Chapter 4
Chapter four
Ashara
The Reach of Atonement
“Untouched, but bruised tonsils,” a man affirmed, probably Pietr, his fingers retracting from my open mouth, forced wide by another.
An acolyte? A monk? The Blood God Himself?
Eyes shut, all their touches bled together like one monstrous appendage.
The wooden table legs rattled with the throes of my body, every part of me shaking from the tips of my toes to the chattering of my jaw.
Scrunched at the waist, no one had thought to tug my skirts down.
I lay open to the room, knees wrenched apart and bound to the table’s edges with leather straps, just like my wrists.
“Twenty lashes?” Pietr again? Their voices congealed, monotonous and indecipherable.
“Five’s custom.”
“Not with the bruising. The male earnt himself another fifteen, what with his inability to observe silent reflection. It seems they both have trouble remembering what their mouths are actually for.” Their laughter rang hollow.
A surge of something hot, shooting from my cheeks to my chest, stilled my trembling. Did they gaze upon me as they joked?
Don’t check. Don’t look.
“‘Tis confirmed she’s a laurel, not a cypress? Her hair be grey.” Something tugged at my scalp, a nameless hand threading through the strands.
“Unwed regardless,” another drawled with the cadence of a disappointed schoolmaster. “But indeed, a defect since birth. Scrolls state she’ll have seen twenty winters by the next phase.”
A tut.
“Careful what you call defect, Dominous. The Blood God maketh His creations as He sees fit, even if we struggle to comprehend why. Cursed be the ignorance of man.”
Pressure flattened my stomach before someone fisted my skirts. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter.
“Our moral faults, however, are entirely our own, as this laurel will come to learn. For Blood Demands Blood.” He threw them down, back over my legs, the fabric sticking to sweat-stricken skin.
I knew the urge would pass, but still, I wanted to die. Right now, on this table.
Other, kill me quick. Let me die. Now. Smite me now.
He wouldn’t listen, and perhaps that’s why I felt emboldened to ask. Eventually, I’d be released from the binds, and this would be over. I wanted to see my mother. Gods, I wanted my mother—wanted to be held by her, touched by her, soothed by her.
“She may have fainted.” A clammy palm pressed to the expanse of my temple, testing its heat. I tensed my eyes shut again, hoping no one would demand they open.
“Drop her to the cell, and I’ll amend Druid Capriche’s Book of Turns. No need to alert him this eve…not if you value your head or your rations. The Blood God hath blessed him in fury as well as prophecy.” Murmured agreements accompanied the flapping of leather as my limbs were finally freed.
I snapped my legs shut, swallowing the urge to vomit as olive oil trickled from between me, dripping down my thighs.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
I kept my eyes closed the whole way back to the cell, fighting a wince each time a monk righted me with their hands. The world felt…altered, somehow. Bars clanking shut, I traced the walls with both hands, lowering myself to the straw.
Eventually, I opened my eyes, if only to cry.
By the Other, how I cried. Those deep, wracking wails that leave you gasping for breath, face red, eyes puffy.
Yet, for all my noise, the cell beside mine remained silent.
***
Doors of Judgement were plentiful in Thromarra’s capital of Dendra, guarding the entry to every enclave’s chappellum.
My mother would try to make me look at them during our Third Day walks through the city, collecting commissions for the guild.
Despite her relentless pointing, I never did—blurring my eyes or fixating on the tips of spires and stained-glass windows instead.
Sometimes I’d chanced a look, if only to regret it. Never a phase passed when every door didn’t bear some festering limb speared to the wood: tongues, ears, hands, eyes…wombs.
The Reach of Atonement, however, there was but one of those.
Led by acolytes, flanked by monks, I, alongside others who’d awaited First Day Judgement in the bellies of chappellums, marched down the cobbled streets.
There was an art to it: dodging the emptying of chamber pots from above and the mischief of hungry rats at our heels.
Beamed faces of houses and shops leered over our procession, each of us destined for penance, countless eyes casting their silent condemnations through latticed windows and the hatches of doors.
I stared ahead, the people, buildings, and colours all curdling into one watery smear like owl shit.
A hollow numbness replaced the hysteria of yestereve; I had cried enough tears to fill the River of Galae, running dry well before dawn.
By the gods, I was thankful for it. I could only hope it would endure the scaffold, the crowds, the whip, and worse still, the knowing eyes of my mother.
Step faltering, my slipper dunked into a rust-yellow puddle.
How fortuitous.
