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  As Markes finished playing, a Riper with a high forehead and long, curling hair clapped her hands, sending the mass of bracelets on her bare arms jingling. ‘Brilliant, Brand! Ruzalia has high regard for artists. Remember the singer?’

  The Ripers all laughed, except Brand, who gave a sly smile. ‘Thank you, Varonessa. Don’t you think a boy with such exceptional talent should be honoured by admittance to the Circle?’

  ‘Lenoir?’ asked Varonessa. ‘Don’t you agree that it would make sense?’

  Lenoir shifted his weight in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. His face, though perfectly bland, emanated displeasure. ‘It’s not usual to bring a new one into the Circle.’

  Brand went to stand alongside Markes. ‘It is not usual to find such talent, Lenoir.’

  ‘Do you wish to be admitted to the Circle, Markes?’

  Markes lifted his head and looked into the eyes of each individual around the table, returning to Lenoir last. Retra thought his eyes seemed glassy and distant. What had he taken before coming here? What had Modai given him?

  ‘It would be my privilege, Guardian,’ Markes replied.

  Lenoir shrugged. ‘Very well.’

  ‘The oath, please, Brand,’ said Varonessa.

  The scarred Riper slid her tongue across the top of her lip and gave a throaty laugh. ‘Repeat these words … I pledge to uphold the Charter of Ixion and to follow its creed to my last worldly breath.’

  ‘I pledge –’

  Dread filled Retra as Markes began to speak and she saw a demon crawl out of the cold stone floor and up Markes’s body using its wet teeth as another set of hands. It climbed surely towards his neck.

  No! Retra leapt from her pew and ran towards the table.

  A Riper caught her before she could reach Markes, strong fingers biting the flesh of her upper arm.

  She struggled to get free. ‘Markes, don’t!’

  The demon paused and swivelled its hideous head, its many wet eyes blinking at her.

  Retra choked off a scream. It couldn’t be real and yet it looked so. What was happening to her? She hadn’t eaten a pod like the time before.

  Lenoir – all of them – turned to stare as she hung suspended in the Riper’s grip.

  ‘What is it, baby bat? Why do you seek to interrupt Circle?’ Lenoir’s question sounded mild, but it flooded the darkest corners of her mind like torchlight. Retra found she couldn’t answer, robbed of words by embarrassment and fear. His look seared her, and in it she saw recognition. He knew her.

  She dragged her eyes from Lenoir to Markes, imploring him to refuse.

  He returned her look with one of surprise and confusion.

  Lenoir saw their exchange and frowned. ‘Aaaah … a crush on another so soon? You have excellent taste, pretty baby, but no sense of decorum, or timing. Now I will ask you again, why do you seek to prevent this boy from his service to Ixion?’

  Retra grappled for words. ‘I-I see danger for him – for all of you.’

  ‘You see danger?’ Lenoir gave her his complete attention now, his whole body tense with it, leaning towards her. She felt paralysed – trapped – by the weight of his presence and the glittering power in his eyes. His perfect lips fell apart, softening his face into something exquisite.

  Retra’s skin hurt with the comprehension of it, as if she had been burned or stung or cut. And she knew immediately that she had made a mistake, speaking of her vision. ‘I mean … we are new here and I’m frightened for him.’

  Lenoir’s eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Truly?’

  Retra summoned all the truth she felt in her answer. All the terror she harboured. ‘Yes.’

  He leaned back in his chair and for a moment Retra thought he seemed unbearably sad. ‘But Ixion is a place of pleasure, not fear.’

  ‘That is not how I’ve found it.’ Retra straightened her body and looked to Brand.

  The scarred Riper moved to Retra’s side with startling speed. ‘May I take her, Lenoir?’

  ‘Take, Brand?’ Another mild question.

  ‘That is … I mean … return her to a more suitable place.’

  Lenoir gave the Riper a piercing look. ‘So obliging, Brand. I hope your intentions are honourable? Unlike your previous encounter with her.’

  ‘She seems more forthright than most. I would talk to her about unseemly displays. That is all.’

  Retra heard the anger underlying Brand’s soft tone.

  Lenoir’s eyes narrowed with mistrust, but he leaned back and draped a leg across the arm of his high-backed chair. ‘Take her back to Vank. Charlonge has a talent with the awkward ones.’

