Maiden! What a… I can’t… Shayl, how can I face… whip’s bad enough… my face… I can’t…
She must and she knows it. Get it over with, she thinks, clamps her tongue in her teeth so she won’t cry out, the anticipation almost worse than the burning, but it won’t be once the burning starts, she knows that too. The silence behind her stretches on and on, an eternity. She starts shaking. She is going to tell, she knows it, tears gather in her eyes and run down her face. I can’t… I can’t… Her bladder gives way and hot-liquid runs down her thighs, splatters on the floor. She goes rigid with shame, then she is shaking again, moaning. She tries to dredge up anger but can think of nothing but the irons burning her…
The Agli’s voice comes genially behind her. “What is your name, girl?”
She wants to tell him, she is going to tell him but she sees Rane’s face Hal’s face Her father’s face Teras Sanani and her silly oadats… And she cannot do it. Cannot. But she has to tell, what else can she do? What does it mean anyway, it is just postponing for a little what must happen anyway, they are bound to be taken, all of them, Hal and Gesda and the angry taroms and her father and Teras, and all of them. But there is something in her that will not let her do what logic tells her to do. She bites on her tongue till blood comes and says nothing.
The Agli makes a soft clucking sound of gentle disapproval. Tuli is almost startled into giggling, it is so like the sound old Auntee Cook makes when she catches her or Teras in the jam pots. Tears run down her face. Blood is salty on her tongue.
One of the acolytes-she thinks it is the one who curled his lip at her menstrual blood-brings the hot iron. He holds it close to her buttocks. She cringes away from the heat, tries to press into the stone. He sniggers, puts the iron between her legs and brings it up hard.
For just an instant the pain is something she can’t realize, it is so greatly beyond anything she has experienced or even expected, she cannot breathe, cannot make a sound, can only sob, a high whining sound like an animal cry-then the pain is gone, the heat is gone, and all she feels is an uncomfortable pressure and a gentle warmth throughout the whole of her body. And she hears Ildas’s angry chitter in her head.
The ropes burn off her hands, though no fire touches her skin. The warmth flows out of her. The acolyte behind her shrieks, the pressure drops away from her. The Agli screams in an agony equal to hers a moment before. She turns.
He writhes on the floor and as she watches, flashes to a twisted blackened mummy. The acolytes burn with him. The three of them are suddenly and utterly dead. The smell of roasted meat is nauseating in the room. She walks from the wall, stops by the hideous corpse of the Agli. “You said there’d be another smell in this room, but you didn’t know you’d provide it. If I told you anything, it has vanished into your present silence.” She touches the body with her toe. It is hard and brittle and stirs with a small crackling sound that wrenches at her stomach.
Hand pressed hard over her mouth she runs from the room.
She looked down at Ildas prancing beside her, smiled at his complacent strut, the glowing whiskers sleek and content. “Take me to Rane.”
They wound through the dark and twisty halls of the Center, dodging an occasional guard or flitting female form. It seemed absurdly easy to Tuli, like dreaming of walking naked and unobserved through crowds of strangers. And there did seem to be very few folk of any sort about. Maybe Floarin’s taken them all to Oras, she thought. Near the back she came to a row of cells like the one she’d waked in but too far on the side for hers. There was a drowsy guard leaning half asleep against one of the barred doors. Tuli chewed her lip. She didn’t even have her sling, she didn’t have anything. Except Ildas, and she didn’t exactly have him, he did his own will and hers only when the two wills coincided or he felt like doing her a favor. He looked like a beast, he acted like a beast most times, she called him a beast when she thought about him, but she knew it was not the right word, he had more mind than any beast, more will, more… something. She knelt in shadow and touched him, drew her hand along the smooth curve of his back. “Will you help me, companion and friend?” she whispered.
The fireborn wriggled under her hand, then was away, a flash of light streaking along the worn stone flags, then a rope of light coiling like a hot snake up and up, around and around the man who wasn’t aware of anything happening until the rope whipped round his neck and pulled itself tight. He clawed at the nothing that was strangling him, tried to cry out, could not, staggered about, finally collapsed to the floor. The light rope held an instant longer, than unwound and was Ildas again, sitting on his hind legs, preening his long whiskers, more satisfaction in his pose, reeking with self-approval.
Chuckling, Tuli came walking down the hall. She scratched him behind his ears, felt his head move against her palm, felt his chitter echoing in her, head. “Yes, sweeting, you did good.” She straightened, unbarred the door.
Rane was stretched out on a plank cot like the one Tuli’d waked on. She sat up when she saw Tuli, her eyes opening wide, the irons clashing, on legs and arms. She was naked and there were bruises and a few small cuts on her body. She looked strained and unhappy, but otherwise not too badly off.
Tuli looked at the irons, then looked uncertainly about the cell as if she expected to find help in the filthy stones.
“The guard,” Rane said. “He has the keys on his belt.”
Tuli came back with the keys a second later. She took the wrist irons off first. “You have any idea where they put our clothes?” She bent over the leg irons, scowling as the key creaked slowly over in the stiff lock. The irons finally fell away with a slinky clanking.
Rane worked her ankles, rubbed at them. “No, but I know how to find out.” She swung off the cot and went out to squat beside the guard. She touched the charred circles about his neck, pressed her fingers under the angle of his jaw. “Good. He’s still alive, just out cold.”
Tuli smiled, felt a distant relief. “There’s enough dead already.”
“The Agli?”
“And the acolytes.”
“How soon before someone finds them?”
“Can’t say.” She rubbed at the nape of her neck. “A while, I expect. They were getting ready to use hot irons on me, wouldn’t want to be interrupted at their pleasures.”
Rane shivered; once again she touched the blackened rings about the guard’s neck. “How did you do this?”