girl was almost unrecognizable. Her blond hair cropped short as everyone else’s and her face streaked with tears, she could have been mistaken for a street urchin rather than the young widow of the last Lord Kepler.
Hana laughed bitterly. “How did you get pinned for a heretic? Little Miss Temple herself.” She sniffed noisily and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“I fear they're mostly punishing Silas,” Shiloh sighed, ignoring Hana’s tone without comment. “They didn't really explain. They told me I wasn't arrested, merely summoned. But this looks like some strange sort of prison, so . . .”
“We're in what they call the ‘Penitents’ Hostel.’ It’s for people not slated for execution or lifetime indenture. The aristocracy of the damned, if you will. We’re ‘guests’ of the Patriarch until he decides to let us go, when he judges us sufficiently cleansed of our sin,” Bluebell explained. “Or, more accurately, when he has sent whatever message our incarceration was meant to send. Most of these women are nobility whose families crossed either Queen Esta or the Patriarch, or both.”
“I figured as much. I thought I saw Lady Mosspeak,” Shiloh mentioned.
“She's as big a mess as I am,” Hana replied, gesturing toward her swollen features. “She cannot believe how low she has fallen, and she cannot find any reason to hope.”
“Why is she even here?” Shiloh asked. “Esta has no quarrel with her that I can think of.”
“She thinks Esta hates her for loving Loor too much. And they want something to hold over her husband,” Hana explained. She sounded almost like her old self for a moment, sharing gossip the way she had adored to at court.
“And why do you have a purple patch?” Shiloh asked Hana, suddenly noticing that the former Lady Kepler had her own wine-colored teardrop marring her dress.
“I'm a heretic, or so they say. Everyone here has a filthy Unclean patch,” Hana spat. “So you’re normal for once.”
A bell rang. Bluebell stood. “Bring your bowl and spoon,” she directed Shiloh, who swiftly complied. “It is time to dine.”
“Time to vomit, more like,” Hana groused, but she picked up her own bowl nonetheless.
The three young women joined the procession in the corridor. Bluebell walked with an otherworldly surety that provoked looks of fear from the other “penitents.” The barred door through which Shiloh had arrived creaked opened, and Shiloh followed Bluebell down for what seemed like forever, many more steps than Shiloh remembered climbing. More women joined them at each floor they passed.
“The common folk,” Bluebell explained. “They have separate dormitories. As do the fallen nuns and priestesses not condemned to the Pit.”
“You mean ones who have gotten pregnant, but aren't heretics?” Shiloh asked softly, seeing that a few of them had rounded bellies.
“Aye,” Bluebell confirmed. “Or caught stealing, or gambling, and the drunks. Your more ordinary transgressions. They serve a term and return to a convent better behaved. That's the theory, anyway. You will see most of them in the Script Shop.”
Shiloh was about to ask how Bluebell knew her work assignment, then remembered to whom she was speaking. The women of Mount Tarwin tended to know a great deal from sources not of this world.
“Why aren't you with the priestesses, then?” Shiloh whispered.
Bluebell grinned. “Because I was born a princess of Vreeland.”
“Oh,” Shiloh mouthed silently.
They descended further, and the air that had been too cold grew uncomfortably hot.
“They make us walk through the Pit to get to the dining hall,” Bluebell explained. “It serves the double purpose of taunting the condemned and reminding us to be grateful for our relative comfort and to do nothing to endanger it. You must brace yourself. And stay clear of the edge.”
Oh, Gods. Where in the hell have you brought me?
A Dangerous Creature
“Master, there are pages missing in this book!” young Shiloh cried.
Edmun’s head shot up. “What’s that, poppet?”
“I was reading this history book about the Southlands, and these pages are gone,” she explained. She walked over to her teacher and set the ancient volume carefully before him.
“It looks like they tore out the section on Brother Elton, the great wandmaker. I swiped this book from the palace many years ago, you see. Someone must have gone through the royal library and purged the records long before my time.”
“Why would they remove mention of him?” Shiloh asked.
“Because he was a convicted heretic, and the church wanted to keep hurting him even after the poor man died. The wandmakers keep the tales of him alive, but in secret,” Edmun explained. “He was the greatest wandmaker who ever lived, and a wielder of steel. But he was more than a wandmaker. He was an inventor, an architect, a builder. He oversaw repairs to the great Gate across the entrance of the Bay. And while he was imprisoned for heresy, he built the Citadel,” Edmun explained.
“Was he really a heretic?” Shiloh asked, eyes wide.
Edmun shrugged. “I have no idea. The Patriarch had most of Elton’s writings destroyed. His crime was promoting unorthodox ideas about the arrangement of the cosmos, and they accused him of trying to overthrow the Lords of Heaven. But perhaps he loved the Gods just as much as we do. There is no way to know. And as a final act of creation, the Citadel is rather impressive.”
