by Lila Dubois
“My mother?”
There was a hard edge to Anleeh’s voice and Siara focused on the quill she held, turning it between her fingers. “Yes. I spoke with your mother.”
“When?”
“A few days ago.”
“What did you speak of?”
“Many things.”
“Where did you have this conversation?”
“In a rather interesting room…”
“The orarista.”
“The what?”
“The orarista is a room of remembering, a place where history is stored, and then the room is hidden away, so that no one will become complacent by dwelling too long on past glory.”
“Hidden away? It is in that corridor behind your Uncle’s throne.”
“There is no corridor behind the throne.”
Siara handed Anleeh her book and quill, and darted across the Hall to investigate. Anleeh sipped his ale, not realizing until his fingers hurt that he was clenching the tankard so hard that his fingers were white against it. He was angry. Angry with his mother for speaking with Siara, and with Siara for doing the same, though why he was angry, the true root of that anger was something he was not ready to examine.
Siara returned, utterly irresistible with her cloud of dark tousled waves spilling over her lush body so enticingly packaged in her furs, her progress watched by both men and women.
She sank down beside him, face blank. “There was a room there.”
“My mother called the orarista.”
“Wait.” Siara snatched her book and quill back, quickly flipping open to a blank page. “First, please spell it.”
Anleeh felt the anger wash away. If his mother had spoken of things best kept undisclosed, Siara would have peppered him with questions; clearly she was still ignorant of his secrets.
Relaxed once more, Anleeh spelled the word for her and spent the next hour answering her questions about how (an incantation of course) and when (whenever the caller was in true need) the orarista was called. When her questions pushed the bounds of his knowledge, Anleeh laughed and begged her to leave off with her inquisition.
“This is an inefficient amount of information.”
“I have told you all I know.”
“I will have to speak with your mother, perhaps she will know more.”
“Perhaps.”
“What do you think about…”
Bang! The doors of the Hall were thrown open, the heavy wooden panels pushed with such force that they crashed against the walls.
Wind whipped through the doorway, bringing the flavor of night to the warmth of the Hall.
From the darkness a figure emerged, a warrior, his massive shoulders heaped with furs, so that at first he appeared to be a monster, something too large to be human. He stepped into the light, boots thudding against the wood of the floor.
Anleeh sat up quickly, setting aside his ale and reaching over to close Siara’s book, forcing her to put it down. Without question she capped her inkpot, tucking it away into a small bag with her journal, and scooting close to Anleeh’s side. Around the Hall others did the same, putting down whatever they were doing, preparing themselves for whatever ominous things the dramatic entrance heralded.
Anleeh recognized the warrior, an older man, calm and seasoned in battle, a good fighter. His face was blank, but his eyes burned. The man continued into the Hall, staring straight ahead, stopping when he reached the Hearth Fire. It was then Anleeh noticed the rope clutched in one hand.
The warrior turned towards the open door and began pulling, his biceps flexing as he towed on the rope.
A ragged bundle appeared, thumping over the threshold. Bit by bit the warrior pulled the bundle into the Hall, and Anleeh knew that all save Siara understood what was inside.
Finally Siara would know why he had warned her so stridently, trained her so harshly.
Siara pressed her side against Anleeh’s back, her heart thumping hard inside her chest. His quick, quiet insistence that she put down what she was doing, that she pay attention, had set her on alert.
As the warrior pulled the bundle closer to the fire Siara could see that it was a large sack, filled with something angular, not smooth, as a bag of grain would have been.
The warrior reached down and sliced off the top of the bag, stepping away from it once it was opened. Movement behind her had Siara turning. Jahrl moved forward to take his place on the throne.
She turned back in time to see the bag slowly move, undulating.
A head appeared in the opening, followed by shoulders. The figure rose, its feet still in the sack. Wild tangles of hair covered the naked body. It was a woman.
Siara sucked in a hard breath. That warrior had placed this poor woman in a sack and dragged her across the ground, no telling how far. Siara twitched forward and Anleeh placed his arm across her waist, holding her still. He was right, she needed to watch, to learn how justice was delivered in Den.
“Jahrl-Ori,” the warrior barked. “I bring charges of disgrace upon this woman.”
“Do you wish to give reasons?” Jahrl asked.
“I would, that all will know her shame. She touched another man.”
There was a rustling in the Hall and Siara watched as women pressed closer to their men. Most of the women’s faces had gone impassive, though many of the men wore looks of disgust. Those few women who had an expression showed pity and fear.
Siara’s breathing sped up, her belly knotting with anxiety.
“Raise your chin, woman, let us see your disgrace.”
The woman raised her head and Siara jerked in surprise. It was Anga’s older sister, the one newly married.
Her long white blond hair hung in her face, and the warrior moved forward, pulling a knife from his boot.
“Anleeh,” Siara whispered fearfully.
“Quiet,” he breathed.
The warrior gathered his wife’s hair in his fist, rough fingers pulling it away from her face, and then, with little ceremony, sliced it off.
Her hip length locks now shorn to neck, there was no protection for her nakedness. The warrior threw the hair onto the hearth fire where it crackled as it burned, sending up a rank smell.
