The last thing I saw as the door closed behind them was Vi kicking one of the Shriven savagely in the back of the knee. I started to pray for her safety, but quickly stopped, gritting my teeth.
None of this was up to the gods. It was up to me and me alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Vi
The Shriven shoved Curlin and me through a door that immediately clanged shut behind us. The key screamed in the rusty lock, and then we were alone, but for the low moans coming from the cells around us. The stone walls were slick with grime and mold and condensation, and moldering hay was heaped in the corners of the room. Curlin used the toe of her boot to push a rot-scented bucket as far away from us as the cell’s scant space would allow.
“It’s not so bad,” Curlin said. “At least the rats in this part of the dungeon don’t try to chew your fingers off while you sleep.”
I glared at her. “How’d we not see this coming? We got so cocksure taking out the Shriven in Ilor that we didn’t think they’d have the gall to haul us off? And us walking into the palace just like we owned the place.”
Ignoring me, Curlin picked up a half-rotted blanket. “Look here. They even left us blankets. We’ve come up in the world, Vi. A year ago, there’s no way they’d have stuck us in the fancy cells. It’s good to be rebelling with the king’s sister.”
A large section of the blanket fell away as Curlin held my gaze.
“Shut up,” I snapped, unable to share Curlin’s forced amusement at our dire situation. “What do you think they’ll do to Bo?”
Curlin shifted from foot to foot, both of us being careful not to touch the mold-slimed walls. “Too many people saw him on his way through the city. They’ll have to let him go back to his estates. If he’s smart, he’ll find a way to take the rest of our people with him.”
I bit my lip. Thoughts raced through my brain half-formed and jumbled. The awfulness of the room weighed on me—the stench of rot; the darkness; the high, looming ceiling; the skittering chirps of the rats. It grew together into something massive; something living and unconquerable and real.
I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d come all this way, done all this work, just to die in the same fucking dungeon that’d waited for me my whole life.
I gasped a short, squeaking sob. Another. My heart pounded in my chest, so hard it felt like it was going to beat its way out of my rib cage and onto the cold, damp floor. Pain shot through my limbs, circled the scars I’d gathered in the time since I left the temple, squeezed my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I just gasped like a dying fish as tears coursed down my cheeks.
Curlin let out a string of curses, but she seemed unreachable, as distant as if she were on another continent. Her hands closed around my shoulders and she pulled me to her, my back against her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around me.
“Shh, Vi. We’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”
“Fine?” I heaved. I had to fight for each word. “Our bodies’ll be burned with the trash before the week’s out. And that’s if they decide to go easy on us.”
The cold air seized my throat, and great, shuddering coughs racked my body. Curlin still held me tight to her chest, her warmth seeping into my cold bones.
“Breathe, Vi.”
“I am breathing.”
“You’re not. Breathe in.”
It took three short, gasping tries, but I managed to take a deep breath that filled my nose with the smells of rot and mold and human waste. I gagged, and Curlin rubbed my back, doing what she could to ease my sobbing panic.
“Once more.”
When my breath came slow and steady and my heart had stopped racing, Curlin turned me around to face her.
“They can’t kill us outright without a confession of some crime, and with Bo and Gerlene fully aware they’ve taken us, they can’t just make us disappear.”
A bell rang far overhead, and its faint echo reawakened the moaning in the other cells on our level.
“They’ll do their best to make you confess to something, anything,” Curlin told me. “All you have to do is keep your mouth shut. Admit nothing. If you can manage to do it, say prayers. It’ll make them spitting mad, and it’ll buy you time. Can’t very well say a prisoner is committing treasonous sacrilege if they spend their interrogation praying. But don’t look them in the eyes,” she warned. “Don’t provoke them in any way. When they hurt you, cry, but don’t curse. You can’t retaliate. If you raise a hand to them, if you say an aggressive word, they’ll have cause enough to trump up charges against you.”
Heavy boots clattered on the stone steps, and a door’s hinges squealed in protest as someone forced it open.
