Chapter Two
His low, baritone voice seeped into her bones, reaching her marrow.
The sound of wood hitting metal woke Seraphina from a feverish dream. She’d been doing drills in her sleep, but no matter how fast she moved, how focused she was, her sparring partner always disarmed her in three moves and had her pinned, a dagger to her throat. It was more a memory than a dream.
At Saint Vivia’s Convent, Briar had been her friend and trainer.
A girl her age, born in London as well, who’d moved to Bavaria with her mother when she was a child.
Every time Seraphina had tried to pry into her and her mother’s circumstances, Briar had deflected and started droning about weapons and close combat strategies.
Seraphina could be forged into a fighter; she was a fast and eager learner.
But she couldn’t be persuaded to make a passion out of it when at her core, she was very much a woman interested in womanly pursuits.
The guard’s club hit metal again down the corridor, and Seraphina sat up on the hard cot, gathering the blanket tightly around her.
She stuck her chin out and inclined her head, listening intently.
There were two guards moving from one cell to another, and a third man handling objects that banged and clattered.
When they reached her cell, she understood what was happening.
“Breakfast,” one of the guards shouted.
His voice wasn’t familiar. She didn’t know him.
Her cell was unlocked, and the one with the wooden club stepped forward, making her cower in the corner. She tried to become small. As small as a rodent. She certainly felt like one.
“So, this is the mad bitch?” the guard asked. Someone grunted behind him, and he tsked. “You’re telling me this scrawny thing unmanned an academy porter? I don’t believe it.”
“Two daggers, she had,” the second guard said. “Or that’s what I heard. Sharp, custom-made.”
“You sure she didn’t use a relic? Look at those twig-like wrists. There’s no way she can do damage, no matter how sharp the dagger.”
“They searched her thoroughly, especially when she said she’s a Sarumite. No relics. No lattices, either.”
They were talking about her as if she weren’t there. She heard the third man clatter about, and she realized he was emptying and rinsing her night bucket. The guards were there to make sure the prisoners didn’t misbehave or get any ideas when they saw their cell doors open.
“The year of our Lord 1818, and here I am, still learning new, astonishing things,” the first guard said sarcastically, then she heard him suck his teeth and spit. “Here, let me.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, but then she felt lukewarm slop hit her chest, and a second later, a wooden bowl landed in her lap.
“Breakfast is served,” he laughed.
Seraphina jumped to her feet, hurt and angry, and now filthy with the foul-smelling gruel he’d thrown at her.
The cell door closed and locked just as she reached it and wrapped her fingers around the bars.
She half expected them to be crushed by the guard’s club, but he banged on the door next to hers instead.
“Creature, I got your favorite for you,” he told the prisoner mockingly. “Stand back.”
“Sir, excuse me.” Seraphina swallowed her pride and tried to be polite. “Have you heard from the academy? Did the headmaster send a letter?”
“Letter? Why would he send a letter?”
“The sergeant must’ve written to him by now. I told him–”
The guard’s booming laugh cut her off.
“He did, he did. But I’m afraid the sergeant’s letter was intercepted. Vanished, I hear. Nothing to be done about it.”
“What do you mean intercepted? By whom?”
“By the grace of God, our friend Hartmann was released from hospital. He’s recovering nicely, though over a few drinks at the tavern, he confessed he’s having troubles with his wife. If she wants a divorce, that will be entirely your fault.”
He gently tapped the club against her cell door, making the iron bars vibrate in her grip.
She clenched her jaw to suppress the scream that threatened to burst out.
Intercepted. Vanished. So, the sergeant had believed her and sent a letter to Kr?henstein, but the institution she’d devoted the better part of her life to would never learn she was alive and needed help as long as Hartmann had friends among the city watch.
Despite what the turnkey had said the day before, some of them did drink in the same places.
“You have to–” she started.
“I have to finish my rounds,” the guard said. “That’s what I have to do.”
“Please...”