“I will have my save-face,” the warrior yelled. Jahrl nodded.
Several warriors rose, pulling a large box from beneath the platform the throne sat on.
The box was opened and several long lengths of rope pulled from it, as well as a heavy leather flogger. The woman whimpered—the first sound she’d made—and tried to run.
She darted for the open doors of the Hall, but was easily caught. Her husband grabbed her, turned her, and then backhanded her to the ground.
Siara could take it no more. She pushed to her feet, prepared to go to the girl’s aid. Anleeh rose beside her, and Siara expected that he too would assist in putting and end to this abuse.
When Anleeh wrapped an arm around her waist and clamped a hand over her mouth, using the hold to pull her back into the shadows, Siara was so surprised that she didn’t fight him.
The other men moved forward, helping the woman’s husband to corral her, lacing cuffs onto her wrists and ankles. Throwing the ropes attached to the wrist cuffs over a high beam the warriors dragged on it, jerking the woman forward until she was directly below the beam, then stretching her onto her toes.
Other warriors came forward and took the ropes attached to her ankles and jerked them apart, spreading her legs until her big toes barely brushed the ground, forcing her body’s weight onto her arms.
The woman’s head bent forward between her painfully stretched arms; she was whimpering, a soft, continuous cry. Tears prickled in Siara’s own eyes, and as the husband hefted the flogger, Siara struggled in Anleeh’s hold.
Anleeh would not make her stand and watch this. He would stop it. Together, they would stop it.
The husband raised the flogger and brought it forward in a brutal blow against the woman’s back. She screamed.
No. No,
this is wrong, this is horrible, this is brutal and I will not watch it happen. I will stop it, I will save her.
Siara began to fight Anleeh’s hold in truth. His arm around her middle, binding her arms against her sides, tightened. Siara dug her heel into his toes, but Anleeh jerked his foot away.
He leaned back against the wall, keeping her body tight to his, and forced her legs between his, holding them immobile within the heavily muscled bracket of his own limbs.
It was then Siara realized that Anleeh would not stop this, that he would force her to watch as this woman was beaten.
A second blow landed, the woman screamed again.
“You deserve this, you are dirt, not fit to wear furs.” The man’s voice dripped with venom, and Siara wondered how he could so abuse his wife, a woman he must have cared for if he had married her.
Again the lash fell, the screams heartbreaking, the silence of the watchers horrific. None moved to help her, and the men who held the ropes pulled them tighter when she struggled.
The warrior moved forward, grabbing his wife’s jaw and forcing her head up.
“You are lucky that Jahrl-Ori grants you mercy, for I would take pleasure in slitting your throat for what you’ve done.”
Bile rose into Siara’s mouth. This was mercy?
He stepped back and raised the flogger once more, striking the woman’s breasts. Siara jerked in Anleeh’s hold, tears slipping from her eyes, sobs jerking her chest, as hard red welts, accented by thin cuts, bloomed across the woman’s breasts.
Siara wanted to close her eyes, to turn away, but felt that she should not, could not. She felt that if she watched, she, who alone seemed to understand how horrific and wrong this was, it would alleviate some of the poor woman’s suffering.
The woman stopped screaming as another blow landed against the front of her body, marking the skin of her belly. She hung lifeless in the ropes as thin trails of blood coursed down her body, crossing the horizontal cuts and welts. If her body were not dead in truth then Siara could only assume that her soul was dying.
Soon no unmarked patch of skin remained. Each leg had been beaten, the popping sound as the straps of the flogger wrapped around her thin legs gruesome.
The warrior stepped back and Siara sagged against Anleeh, hopeful that the litany of prayers she had whispered to the Goddess had helped ease the woman’s suffering.
The warrior still held the flogger, continuing to swing it. His swings changed, from horizontal movements to underhanded vertical upswings.
The men holding the ropes attached to the woman’s ankles pulled them further apart.
No.
Siara started struggling once more in Anleeh’s hold. She would not, would not, watch this, she would stop them. Anleeh’s fingers bit into her flesh and Siara wanted to weep with frustration at her inferior strength. She could not fight him.
But her beast could.
Siara closed her eyes and reached for her beast. Before she’d always called her beast with lust, pleasures of the flesh, but in her anger and fear the beast flourished. Focusing on that anger, she tried to call the beast up, tried to raise her through the thick fog of horror, an all too human emotion that coated Siara like black tar. The beast stirred fitfully and, pressed against him as she was, Siara knew the precise moment that Anleeh felt her beast stir, for his own woke, rising to help its mate.
Anleeh jerked her off her feet and Siara used the opportunity to kick at him. Holding her, one hand still securely over her mouth, Anleeh made his way to the back of the Hall, away from the beating, and into the kitchen.
Siara, still struggling, paused momentarily when they entered the kitchen and saw the Cook. The older woman was curled in a corner, rag pressed against her mouth to muffle sobs.
It seemed that Siara was not alone in her grief for the woman they were beating, but while Siara felt both grief and anger, this woman’s face was marked by grief … and fear.
Anleeh shouldered his way through the kitchen door, slamming Siara on her feet and releasing her.
