There were eleven other people in the room. Seven men and four women who all looked older than they smelled. Ten of them looked down quickly rather than meet his gaze, the eleventh looked hopeful for a moment, then sighed and closed his eyes. There were two obvious couples and a woman who sat alone, as far from the others as she could get and still be in the same room. She wore trousers and one sleeve of her heavy workman’s jacket had recently been soaked in gin. There was no furniture, nothing anyone could use as a weapon, only what looked like layers of worn rugs. The glass in the single window in the front wall had been painted black. Besides the gin, the room smelled of old blood and urine and stale sweat.
And lavender.
Behind him, a steel bolt slid home. Bolts were easy enough to open from the inside. He could do it in fur if he had to.
“Is safe. Is safe.” The Sister pushed by him. Tomas’ eyes watered a little as the scent of lavender grew momentarily stronger. “No soldiers get in. No abominations get in.”
Mirian wrapped her hand around his and pushed up against his side. “Abominations?”
Distracted by the contact, Tomas managed to pull himself together enough to wonder why she bothered asking. Who knew and who cared what Imperial Starry Sisters thought were abomination.
The Sister turned back to face them, hands tucked under the loose fall of cloth that made up the top layer of her costume. “The new Prelate of the Church of the Sun,” she said, as though that was enough to make everything she was about to say the absolute truth, “has declared the beastmen abomination.”
“What does that mean?” Mirian asked pushing closer to him. He could feel himself sinking into softer parts.
“That they are not been cleansed by the fire.”
Mirian’s grip on his hand tightened enough it started to hurt. “But what does that mean?”
The Sister looked confused for a moment, then her face cleared and she smiled. “Oh, for the abominations. That they are not given the protections of the law and in their death, they will not be reborn in the fire. Now go, take your young man to sit. There will be food.”
It took Tomas a moment to realize what the beastmen meant. Took him a moment to realize it meant him.
The Sister had started through a door in the back wall before he put it together. He had been declared an abomination by someone who’d never met him and knew nothing about him. How could a church declare a whole people abomination? It didn’t make sense. He’d begun to form a protest when Mirian used her entire body to shift him to an open bit of carpet against the wall no more than three feet from the front door. He snapped his mouth closed and tried to pull away, but was too afraid of hurting her again to use the effort necessary.
She smelled better than everything else in the room combined, but he really was afraid of hurting her. When she tried to maneuver him down to the floor, he locked his knees.
“We can’t stay.” He breathed the words into the curve of her neck and tried not to inhale.
Mirian curled one arm up over his shoulder, stroking her fingers through his hair. He started to jerk away until he realized the sudden familiarity was to cover his ears. “If we’re caught after curfew, the soldiers will find out.” The words were warm against his cheek.
“They won’t catch me. Not in the dark. Not on four legs. I’ll go. You stay.”
“I can’t walk another step, and you will not leave me with these people! They smell terrible and they’re filthy.”
Tomas pulled back. There were dark circles under her eyes and a crazy gleam in them. Nothing about the way she held onto him said seduction. She clutched at him the way a much younger Mirian would have clutched at a rag doll. “We’re filthy.”
“Not the point!”
A hand clutched at his trouser leg and he looked down into a hopeful dark-eyed gaze. “You got a drink?”
“No.”
“I need a drink.”
Mirian leaned past his shoulder and showed teeth. “He said no.”
They suddenly had a larger area of open carpet around them.
“Sit, sit, new people. There is food.”
There were three Sisters now. One carried a large pot, the other two bowls and spoons.
“Sit,” Mirian repeated. So he sat. And put the clogs back on.
The food was nominally stew, although it was mostly potatoes and smelled a little like lavender.
The Sister who’d let them in spoke as they ate of how science had found that the stars were also suns, were also life-givers, and as there were a thousand small suns in the sky so there would one day be a thousand Sisters ministering to those abused by war.
Leaning sideways, he breathed, “A thousand? I think her math is off.”
Mirian snickered, turned it into a cough, but he felt like he’d accomplished something.
After the food, there was an opportunity to use the privy at the end of the tiny back garden then, when everyone had reclaimed their bits of carpet, the Sisters intoned a long blessing in Imperial, mostly about the burning away of sins. Two of the men, half propped against the wall and half against each other were obviously asleep before they finished.
When the Sisters took the lamps away into the kitchen and closed the door, Tomas noticed that bits of the black paint on the window had been scratched away to make star patterns. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the dark, he could make out what he thought were supposed to be the Stag and the River, both only barely visible in the minimal spill of light in from the street.
“At least they’re consistently crazy,” Mirian muttered against his ear. Sat up. Rummaged in the bedroll and pulled out the telescope—he recognized the whisper of its chain as she tucked it under her jacket—then pushed the bedroll back toward him. “You should sleep on this so no one tries to take it.”
“Sleep on it?”
“Use it as a pillow.”
“Why don’t you use it as a pillow?”
“They can’t sneak up on you.”
Tomas wasn’t sure who they were, but since no one could sneak up on him—at least no one in the shelter with them—he tucked it up against the wall. Without the hard ridge of the telescope, it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable.
“I think there’s bugs in the carpet.”
“There were bugs in the straw.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Risking the curfew’s looking better, isn’t it?”
She shot him a look of such exaggerated disdain that he snickered. The Sisters were a little crazy, but it could be worse. They had food and shelter. They were a day closer to Karis and while he could have played hide and seek with the Imperials all night, Mirian couldn’t.
People were muttering and shuffling into different positions all over the room. Someone growled a profanity. Someone answered with a louder one. The air was fresher than he’d expected by the floor, less stagnant, and he wondered if Mirian had anything to do with that. Did she think about blowing out a circle of candles?
Mirian was…
Still sitting. And not looking as though she were about to lie down any time soon. Tomas pushed himself up on his elbows. “What?”
“I’m not putting my head on that carpet.”
How was he supposed to sleep if she sat there looking disgusted all night? He couldn’t change, so there seemed to be only one solution. Lying down again, Tomas patted his right shoulder.