“She’s almost pretty when she begs,” he laughed.
They were done with the prisoner in the cell next to hers, the creature, as the guard had called him.
Before moving on, the club hit his barred door, and the sound reverberated through the walls.
It made Seraphina’s empty stomach flip painfully.
All these harsh, sudden noises were meant as a form of torture.
Since torture had been abolished by law in 1806, the guards felt rather disgruntled and on edge, so they found other ways to get a rise out of the convicts.
“Hear that, creature? She cut a man’s cock off.
I think you two might become fast friends.
” Then, turning to Seraphina: “You like castrating men, he likes eviscerating whores. You’ll have plenty to talk about while you await trial.
But God is great, and God is mighty, and you might just rot in here before your cases land on the magistrate’s desk. ”
With one last bang of his club, he moved on to mock and goad the rest of the prisoners down the corridor.
Seraphina didn’t say anything. She let out a sob, but nothing more, slid down to the floor with her back against the bars, and hugged her knees to her chest. She shook her head over and over, not wanting to believe this was happening to her.
Hartmann was well, and out of the hospital so fast. Of course he was.
The garrison hospital must’ve had a few healing lattices, though most of them were sent to the front as soon as they were completed by a weaver’s skilled hands.
All the lattices Matteo had made had gone to the field hospitals around Neuburg, the fortified town that had managed to keep the enemy and his army at bay for longer than anyone had expected or hoped.
Matteo had been a master weaver, the only one the academy had had.
She wondered if Kr?henstein had managed to replace him.
Sounds coming from the cell next to hers made Seraphina stiffen and sit upright. There was shuffling, then a soft clatter, and she heard something metallic being pushed over the stone floor toward her cell. She didn’t move a muscle.
“Water,” the man said. “I didn’t see them give you a bucket, or at least a cup to drink.”
His low, baritone voice seeped into her bones, reaching her marrow. She relaxed slightly, though she had no idea why she’d have this reaction to him. She remembered what the guard had said, that he was in for eviscerating whores.
“Thank you.”
She would’ve loved to refuse, but she was in no condition to do so.
Her throat was raw from how dry it was, and she was starting to find it difficult to swallow her own saliva.
She reached for the cup and found that he’d managed to push it close enough that she could grasp it without having to push her whole arm through the bars.
She drank greedily. The water was stale and smelled funny, but right now, she was too grateful to care.
“He threw your food on the floor,” he said. “Koch is a bastard. He’s the worst of them. Bauer is acceptable, and even Weber has his moments of decency. But when Koch and Fischer are on shift, it’s better to lay low and not draw their attention. Maybe ask Bauer next time. About that letter, I mean.”
Seraphina heard more shuffling, and she could tell he was trying to pass something else to her.
“Here, have my bread. It’s hard and moldy, I’m sorry. It’s what they feed us. Better than nothing, still.”
She accepted it. Again, she would’ve loved to refuse and tell him she didn’t need his bread, and that he shouldn’t go starving for her sake, but her stomach had started to rumble and twist itself into painful knots.
She took it and nibbled at it. It was the worst thing she’d ever put into her mouth, but she had to eat.
The best way to distract her mind from the literal trash she was eating was to make conversation with the man whose generosity was unexpected and a little suspicious.
“Is it true you killed...” She choked on the bread and coughed. On second thought, she’d probably choked on the words.
“I’m not a violent man.”
Seraphina had no clue what that was supposed to mean. An idealist would take it as a “no”, but she was a pragmatist, in more ways than one, so she categorized it as a non-answer.
“How do you do it?” she whispered.
There was a long pause before he asked, “What?”
She drew in a breath. “Kill someone and live with it after.”
A longer pause. A minute passed, and Seraphina realized it wasn’t a pause at all. He wasn’t going to answer her.
“I’m not judging you,” she said. “I’m in no position to judge you.
I’m only asking because I was supposed to kill someone, and I couldn’t do it.
I failed. And now I’m here, but that’s not even the worst part.
