Lavinia watched the rovings unwind, sway sway sway sway. She jumped as a hand clasped her shoulder. Karll was saying something into her ear. She shook her head.
“Pettria is late with the spools!” he shouted as loudly as he could. He pointed to the rovings. The spools were almost empty. Pettria was supposed to deliver fresh from the spooling room every half hour for Lavinia to replace the empties, but she had not. “Go see where she is! I can watch both ends for three minutes. Go on!”
She nodded. First she must get permission from Goodwife Anga. She had to shout to make herself heard. Anga produced her chalk, and Lavinia’s stomach flipped. The mark scratched down next to Pettria’s name, and Anga waved her out.
The storeroom was off the second workshop on the ground floor. The spinning machines were old, water-powered devices adapted for steam. The roving twisters in the second workshop were ancient. A rope lift brought sacks of twisted roving down, children dragged them over to wood and iron spooling devices, operated by hand wheel. Fibres of cloth sparkled in the rays of light slanting in through a pair of dirty windows.
“Where’s Pettria?” she asked. One of the others mimicked her voice. She never mastered languages as quickly as her brother, and spoke with an accent. She ignored the insult
“Through there,” said Garristion, who was something of a leader among the children. He pointed off to the storeroom.
The storeroom was mercifully quiet after the noise of the weaving room. Spools were threaded onto poles slanting up from the walls. Pettria’s hand truck was in the middle of the aisle between the two rows.
“Pettria? Pettria, where are you?” There was no reply. Thin passages lined with roving spools opened up off either side. “Pettria!” she said, becoming angry. “We’re about to fall behind. Angry Anga is out to whip you. Pettria!” She became frightened, worried that she too would be beaten. She went to the end of the store, looking down every gap between the spool racks, but she could not see the other girl. “Pettria!”
She turned back, exasperated, to come face to face with Pettria’s dirty face under her dirty hat. Older than her by four years, she was much taller, with a ropey strength in her arms.
“Shh!” she said. She clamped one hand over Lavinia’s mouth and the other behind her head and pushed her between two racks. Lavinia flailed at Pettria, knocking the rovings swaying, but Pettria impelled her backwards, half lifting her from the ground, slamming her into the wall and winding her.
“Shh!” she said. “I’ve been watching you, Mohaci maid. You’re beginning to flower, take on the pretty. Might find you a good man to take you away from all this. Be a shame if someone ruined that lovely face.” There was a gap in Pettria’s upper jaw lined with decaying teeth. Pettria’s hands smelled bad, and her breath was feculent. “About time someone taught you the facts of life. I’m bigger than you. You give me what I want, or I will take it off you.”
Lavinia shrieked into the dirty hand as Pettria pushed her head into the wall, pinning her.
“Shh, shh! There’s another way. Another. Shhh! Don’t say I ain’t your friend. Listen! You give me half your ration in the morning, and I’ll keep off you, even keep the others away. Especially the boys. They’ll be a problem for one like you soon enough. Pretty’s a curse in a place like this. I can protect you. That a deal?”
Lavinia shook her head emphatically.
“Bad choice, Mohaci maid. I’m going to hurt you.” Pettria pinned Lavinia’s head against the wall. She drew out a dagger made of glass cracked out of a window, the handle wrapped with stolen cloth, and held it up by Lavinia’s face.
Tuparrillio had always warned her to be careful, back in Mohacs-Gravo. He had warned them all, but especially the girls.
“Or you could just give me your bread. Your choice.”
Tuparrillio had done more than warn her. Her guardian had been a soldier, once, and he had shared his skills.
Lavinia bit hard into the edge of Pettria’s palm, digging down until she tasted blood. Pettria screamed shrilly, tugging at her hand to get it from her teeth. Lavinia would not let go until Pettria banged her head hard on the stone. Lavinia saw stars, but her jaw slackened only a little. Pettria yanked her hand out, ripping the wound.
“You little bitch!” Pettra said, aiming the dagger at Lavinia’s face. Lavinia ducked it, and Pettria’s dagger shattered on the wall. Bending low, she raked at Pettria’s face, scratching a furrow in her cheek, then barged the bigger girl with her shoulder. She was heavier than she, so she struggled her hand up to Pettria’s face, clawed at her face to find her eye, and pressed hard with her thumb.
Pettria went down shrieking. Head spinning, Lavinia stepped over her and ran for the door. Garristion looked at her wide-eyed as she sprinted from the storeroom.
Karll gave her a questioning look as she returned to the weaving machine. Lavinia’s look killed his curiosity dead. She shook her head and held up a finger to her lips, nodding meaningfully at Goodwife Anga. The rovings were nearly done. It the spools weren’t swapped, there would be trouble for her regardless of what had happened. She waited for them to run out. Karll stopped the machine, and she set to unloading the empties in a daze, hoping that the spools would magically appear and save her.
She unhooked the last. Someone handed her a full replacement. She looked up. Pettria stood there with her cart, bruised and bloody, her weeping right eye covered over with a rag. Lavinia got the machine reloaded, Karll started it up again, and Pettria pushed her cart on.
Goodwife Anga chalked up three more marks next to Pettria’s name.