“How do you know all this?”
“Every Shriven initiate has to train as an interrogator,” Curlin said sadly. “They’ll be coming for us soon.” She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eye. “I love you, Vi. You’re the best friend I ever had. Thanks for giving me a second chance.”
I threw my arms around her and squeezed. “You’re more my sister than my own flesh and blood.”
With a grin, Curlin squeezed my hand. “Don’t let Pem or Still hear you say that. They’re right loyal to you and Bo.”
The key scraped into the lock with a sound that set my very bones to screaming. I laced my fingers through Curlin’s and steeled myself.
“We’re going to get out of this,” she said.
“By the headsman’s block or the holy fire.”
Curlin punched me in the arm just as they flung open the door. “Promise me you’ll stay strong, Vi. Promise me you’ll try.”
Six strong Shriven piled into the dank cell and pulled us apart. As they hauled Curlin out through the door, I shouted after her.
“We’ll show them. We’ll show everyone. I didn’t come this far to die in that same fucking square that’s been soaked in the blood of the diminished.”
One of the Shriven knocked me in the head so hard, I would’ve collapsed if the other two hadn’t already taken bruising grips on both my arms. They dragged me up flight after flight of stairs to a room I’d never seen, not in all my explorations of the temple as a brat. Slim windows high on the wall let in slivers of crimson evening light that sliced across the scarred wooden floor. The room, lit by a crackling fireplace, was mostly bare, save for a plush upholstered chair and a table that held a wide, shallow chest.
The Shriven slammed my back into a pillar and strapped me to the thing with thick leather straps. They pulled my arms behind me and chained them to the floor, so I was pulled down by my wrists and held up by the straps across my shoulders and torso. Splinters ate into my exposed skin.
They left me there without a word, icy wind whistling through the open windows. I did everything in my power to push down the panic that threatened to creep back into my lungs as I watched the last light of the sunset fade across the floor. Finally, when the room had been fully dark for some time, and my eyes had grown heavy, the door slammed open, and bright sunlamps burned my eyes.
“Obedience Abernathy.” The slow, drawling accent crawled over my name like a slug. “You’ve been a very naughty girl.”
My eyes adjusted, and I saw the mouthy Shriven who’d been standing behind Rylain in the throne room leaning against the doorway, a cluster of Shriven on either side of him.
“I’d rather you called me Vi, thanks very much. And you are?”
He rubbed his back against the doorjamb, like a massive bear scratching itself on a tree. Regarding me with cool, calculating eyes, he smiled. “You are so like him. My Bo. Who would ever have guessed he was so common?”
“Your Bo?” I asked, pushing as much disdain into my voice as I could stand.
“My Bo,” he confirmed. “That sweet lamb has been in love with me his whole life, ever since my mother foisted my sister and me on his mother and ran off to the
colonies. I’m Claes. Surely he’s told you about me.”
I shrugged, a mask of nonchalance on my face as I racked my brain, trying to place the name. Claes was his cousin. The one who’d died. The one who’d betrayed him. Us. “Can’t say as I have.”
“You know, not in a thousand lifetimes would I’ve guessed that Bo wasn’t singleborn. Myrella did an incredible job disguising the unfortunate influence of his maternal blood. It’s a pity, really, that you didn’t have her good guidance.”
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t have much use for my shit of a mother, but that didn’t mean I was happy to let him drag her through the mud. I wanted to ask what had happened to him, why he’d joined the Shriven, why he’d place himself in direct opposition to someone he’d once loved.
But I knew why. I’d seen it a dozen times or more. He was afraid. His sister had died, and he was terrified that he would lose himself. So he ran to the Shriven, and once there, he did what he did best. He sought power. And apparently, he’d been quite successful.
“You know something?” He pulled himself off the doorframe and sprawled into the thickly upholstered chair just in front of me with a deep sigh. “This means we’re related.”
Claes poured wine the color of amber into a tall water glass, filling it to the brim, then took a sip.