Maybe I’ll survive this, maybe I’ll get out, and then I have to.
.. I must not fail again. So, how do you do it? That’s what I want to know.”
When he still didn’t say anything, she chuckled darkly. Was he startled by her confession? She knew she was, but why would a murderer be?
“If someone could teach me,” she said. “If someone could explain it to me. I’ve learned many things I’d never thought I’d learn, done things I shouldn’t have been capable of doing, but this.
.. Killing a human being, no matter how rotten and despicable, no matter how much they deserve it and how much better the world would be without them in it.
.. This is where I draw the line, apparently. ”
She heard a squelch coming from outside her cell, to her left, where their two cells were separated by a thick wall, then a trickle of freezing water reached her. She moved her hand away.
“It’s a cloth,” he said. “Take it. I rinsed it and soaked it in clean water. They give us a bucket a week. To wash. Take it.”
“Th-thank you.”
She reached for the wet bundle and used it to clean her face and her neck, and get as much of the slop out of her dress.
The man told her to give it back to him, and he rinsed it again and returned it clean once more.
They passed the cloth between them until Seraphina thanked him again and said she was fine.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Con–”
He gulped, as if he’d swallowed wrong just as he was speaking.
“Con? Conrad?” she asked.
“No. Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. Rune. My name is Rune.”
“Rune. I’m Seraphina.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” he whispered.
She smiled. “My mother insisted. She wanted her only daughter to be called something special. Not Mary, or Anne, or Catherine, or Theresa. You know, the most common saints’ names.
Though she never called them saints. She called them consecrated.
Yes, she was a purist. Isn’t it hysterical that a purist’s daughter ended up in jail?
And for cutting off a man’s dick, of all things.
” She let out a dry laugh. “Still, she wanted me to have a name with a divine meaning. But there was a Saint Seraphina, you know? In Tuscany.”
Her voice lost its strength, and she sighed.
“My mother didn’t know, and I found out later, when I came to study at Kr?henstein Academy and met...” She bit her suddenly trembling lip. “I met someone from Tuscany who told me about Saint Seraphina, or Saint Fina, as they call her.”
She fell silent, not knowing what else to say.
In truth, she didn’t know why she’d started pouring her heart out like that, telling him details that didn’t matter to him at all.
Only to her. To her, they mattered, because Matteo had been the one to tell her she’d been named after a saint after all.
Matteo, like her mother, had called them consecrated. Because he’d been a purist.
And it had been so ironic – and fitting, at the same time – that she’d started defining herself as a pragmatist when she was only twelve, just to spite her mother and prove she wasn’t anything like her. Then she’d gone ahead and fallen in love with a purist years later.
“A purist’s daughter?” Rune asked, sounding uncertain.
“Yes. My father was one, too. I wanted to go against both of them. Be different, wild, a rebel.” The last words were marked by sarcasm.
“I... I don’t know what a purist is.”
“Huh?” She turned her head toward his voice, scooting closer to the wall that separated them. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Did you live under a rock?”
“I... I lived a sheltered life.”
He said it as if he was embarrassed by it. Seraphina wondered what it meant. Who lived a sheltered life? Only wealthy people could afford it. The nobility? The royal family? But that was silly, because Rune didn’t sound like someone from the upper echelons.
“Would you two shut the fuck up?” a prisoner yelled. “Some of us are trying to get some sleep in.”
“Yes,” someone else grumbled. “Before night comes and this shithole turns into a madhouse of cries, and screams, and bad fucking dreams again.”
Seraphina fell silent. If she held her breath and listened carefully, she could almost hear Rune breathing softly on the other side. Or she could’ve imagined it, though these days, her hearing was especially sharp. Nothing escaped her.
“Will you sing tonight, miss?” a third prisoner asked, a man whose voice sounded old and tired.
Her chest ached, and she thought about beasts again. The ones born, the ones made, and the ones aspiring to become.
“I will,” she promised.