Sanctuary

CHAPTER ONE

S he stood naked. Fifty other women stood with her, also stripped. This was the third and final round of consideration. Those who passed would be employed within the Cloistered City.

She had come in well under the maximum height allocation. If that worked against her, her hair was glossy and long. She had all ten toes and fingers. Her eyes were far enough apart, and her nose was not offensive nor ignorantly slanted. Already she proved she could speak without stuttering and knew enough of her words to read simple sentences and write her name.

Her breasts were small but alike. Even though she had worked in the fields in her small village with her mother, Petra did not wield a scythe or hoe. Her hands were not like burlap, nor did she have one arm longer than the other. Her teeth were straight. A birthmark did stain her backside, but her mother had always said it was a blessing the discoloration was the shape of a star.

When she was little, her mother joked she could sit with royalty because of such a mark, denoting her for greatness.

This last round was the Innocence Test. The inspector, with long, bony fingers, came up to each woman and forced legs apart while two other women, with hands like clubs, held the prospect by the shoulders.

Some of the girls struggled. Some swore and wept it was not their fault when she pronounced them “indecent.” Many declared it would not affect how they served the emperor.

Not one protestation was heeded.

Petra had never held a man between her legs. However, a belligerent insect had once made its way into the folds of her body, attracted by her first entrance into womanhood. A doctor was called in. The pain was excruciating; the doctor’s hands were clumsy. He got the crawling creature but punctured the physical evidence of her virginity.

Many women came to this annual consideration knowing they would not pass this round without trickery and believed themselves clever. Petra did not consider herself clever. However, she did know her own determination.

Since news of Aldney’s death six months ago, she had waited for this day. His death in the palace brought unending grief to her heart and robbed their mother of a son and provider. His death was a crime, and she stood proudly naked, proud to learn the truth of how her brother was taken and provide for her mother in the meantime.

The inspector’s breath was hot and sour. “Are you innocent?”

She crouched down like a frog and looked up, prying fine hairs aside and shoving her first two fingers in.

I am destined to serve in the Cloistered City. My red moon cycle began this morning.

Petra shrieked and pinched her knees.

The inspector tumbled over. “Stupid girl! Hold still!”

“No need,” Petra answered, forcing her eyes wide, remembering the words on the delivered note stating her brother had died. “You have the answer on your hand!”

Heads turned.

Other girls wept and begged. It alarmed no one. But Petra had screamed and now dozens of eyes saw a humiliated girl, legs crossed, head hung, with her perpetrator on the ground, fingertips colored with blood.

Whispers raced like serpents through the crowd. Astonishment and confusion twisted the face of the inspector.

“You...you...”

“You see your proof and I can no longer say I have proof of my innocence.”

Like a long-legged spider, she recoiled and sprung to her feet, hurling a slap across Petra’s cheek.

“You expect me to believe, in all my years of affirming virgins, that I have penetrated your innocence?”

“It is as it seems.”

I’ll find your truth, Aldney. I won’t let your death be lost to the secrets of the emperor’s city!

Trapped by the apparent visible evidence, the inspector crouched back.

“What is this racket?” A voice demanded from the furthest portion of the crowd.

Bodies parted as if pushed by a giant, unseen hand. A tall woman, dressed in the dark gray of elder palace servants, came forward. Stitched yellow lines up the sleeves of her robe further attested to her status.

The Innocence Inspector had no such lines.

She snapped her lanky body into a bow. “It’s nothing, ma’am.”

“It’s nearly nightfall. Written code demands new servants be within the walls before moonrise.”

The inspector bobbed her head. “So it will be. This girl was one of the last.”

“If she is a virgin, she should stand with the others. Be done with this.”

The inspector opened her mouth to protest, but the woman waved Petra towards the other virgins, now clad in loose, pale, yellow robes.

***

T HE WOMEN AMONGST WHOM she stood all looked like they could be second and third cousins.

Whether the directive came from the emperor, which she doubted, or from the Mother-of-State, this year’s selection consisted of women with flat chests and small hands. All the faces, like hers, were round. All the eyes, like hers, were dark and downturned. Hair colors varied slightly, but all shades were deep brown and black.

It was strange to stand in such company. Each of them had led different lives, boasted different personalities. Yet all were now dressed in yellow and hurried towards the bathhouse.

Here, on the outskirts of the city, refuse was hauled, and chamber pots scrubbed. If she, or any of the other young women were inept or considered too dumb for the positions they had been selected to fill, they would end up here, grinding charcoal to absorb the smell of urine and excrement. Their hands would tend manure piles, dump filled barrels, and reek of the vinegar portioned to scrub their own bodies free of filth.

Aldney had written to her about this place. He described the smell as meaty and festering with rotten milk.

Aldney had not stayed here. A high-ranking eunuch said he was far too androgenous to remain out of sight. Both men and women would derive pleasure looking at him; he must be seen. A position was found for him as a courier.

There were letters in his satchel when they found him.

Petra was convinced the same odd beauty that had pulled him from the men in his first days was his undoing. He had been a Spadone. Only part of his genitalia had been removed. He was still capable of coitus.

He had been killed by a jealous man for being the lover of a lady-in-waiting.

He had rejected a woman or a man’s love and been killed for his modesty and purity.

Aldney had not ended his life like they said. He was not a coward. His letters to home were honest but happy. Her entrance to the royal city was proof that his end was a crime. Now she had the chance to bring truth to his name.