Edmun stood and pulled another book off of the shelf. He found what he was looking for and showed it to Shiloh.
“That is the Patriarch’s Citadel?” she asked.
“Indeed,” her teacher confirmed.
“It’s beautiful, in a sort of terrifying way,” she declared.
“Ha! That it is, poppet. That it is. Pray you never have cause to lay eyes upon it.”
They came to a st
one bridge suspended over a deep chasm. Below them, in darkness broken only by scattered torches along the walls, Shiloh could make out dimly the figures of scores of people, perhaps more than a hundred.
The nun leading their column raised a wand, and for a minute, bright light bloomed to afford her charges the chance to gaze upon the fate they had heretofore escaped. The men and women below covered their eyes at the sudden brightness. Shiloh could see now that they were dressed in rags—shoeless, filthy. There were no beds, no blankets, no chairs. No bowls, no spoons. Some were obviously wounded, from beatings, Shiloh assumed, or work accidents untreated by healers. Her heart caught in her throat.
“Steady on,” Bluebell warned her softly. “Eyes straight ahead. Show no sympathy.”
Shiloh attempted to comply. She exhaled with relief when the light faded and they resumed their march to supper.
They stood in line for a long time to get their bowls of stew and hunks of bread, then sat in silence on rough-hewn benches to eat after a painfully lengthy prayer. The room was packed with row upon row of imprisoned women of every age and appearance. Some of them looked too young to even have had their first courses. Some were old enough to be toothless. They supped under the watchful eyes of sisters in gray, their wands at the ready for any sign of trouble.
Shiloh ate quickly and gratefully. It was the first hot meal she had had since Northgate Castle, and though the fare was rough and not terribly tasty, it was nourishing enough, and not so different from the meals of her childhood. There had been no one to teach her to cook but her father, after all. Hana picked at her meal until Bluebell elbowed her in the ribs.
“You want another punishment detail, foolish girl?” the seer hissed. “Last time you went on a hunger strike they made you clean the latrine.”
Hana began mechanically shoving the food into her mouth. Bluebell shook her head.
After the lamps in the cells went out, only the dim light from the corridor remained. Wind whistled through the glassless window, and Shiloh said a prayer of thanks for the blankets she shared with Bluebell.
“You will be warmer closer to me, Shiloh,” Bluebell murmured with an amused tone.
Shiloh scooted over until she was huddled against the other woman’s back. “Thank you,” she whispered in relief.
“I’ve been inviting Hana for weeks. She refused, the snob,” Bluebell snorted.
“I can hear you, you know,” Hana whispered hotly.
“I know,” Bluebell whispered back. Shiloh stifled a giggle. “You’ll come around in the end,” the soothsayer continued. “We’ve got to stick together to survive this place. Besides, I’ve seen it.”
“Seen what?” Hana whispered, intrigued in spite of herself.
“Seen you stop acting like you’re the only one who doesn’t deserve to be here,” Bluebell answered tartly.
There was a silence. “Is that how I seem?” Hana finally asked.
“Pretty much,” Bluebell replied.
Hana made a strange sound. “Don’t you see? I cry all the time because I know I deserve to be here. I’ve been a terrible person all my life. It took my husband’s suicide to make me see it. It took losing everything. I’ve gotten exactly what I deserve. I wish I had never been born.”
Shiloh’s heart ached as Hana began to weep again. She reluctantly abandoned Bluebell’s warmth and crossed the room to Hana’s bed. The former Lady Kepler made no protest as Shiloh slipped beneath her blanket and took the sobbing girl into her arms.
“You weren’t as bad as all that,” Shiloh assured her, patting her back.
“I was awful to you,” Hana protested. “I was awful to everyone.”
“I’ve had a lot worse,” Shiloh countered. “What matters is that you know better now. And I assure you, nobody deserves this place. None of us. Evil permeates the very walls.”
Gradually, Hana’s tears subsided, and when her breathing deepened, Shiloh snuck back to Bluebell’s bed.
“That was kind of you,” Bluebell whispered, still awake. “Kinder than I’ve been to her, anyway.”
“She can be hard to take,” Shiloh said, absolving the seer. “Believe me, I know. But she really has lost everything. There’s no point in holding a grudge now. She had awfully far to fall.”
After a pause, Bluebell replied, “That’s their fundamental mistake, the people running this hellhole. If they take everything away from us, then we have nothing to lose.”
Shiloh smiled grimly. “And a woman with nothing to lose is a dangerous creature.”