SO IT WENT, day after day. Spring wore on. Lavinia’s heart should have been gladdened by the return of the sun, of the warmth—such as it was in Karsa. Spring meant the lines between Karsa and the far east should be open. Spring should have brought her news from Tuvacs. Spring brought only despair. She grew skinnier as her insufficiently nourished body continued its struggle to turn her from girl to adult. She felt herself begin to fade as if she were passing from life into non-existence, so that it would be as if she had never been.
And then, one day, it stopped.
She was working the weaving machine, watching the hypnotic uncurling of the rovings sway and sway, when sudden light intruded into the dark world of the orphans. The large double doors at the far end of the weaving shed opened. A group of men came in. Several wore the tall hats and coats of the constabulary. One of them held up a sheet of paper before him. Other men and women, not police, came with blankets and kind words. One of the constables went to the master lever at the edge of the room and disengaged the gears of the drive shaft. The machines slowed, and stuttered to a stop.
“What are you doing? Explain yourselves!” said Goodwife Anga.
Another man that Lavinia had seen two or three times came forward. He was stooped, and had a hunted look about him. He wrung his hands over and over. “Shhh, Anga, shhh. There’s nothing we can do.”
The man with the paper walked down the aisle. “By the order of the Ministry of Justice, on behalf of Prince Alfra, lord regent of the Isles of Karsa, all production is to cease at the Lemio Clothing and Shoddy Factory immediately!”
“Why? What is happening? This is a charitable institution.”
“This factory is closed upon charges of child exploitation and defiance of labour ordinance number eight hundred and four, signed in the year of 452 by the assembled prime ministers of the three houses.”
“Goodman Grostiman,” said Anga to the hunched man, “your cousin at the ministry, what...”
Grostiman silenced her with a look. “He signed the order himself. I’ve carts outside waiting. Get rid of them.”
The constable watched the children being rounded up.
“You are to be taken from here,” said one of the people. “Freedom awaits you.”
“Why are you doing this?” said Anga. “Do you know how much it costs to keep these wretches? We are performing a public service!”
“I do not know,” said t
he constable, rolling up his writ. “And I do not care. I put the law into action, I do not write it.” He thrust a piece of paper at her. She looked at it questioningly.
“A warrant. You are not to leave the city. Prepare yourself, you will probably be arrested. Good day, goodwife.”
“How can I be tried for past actions under a new law?” Agna demanded, but the constable ignored her.
Lavinia followed the others tentatively. The weak spring sunshine felt deliciously warm and unbearably bright. Kind men and women shepherded the children towards waiting carts. They were helped up and packed in tight, wrapped in new blankets. Someone gave her an apple. She looked at it stupidly. The colour was ridiculously red after the grey of the mill. Then the drays heaved, the cart pulled out. It was all over so quickly.
By the time the millgate was behind her, she realised she had left Tuvacs’ letter behind. The apple rolled from her hand, and she burst into tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Room of Hands
A HUGE HAND wrenched Madelyne out of bed, hauling her up by her hair.
Terror chased sleep from her.
“Your grace, what is happening? I—”
“Silence!” roared the Infernal Duke. “I will have my due for your lodgings.”
He had changed, his eyes blazed coal red. His clothes were gone, his vaguely human form shed with it. He walked upon a goat’s legs, his skin was deep red, and shimmered with heat. The fingers of his single hand circled her waist easily, and burned her. He shoved out of a door too small to encompass his divine bulk and stormed along the corridor. Fires burned in the carpet where his feet touched. He trailed his free hand along the wall, causing paintings, hangings and doors to burst in flame.
“Faithless creatures, all of you!” he growled. “I gave you the freedom of my house, and would have granted you that of my heart. Now I must punish you. Where you would have experienced pain to shrive your soul and bring you closer to the divine, now you will have it only to suffer.”
“I have done nothing wrong!” screamed Madelyne. She swung from his wrist, arms burning with the effort of keeping the weight from the roots of her hair. Her eyes streamed from the smoke of the burning mansion. “Please, your grace!”
Somehow he could walk down the corridor, though he had grown far too large for it to accommodate his body. The mismatch between his dimensions and that of his home caused Madelyne’s head to spin. Through the door and up the stairs he bounded, lighting the way with his fires of wrath. Beyond the walls the city went about its business ignorant of what went on within the duke’s mansion. Hearing the sound of a carriage thundering by outside heightened Madelyne’s terror, for it rooted her experience in the real world, as unreal as it seemed.
“No one can hear you. No one will come. You shall suffer for your impertinence.”
“What have I done?”
“You are human. You are a woman,” he said. “That is enough.”
He kicked in the door to the second room upon the first floor. Like the Room of Dawning in shape, size and decoration, there were within no normal article of furniture, but a collection of devices from a torturer’s lair. With his free hand he smashed a heavy wooden chair to flaming pieces and flung her to the floor. The door slammed behind them, untouched. Fire sprang up in the fireplace, roaring high with unbearable heat. The fire dogs glowed cherry red. Madelyne tried to rise, but the duke kicked her sprawling. Pinning her in place with a sharp hoof, he unlooped a chain from a hook in the wall, and lowered something from the ceiling. He reached down and lifted Madelyne by the head, swinging her into a collection of iron objects hanging from chains. She beat at his arms in panic, sure he meant to kill her, but he stunned her with a slap and tore her clothes off. They ignited and fell to ashes, leaving her naked in his iron grasp. He was as hard as stone, immovable as a tower.