“Oswin was our third cousin twice removed, in addition to our mother being Myrella’s sister, which makes you... Oh, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’ve sinned against the gods and goddesses, and until you free yourself of the burden of those transgressions, it will be impossible for the temple to accept you back into her warm embrace. Back to where you belong.” He set down the glass. “Now. Let’s begin with the pearls. Anchorite Bernadine told us that you hoarded some of the temple’s pearls while you were still a ward of the Penby temple. The anchorites who protected you have been punished according to our will.
“Were you always drawn to thievery and lies, or were you corrupted by the trash you grew up with?” Claes asked. “I understand you were close to a pair of wretched orphans who left you for the allure of Ilor—Lily and Sawny, weren’t they?” He shuddered and flicked an invisible piece of lint from the sleeve of his sumptuous silk robe. “Even if you are an unacknowledged bastard, you shouldn’t have been forced to associate with that kind of trash.”
“Eat shit, you scum-sucking mold cock.” I spit at him, my blood boiling. It didn’t matter that he was Shriven, and Bo’s cousin and first love to boot. He’d stepped over the line.
He easily sidestepped the glob of spit and flicked his wrist at one of the Shriven. The black paint around her green eyes made them sparkle as she flipped open a leather case and laid out her implements of torture. She grinned up at me, her smile revealing teeth shaved to points, and fingered a pair of bloodstained pliers. Claes shook his head and pointed to a silver cup that held a fistful of delicate silver needles. The Shriven woman snatched them up and crossed the room in a single stride. Claes followed and yanked at the gold cuff on my wrist.
“Look at you, wearing the symbol of royalty like you own it.” He sneered. “I don’t want to hurt you, Obedience, but it’s time someone taught you a lesson. Just admit to the ways in which you’ve violated the goddesses’ trust, and we’ll see that you don’t rot in a cell for the rest of your life.”
He nodded to the woman. She ran a fingertip lightly up my arm from wrist to clavicle, prodded the soft flesh above my collarbone until I flinched and then drove a cluster of the needles into my flesh. Pain shot up and down my arm, and despite myself, I screamed.
Claes kept talking between sips of wine. “Perhaps you’ll make a good anchorite? Or one of the Shriven, even. You do have that sort of animal ferocity they look for. Not to mention the tattoos. It would make the most sense for you to disappear into the Shriven after your confession.” He surveyed me over the rim of his glass. “Are you ready to confess, Obedience?”
I glared.
At Claes’s signal, the needles were yanked from my clavicle, and relief washed over me. The pain disappeared as quickly as it’d come.
“You may begin in your childhood, if it would be easier,” Claes said. “Tell me the origin of your thievery. Was it food? It’s always food with brats like you.”
“Perhaps if the growing children in the temple’s care got more than thin porridge morning, noon and night, there might be less theft in their kitchens.” I gritted my teeth. “Not, of course, that I’d ever confess to stealing from the temple.” I sighed and feigned a pitying look. “Just let me go. My brother’ll see you jailed for this.”
“Jailed? By the time I’m done with him, Bo will be begging for me to share his bed once more.” Claes shook with controlled laughter. “My dear, if you don’t start talking, you will lose your mind from the things I’ve planned for you. And that’s before you’re sentenced to death. I see being broken on a wheel in your future.”
He considered me for a moment, then clapped his hand over his mouth, gleeful. “No! No. I have it. We’ll stake you out in the harbor and let you drown. They used to do that to the sea thieves in the old world. Before the cataclysm. How perfect for you! You can wait for the tide to take you as dozens of eels and crabs and sharks eat chunks of your flesh in the cold winter harbor.” Claes’s face took on a cajoling look. “Or you can confess to your sins. Wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t it be easier?”
I shook my head, and the needles plunged once more into my flesh, sending waves of agony down my left side. The pain caught like fire and washed down over my breast, across my abdomen and down the other leg, like molten metal being poured through my body. I tried to breathe through the pain and the horror and the crippling weight of anxious terror that shrouded me.