Shiloh stood at the back of the line filing into the Script Shop. A number of the faces around her were familiar, belonging to courtiers who had, evidently, fallen out of favor. None would meet her eyes. They were a mix of men and women, though most of the men were elderly. She wondered if the young ones were assigned to more physical labor.
As the others took seats at their desks, Shiloh stood hesitantly in front of the monk overseeing the scribes. The room was rather lovely, to her surprise. A large hearth kept it warm. I guess it would not do to have the ink freeze. Floor to ceiling windows bathed it in natural light, which she supposed made sense, given the task at hand. It was the first sunlight she’d seen since her arrival the day before.
“Pardon me, honored brother, but this is my first day. My name is Shiloh Teethborn. Where would you like me to sit?” she asked.
His dark eyes flicked upward, lingering on first her hair, then her hook. He pushed a scrap of parchment toward her, along with a pen.
“Write something,” he ordered. “Let me see if I need to throw you back.”
Shiloh bent to comply, writing her favorite verse from the Tarwah, from the Scroll of the Mother. For she who has known wilderness most appreciates the warmth of the hearth.
“Good enough,” he allowed. “I’m Brother Rikkoh. You will call me Master or honored brother, or, preferably, nothing at all because you are too busy attending to your work to disturb me. Tell me, girl, do you know why we copy the edicts of the Patriarch by hand rather than by magic?”
She swallowed heavily. “Because every word from His Holiness is sacred?” Saying the words nearly made her lose her meager breakfast.
“Indeed. To copy them by hand is an offering to the Lords of Heaven,” he replied with grudging approval. “Who taught you to write?”
“Edmun Courtborn,” she confessed warily.
“That old traitor’s still alive?” Rikkoh asked with surprise.
She shook her head. “No, Master. He died two summers back.”
The man laughed. “Tell me, how did the arrogant bastard die?”
Shiloh gritted her teeth. “A cancer took him.”
He continued to laugh. “Reduced to teaching a hexborn freak in the Teeth. I love it.” Finally, his mirth faded, and he pointed to a desk. “Sit there. Copy this.”
“How many times, honored brother?” Shiloh asked.
“Until it gets too dark to work.”
All morning, they bent silently over their tasks. Shiloh got into a rhythm. It was almost meditative, as long as she focused only on forming the letters. If she allowed herself to read the words, to comprehend the sentences, then her rage became too great a distraction. She breathed into each stroke of the pen, trying to make it the prayer it was supposed to be. Several hours passed in this fashion, until her focus was shattered by a clatter just behind her.
“What is this rubbish?” Rikkoh demanded, hauling an old man bodily out of his seat, sending the stool crashing to the stone floor. “Four errors on one page! Are you going blind?”
“I’m sorry, Master,” the man protested. “I’ll do better.”
With a gasp, Shiloh realized that she recognized him from court. He was a minor nobleman named Dann, whose sole reason for noteworthiness came from having been the father of the executed queen, Zina. Esta sent him here for spite, she realized.
“You’d better,” Rikkoh growled, then dropped the man to the floor, giving him a swift kick for good measure before
stalking back to his own desk. “What are you looking at?” he spat at the scribes, whose heads quickly swiveled back toward their desks.
I should help him up, Shiloh told herself. I should help him up. She listened to him struggle behind her, grunting as he pulled himself painfully to his feet and straightened out his stool. At last, she heard his pen resume its scratching. Shame made her cheeks bloom pink.
I should have helped him up.
Silas sat at his table, his uneaten breakfast growing cold on its tray. He touched the “gift” someone had slipped beneath his door as he had slept: two pink braids about a foot long, tied with ribbons he’d bought for Shiloh at the market next to Northgate Castle.
He’d been staring at them for the better part of an hour, the pain in his chest refusing to fade. He supposed he ought to be weeping at the thought of his wife locked up in the Citadel, at the mercy of the Patriarch and his zealots. But he had always excelled at turning sorrow into anger.
A knock interrupted his fantasies of vengeance. He leapt to his feet and stuffed Shiloh’s hair beneath his pillow, then resumed his seat.
“Enter,” he called.
Kiven entered, then frowned. “You need to eat.”
Silas nodded and began to spoon the flavorless porridge into his mouth. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked between bites.
“She wants to marry King Westan of Gerne,” Kiven announced. He yanked a chair out from beneath the table and sat down in a huff.
Silas laughed coldly. “I can hardly think of a worse decision. Good luck trying to talk her out of that.”
Kiven shook his head like a bull. “She will not hear reason.”
“Let me guess . . . the Patriarch’s idea?” Silas snorted.
“Of course,” Kiven confirmed. “What could be better than his step-brother on the throne of Bryn?”
“They will drown you in Gernishmen,” Silas warned.
“I know. I know.”
“When is the blessed event to occur?” Silas asked.