“I have done all you said!” she screamed. “I have done nothing wrong!”
“You are a liar. Your motives are impure! You are as treacherous and evil as all your breed.”
Heavy manacles snapped about her ankles and wrists, a belt about her waist. He swung a loop of metal up between her legs. She shrieked at this. He snapped it closed to the belt, locking all the restraints in place with heavy, oily padlocks, then locked her head upright with a heavy metal collar that engulfed her neck from collarbone to jaw. Now she was trapped, he unhooked the chains and hauled on them with one hand, lifting her up until she was level with his flaming eyes. Iron on her crotch, wrists and ankles bit into her uncomfortably.
“This is what you expected from me, and so this is what you shall receive,” he said. The friezes around the tops of the walls writhed, the plaster figures trapped inside tormenting and assaulting one another. He took something from a wooden mannequin’s head, some kind of mask, close fitting and made of pale leather. As he held it up, she screamed. In his hand was the skin of a woman, peeled from her flesh.
“Does this fit your prejudice? Is this what you know of me?” he said.
Madelyne’s horror mounted as the features on the mask moved, the mouth gaping in a silent scream. The duke slipped the hood over her head, yanking the lace ties tight and tying them off. It blinked for her, its lips squirmed over her own, disgustingly intimate. He was aroused by all this and she shrieked again. If he meant to take her, she would die. She tugged futilely at her chains.
He walked around her.
“I admit I enjoy this,” he said. “But it is my preference to explore these sensations with a willing partner. You could have trodden worlds of exquisite pleasure, but now you shall have only pain.”
There was a rack of whips in full sight of her. With great deliberation, he selected one and walked around to her exposed back. She struggled, unable to move, dreading what was to come.
“Twelve lashes you will receive,” he said. He swished the whip three times, each pass made her flinch, so that even when he struck her, it came as a surprise. “That was a taste. Let the twelve begin. Six for your humanity. Six for your womanhood.”
Hot pain flared across her buttocks.
“I did nothing, please your grace!” she shouted.
“One,” he said. “Two.” Again he hit her, and she cried out. The second stripe overlay the first, then the third came, and the fourth, striking out a burning cross hatch on her buttocks and back. Her skin split, and blood ran down her back.
“Please!” she wailed, and began to cry.
“I do not care for your tears.”
The mask’s mouth closed over hers. The eyes shut, sealing themselves completely, and the leather constricted, clinging to her head so that it seemed to become one with her own skin, her face eyeless and voiceless. She threshed madly, the blows from the lash lessened in importance, for now she feared she would suffocate, but the nose of the flayed woman opened, and she drew in a panicked breath.
“Nine,” said the duke. “Ten.” With each hit, he put more of his strength into it. Her head buzzed with the pain, the constriction of her face was suffocating. “Eleven.” He paused, swishing his whip one more time without impact, causing her to flinch. He laughed.
“Twelve,” he said, and laid the whip across her shoulders so hard it wrapped around her chest and cut into the underside of her breast.
“Tonight you will be judged,” he said. “I shall leave you with my many hands. If you live when I return, then I am in error, and I shall be sorry. But I am rarely wrong, Madelyne, so I shall bid you farewell now.” He paused. “It is a shame, you were promising. I was growing fond of you.”
He left her hanging, the choking mask wrapped around her face. She passed in and out of consciousness, before being woken by sibilant voices on the edge of hearing. They spoke to her, but she could not understand what they said. The words were elusive, and if she caught one, it seemed to change into an unfamiliar tongue that she could not understand.
The fire roared behind her. Sweat stung her cuts. Her back throbbed pain so intense it ceased to hurt and in
stead became stimulating, as if her senses had been so overloaded with hurt that her body registered only the sensation and not its quality. The iron strap bit into her inner thighs. Her hands went numb from lack of blood flow, and she tried to shift her weight to ease the load on them in turn, but succeeded only in provoking a storm of protest from her limbs. As the pain of her cuts subsided, that in her arms and thighs gew, pushing through the floor of her consciousness as a seed grows upwards, until it flowered with agony that dominated her thoughts.
She sobbed. Her tears had nowhere to go, trapped between the dead woman’s skin and her own. The whispers grew louder. Something brushed past her. Madelyne jerked in shock, setting the chains rattling. The touch was cool, almost unpleasantly cold. An attempt to speak came out as a panicked, muffled nothing—her jaw was clamped shut by the mask.
“Is she a good choice?” hissed one voice.
“Let us see,” said another.
“Death if she is not,” said a third.
“Ecstasy if she is,” said a fourth.
She felt cool hands all over her, and other things, ropey limbs and pulsing organs that caressed and prodded her. She struggled against them.
“Shhhh,” they said. The invasion of her mind she anticipated did not come, or if performed was so subtle as to be unnoticeable.
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