“You may think that you’ll break me, Claes, but there’s nothing you can do to me that I haven’t already imagined a thousand times worse.” I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and glared at him, letting all the hate and anger that’d built up inside me flood out and wash over him and his grinning, dogmatist, vile body. “You can’t touch me, Claes. You can’t touch my brother. We are stronger than you’ll ever be, and he is the rightful king of Alskad. Mark my words—”
“Stop her!” he shouted. “Do something!”
A heavy blow landed in my gut, but I kept talking. “Mark. My. Words. You’ll kneel before my brother and me before this is done, and you’ll pay for your greed.”
Knuckles rammed into my cheek. My mouth filled with blood, and I spit. “You’ll pay for your hate. You’ll pay for the bigotry that’s eaten away your soul.”
Claes drained the tall glass of wine and pushed himself to his feet. Swiping a handful of thin wooden strips from the table, he strode across the room to stand over me. His sour breath washed over me in fast, forceful gusts.
“You will confess, girl. Even if I have to make you do it myself.”
His large, calloused hand closed over my left wrist, and before I could take a steading breath, he shoved one of the wooden strips under my thumbnail. The pain shot through me, electrifying my nerves like lightning pouring through my body. The room dimmed. I screamed and screamed, and despite Curlin’s warning, I cursed the goddesses every way I knew how. Tears poured down my cheeks. The room spun. And all the while, Claes loomed over me, the scripture tattooed up his arm seeming to writhe with his flinching muscles.
When I was finally able to speak, I ground out, “You’ll admit that we were right before you ever make me confess.”
Claes backhanded me across the face, his rings opening welts over my cheekbone. He raised his hand again just as the door swung open. An acolyte, a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten, entered the room, his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Sir, the Suzerain are asking for you.”
I could see Claes struggling to regain his composure, to rein in his rage. “Put the bitch back in her cage,” he sneered. “I’ve an appointme
nt I can’t miss. We’ll see her broken yet.”
A hand closed over my mouth, and I bit down as hard as I could, but my teeth closed on damp, bitter cloth rather than flesh. The leather straps across my body rendered my struggles ineffective, and the room began to darken. I knew in a moment I would be unconscious, but I never took my eyes off Claes’s pallid face, and I saw the fear beneath his mask.
When I woke again, I was on the hard stone floor of the dungeon, and Curlin was next to me. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and her fingernails were black and bloody. Long, thin, blistering burns marked her arms, and it almost looked like some of her tattoos had been deliberately marred. Her tunic had been rucked up when they dumped her in the cell, and a deep purple, ugly bruise blossomed across the top of her exposed hip.
My own body was a map of pain, and despite the dry rasping ache in my throat, I couldn’t force myself onto my throbbing hands and knees to crawl to the bucket of scum-slimed water by the door. I turned my head and let the chill from the stone seep into my bruised cheek. Tears ran down my face, and I tried not to think about any individual injury for too long.
“No use getting yourself all dehydrated with pointless weeping. You’re not a brat anymore.” Curlin’s voice was ragged and torn, and she heaved herself up to sit with her back against the stone wall. “My hands are wrecked. Mind dragging that bucket over here?”
“Shut up, Curlin. There’s no point.” Gloom overwhelmed me. I’d let the temple take me to save Bo, but it was becoming more and more clear to me that I’d let them get exactly what they’d wanted.
Control.
The trap they’d laid for us was even more clever than I could’ve imagined. The moment I escaped—if I could manage it—they would go after Bo with all the lethal force of the Shriven. They wanted any excuse to see him dead and keep their pawn in power. The only thing for me to do was wait until Bo’s machinations landed him back on the throne...or until they came to take me to my execution.
“Dzallie’s tits, woman,” Curlin said tiredly. “Please tell me you didn’t cart me all the way back across the ocean and away from Aphra just for you to give up in a temple dungeon. You need to drink and clean your wounds. So do I. Then we need to find a way out of here.”
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