Like a flock of yellow birds soon to be plucked, Petra and the other women were told to disrobe and get into the large, main tub. Small hand towels were distributed, and the women washed each other’s backs, then fronts, and so on, until all of them glowed with the stark pink of vigorously scrubbed skin. Water, laced with vinegar, was sprayed over them via large, dense feather fans to disinfect whatever the squares of rough fabric had not.

In that time, the yellow robes were steamed in the hot rock room, where clothes for those who worked on the outskirts were cleaned.

Brought out again, the women were instructed to tie the gowns in a new way, the official way of their current rank. Not around the waist but above the breasts and secured between the shoulder blades. The long sleeves were left down because colder months approached.

“You will sleep here,” declared the head maid of the bathhouse. “Tomorrow you will eat and be placed where you are useful.”

Assigned to follow in rows of four, Petra and the other women were led into a long hall, devoid of anything except cots. At the foot of each was a coarse elk hair blanket and in the middle was a bonnet of cotton, to be worn every night so their hair would not frizz.

After all, even though their current ranks were low, Petra was among women who would be seen by ladies and gentlemen of the royal hub. Expectations for their hygiene were astringent.

Without needing instruction, the women filed down the long space and stood beside the beds.

The head maid spoke again. “There is much for you here. Pay, clothes, food, and medicine. Mayhap, there are many stories you have heard of the Cloistered City. Men with the strength of lions. Women who drink the blood of kit rabbits to stay young. Cats who trill like songbirds and birds of a thousand colors. I tell you there are both truths and myths in this city and neither of them are for you to learn. Sloth and flout will not be tolerated. Many have stood where you are now and spurned it in the name of curiosity. Own docility. Busy hands and still lips will provide for you.”

She exited.

In her wake, maids of the hall scurried to douse beef tallow lanterns that lined the walls, leaving Petra and the others in darkness.

Leaning forward, she took off her shoes and slid them under the narrow space between the floor and the worn wooden frame of the bed. The old bed moaned at the weight of her body, an oddly soothing sound of nighttime. Tired beds ready to support tired bodies as dark skies hushed the country of Vale.

There were no pillows on these beds. Aldney had complained how strange it was to sleep without something under his head. At home, their pillows had been stitched from yarn and reeds, filled with either beans or rice hulls, depending on the rotation of the soil.

Petra folded her hands under her head.

From her brother’s letters, she knew that the food, like the accommodation for the beds, would gradually improve, depending on where she was placed. Washing, sewing, beading, fabric dyeing, and garden tending would all be tests to see where each woman served best.

It had been similar for the men.

Petra hoped her knowledge of soil would bring her to one of the many gardens within the city. She must be seen to become a courier, and she had no talent for needle and thread.

Eyes closed, she listened to hushed conversations around her. Each woman had hopes about what serving in the palace could bring.

Already, Petra felt sure, some looked to form alliances; less for others, more for them. And it was tempting to sit up, find the dim shales of moonlight seeping in through high, narrow windows, and discover who might drift to her side.

Leaving home had been terrible. Though both she and her mother knew it was the right thing, Petra felt like part of her insides had rebelled and remained in the tiny farm home.

Everything here was different. The air did not smell of grass and tilled soil. Rotund crows did not hop with their stilted gait, cawing with indignation. Mornings would not bring the egg woman, bartering for rice, beans, and milk.

She would not hear her mother snore at night. She would not hear the cow bellow. She would not glimpse the bed her brother had slept in.

Against the wet heat of tears, Petra closed her eyes and tuned in to the hushed conversations around her. A few talked about how they hoped to serve one of the ladies-in-waiting most likely to become empress.

Petra turned her head in the other direction. A cluster barely kept their voices to a whisper, exchanging all the myths they heard lived within the walls of the royal city.

For centuries the city had stood averse to the outside world. Who was to say that birds with feathers of gold, red, and green were not bred over time ‘til their feathers rivaled silk and their songs were composed of heavenly sounds?

One girlish voice said she didn’t care a thing about birds. She wanted to meet the captains of Shivalry.

Although the emperor’s black army was feared, among those men were chosen others to become Shivs. Their strength of mind and body had to be beyond average. Their aspirations had to be only those of the city. Their blood belonged to Vale. Their life would end in service to the emperor. These men never married.

And to prove they could be Shivalry, these ones were subjected to a terrible test.

Another of the rumors lurking in the royal city was the presence of a garden, the exact whereabouts known only to the emperor, guarded sunrise to sunset. The soil there, the trees, and the rocks themselves thrummed with light and voices from the ancients at the beginning of the world.

Prospective men of Shivalry ate the dirt and rubbed their arms against the rocks until they bled. Ancient forces infiltrated their bodies and turned them into something more than human. Radical strength, enchanted touch, and vision that could penetrate mountains. Those whose bodies could not tolerate such gifts perished in the process.

The girl with the childish voice said she wanted to feel Shivalry strength and wondered if they ever took mistresses.

Petra rolled over.

Aldney never mentioned Shivalry in his letters. Doubtless, he saw them. Their existence was not a myth. However, she wondered how many of the fabled rumors he had seen. Did one of the mysteries he encountered lead to his death?

She wondered. Somehow that seemed more probable than her gentle sibling the object of an unhappy love affair. His life was for his mother and sister. It brought him purpose and joy. Peace and resilience.

I miss you. You were innocent. They have lied to cover their shame. I will clear your name. I will find the truth and set your memory free.