I trudged on, trying—and failing—to ignore the squelch of my left shoe.
It appeared after nearly a full turn. Framed by towering pillars of Ovidian rock, a wooden scaffold, erected against the southernmost reach-wall of the Grand Templum, the spiritual home of the Dendralis.
The Reach of Atonement.
It loomed over the vast piazza, absent of its usual market stalls. Before me stretched a long line of souls readying to ascend its bloodstained steps, each awaiting their turn to render their dues—be that by limb, lashing, or scorching.
I rolled my shoulders, trying not to imagine how it might feel between them after Capriche delivered his blows.
A metallic peal rang through the air, startling a murder of crows from their crumb-pecking. Wings flapped in panicked flight as I ducked, narrowly avoiding a score of talons soaring overhead. Amongst their cawing, a barn owl glided, silent and patient, unlike the rest.
“Make way! Make way! Heathens bound for penance! Let not their profane touch defile ye!”
Assisted by paxiams—armed guards of the Dendralis—an acolyte tolling a bell passed us. In his wake, a dozen or so dark-haired men and women, leashed by collars of hemp, were dragged towards the scaffold.
I couldn’t help the way my nose wrinkled as their bare feet slapped the stone. Heathens were not permitted use of the hot springs for bathing, nor rivers or wells, or to wear shoes, for that matter.
An uneasy twisting rippled through my gut.
They were herded like cattle to the lower left of the reach, apart from the crowds, apart from us.
Druids did not penance the heathens—their blessed, albeit violent, touch too much of an honour—that duty fell to the acolytes.
They would wait until every other Thromarrian bound for penance had rendered their dues, standing for turns upon turns until the last lash was struck.
I’d never lingered long enough to witness a heathen’s penance. We were permitted to return home once day sank to dusk, and only the perverse stayed beyond what was expected.
Today’s sun was scarcely halfway to its fall, its pale light whitening the highest clouds in the sky. How long until I was home in my cot? Until I might draw my sheets about me and return to before?
“A long while yet, darling girl.”
Gods…Demetri.
I fisted my skirts, stained with patches of gods only knows what, trying not to think about him: where he was in the line, or what would happen between us now that we’d been caught.
Glutton for punishment, my neck craned anyhow, eyes wandering to the backs of those farther ahead.
All women, Demetri’s curled crop of warm brown hair glaringly absent.
The one nearest, broad of hip with hay-bale hair, began to weep.
What was her due? I set myself to guess their sins.
Perhaps she’d sold an undersized loaf or brewed non-monk-sanctioned ale.
Maybe she’d kissed a sweetheart or stolen some coin.
Like the cobbler, had she laughed at a druid?
Defecated in a book? Sewn another’s sleeve?
Sins in Dendra were plentiful as grain, and the Dendralis never failed to harvest the crop.
Lost in my game, I didn’t notice the crowd at first, funnelling in from the side streets and alleys.
Not until the swelling of their cheers grew impossible to ignore.
Some, already calling for penance, eyed our line with a fevered hunger.
I avoided their covetous gaze, counting the steps of the scaffold instead.
One, two, three… They were greedy. Greedy for a sliver of entertainment on a dreary First Day morn.
Four, five, six… Others waited silently, lips thin and hands knotted, worry—or shame—slicking their brows.
Seven, eight, nine… Each chanced look into the deepening mass of bodies proved fruitless, my mother’s knowing eyes nowhere to be found.
Did I even wish to see her?
She’d call me a fool. I was a fool.
Oh, such fools we’d been. Demetri and I believed ourselves to be so much cleverer than the rest. “Fate is on our side, darling girl. We’ve stuck to our promise, and what is but one tiny sin? You’re always so good.”
But good girls didn’t stand in the penance line; they stood there, in the crowds—wimples secured, dresses starched, hands clasped, heads down. Good girls watched and waited and endured through it all.
A young thing, ten or so paces away, half-hidden in her mother’s pale blue skirts, eyed me warily, her gaze drifting from my yellow-stained slipper to my unbound hair, no doubt knotted and wild. Around her, men and women pointed and jeered.
I smiled at her, and after a moment, she smiled back—a toothless smile, all gums, just like Adelaide’s a few cycles or so ago.
“Isolde.” Her mother sneered, yanking her skirts to shield her daughter. “Cast ye eyes away—”
Heat pricked my cheeks, and I honed in on the knot of rope at my wrist, hoping I hadn’t gotten her into too much trouble.