“Anleeh! We must…”
Anleeh leaned back inside the kitchen door and emerged with a rag. Pulling it taught between his fists, Anleeh stepped behind her and forced it into her mouth, between her teeth. He had the knot tied even as she brought her hands up to pull the rag free. Anleeh grabbed her wrists, shackling them in his fist, and began towing her through the woods.
Siara was so shocked by his actions that she offered no resistance. Deeper into the forest they went, Siara shivering in the arctic night air, her bare back and shoulder’s shaking with cold.
Anleeh’s face was hidden from her, and the deeper they went into the woods, the more Siara’s anger was melted away by fear. True fear.
She had staked her life on the belief that Anleeh would protect her, at the cost of his own death if it came to that, but she would have sworn before the Goddess that Anleeh, a man of justice, the Lord Justice, would have laid down his life rescuing that woman.
Was she wrong about him? Or was this the man of Den that he’d warned her about? Had her dismissal of his warnings cost her everything?
Anleeh stopped. Releasing her hands, he kept his back to her. Siara stumbled away, driven by fear to put distance between them, however futile fighting him had proven to be. She jerked at the knot of the gag, but her fingers were too cold to work with dexterity, so she tugged at it until she was able to pull it down. The white cloth dangled around her neck like a collar. Mouth free for the first time since he’d seized her, Siara worked to calm her hiccupping breaths. There were so many words to say, so many questions and accusations.
“Who are you?” Her voice shook.
“You know the answer to that, Siara.”
“Nay. The man I know is the Zinah Anleeh, Lord Justice, a man known for his quick wit and sense of honor. A fierce and loyal fighter, who worked to protect all that the Temple and Goddess stand for.”
“Do not blame me if that idyllic vision is who you thought I am.”
“That is truth! Who, what, stands before me now is the lie.”
Finally he turned. “What you see before you is a man, a man of Den who is much more lenient for having gone to the Great City.”
“You let them torture her!”
“Those are the ways of Den.”
“I do not care! It was horrible what they are doing to her, what they made her suffer. How could you let them do that?”
“I warned you from the beginning.” This truth only made her angrier.
“You did not warn me that torture was a public sport. That was barbaric, the most dreadful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You lie to yourself. How many times did you see the Priestess use humiliation as a punishment?”
“Humiliation, yes, but that was not humiliation, that was something different, something horrible.” Siara’s voice rose with each word, peaking only to fall again so that the last word slipped into the night as a whisper.
“She disgraced him, disgraced his honor, and she is his to do with as he pleases.”
“Nay! She should be protected, by laws and justice.”
“The laws are tradition. My uncle changed those traditions already. In the past he would have had the right to slit her throat and wear her blood.”
“No, no…”
“That is the way of Den.”
“It is wrong. Anleeh, you are a man of justice.”
“I became a man of justice; I was not born it.”
“It matters not. You should have stopped them, or if you were not brave enough, let me stop it.”
“You could not have stopped them.”
“I would have. I could have.”
“Now you lie to yourself.”
“Anleeh, please, please tell me that I was not so wrong about you, tell me that you would save her.” Tell me I am not wrong to love you.
Anleeh took a step towards her, pausing, fists curling, when Siara took a shaky step back.
“Would I? Would I
save that woman?” The frighteningly impassive mask he wore cracked, his eyes dark with a pain she could not name, “Would I cut her down and offer her a chance to speak on her crimes, to mandate a punishment that was not so horrible? Yes. But I could not, cannot.”
Siara hung her head, folding her arms against her belly, her icy skin prickled with gooseflesh.
“This is the harshness of Den you warned me of.”
“Yes.”
“I did not believe it, still cannot. I know these people. They are good and kind people. What is happening in the Hall is monstrous.”
“Yes.”
Her shoulders sagged with relief; it was a small piece in recreating their alliance. “I will never forgive you for stopping me, for I will never forgive myself for being unable to help her.”
“Blame me, not yourself.” Anleeh stepped forward, cupping her shoulders in hands that were painfully warm. “Know this. Had you interfered, the next to be bound would be you, and I would have been forced to do the same to you.”
“Would you have?” Siara tipped her head up, but stared at his cheek, unable to meet his eyes. “Would you whip me till my flesh ran red with blood? Would you beat flesh that you had caressed, that had caressed you?”
“It is the way of Den.” His voice was so cold, so hard.
“Why are you trying to scare me? I have never, until tonight, doubted that I was safe in your arms.”
“Did I not punish you physically as I trained you?”
“It was not the same. I may be a novice but I know that. Do not compare what you do to me with that.”
“Your training was better than I thought.” he conceded, “though clearly it was not good.”
That comment cut unexpectedly deep. He could not know how she had treasured every moment of that training, for it meant he had focused on her, acknowledged her in a way that he never would have otherwise. Siara barely remembered the stiff young woman who’d sat beside him the Palace, demanding information and creating lists.
“Was my training so hard for you to administer?” she asked, turning her head away. Her heart was growing as numb as her skin. If he were going to tell her he hated her, that she disgusted him, now would be the time, for she would not feel it as keenly.