  ‘Not for much longer, Lenoir,’ said Varonessa.

  ‘Indeed, my dear. It is soon to be her time.’

  Retra glimpsed his sadness again.

  Brand raised her hand, signalling for assistance, and two more Ripers stepped forward, lifting Retra to their shoulders, hanging her between them like a hunting trophy as they carried her out of the chamber.

  ‘Retra!’ a voice shouted.

  Suki. She wanted to call out to her friend, but her throat had closed tight with panic.

  ‘Let go of her!’ bellowed Rollo. He ran after the Ripers and barrelled against their sides, but his weight barely disturbed their momentum.

  Then heavy doors closed behind her and she could no longer hear Suki or Rollo at all.

  The air grew cooler, and still. Above her, carved wood ceiling struts rose into peaks. The Ripers carried her along the corridor and finally, after many turns, into another chamber similar to the Circle room. In this one the marble-arched recesses in the rock contained stacked iron beds, not altars. Grotesques and crude crosses decorated the front edges of each arch and a mural of entwined, naked bodies ran in a fringe above them.

  She shut her eyes from them but thick, smoking incense assaulted her senses.

  When they laid her on a hard slab, she opened her eyes again to a dome-shaped ceiling lit by wall candles and depicting an old mural of a lamb in bloody sacrifice. Her heat beat painfully in her chest. The walls were bare rock, which seemed to press inward on her. The air was so cold she was sure she was deep inside the mountain.

  Brand released her grip and began to feel her way over Retra’s body.

  Retra tried to wrestle free but several sets of hands held her fast.

  ‘Brand? Should you?’

  Retra couldn’t see which of the Ripers questioned Brand’s actions.

  ‘Hush,’ Brand hissed. ‘I sensed something wrong with this one when I saw her at the re-birthing.’

  ‘Is she a Peak?’

  ‘No. She is young enough,’ Brand replied. ‘Look at the freshness of her skin, the soft pout of her lips. No … it’s something else.’

  ‘Lenoir won’t like what you’re doing.’

  ‘Lenoir does not rule. We all rule,’ Brand insisted.

  ‘But Lenoir leads,’ objected the other.

  Brand ignored them, reaching beneath Retra’s skirt, feeling the soft flesh of her stomach and thighs.

  Retra’s mind flooded with panic to be touched in the way the warden had done when he came with his spying devices. Auditing, he’d called it.

  Then Brand’s hand stopped. The Riper keened in a dreadful, high-pitched sound of triumph. She lifted Retra’s skirt above her waist.

  The Ripers crowded around her naked limbs.

  ‘Brand?’

  ‘Brand, what ails?’

  Their voices rained on Retra. She wanted to scream loudly enough to drown them out, but her Seal-disciplined vocal chords would not oblige her. Seals did not shout for help for themselves. Seals did not scream. Seals did not …

  She heard a gargle and knew it to be her own weak protest. Tears stung the corners of her eyes, more for her own choking impotence than anything else.

  ‘I thought so,’ the scarred Riper-woman gasped. She fingered the obedience strip on Retra’s thigh. ‘She’s been hobbled.’

  The Ripers stared down at it. She re
ad shock on one face, disbelief on another, while another showed sly amusement as if party to something dirty and secretive.

  Retra wanted to shrivel and die under their crass inspection of her body.

  Then Brand’s face came closest of all to her, blotting the others from her vision. ‘That is why the Register does not trust you. You are hobbled.’

  Retra wet her lips. ‘No.’ Her hoarse whisper echoed about the cavern.

  They laughed at that, all of them; hissing noises that bounced off the walls, like excited catlings.

  Brand silenced them with a turn of her head. ‘This one is mine,’ she said.

  She drew an ivory-handled blade from inside her coat. ‘Hold her still,’ she hissed.

  Strong, pitiless hands forced Retra’s shoulders down and twisted her arms wide. More of them held her feet.

  Brand climbed onto the slab and sat astride Retra, her black eyes unemotional now as she lowered the blade.

  The knife’s first sting on her tender skin dislodged something inside Retra’s mind. She grappled to put it back in its place but it crumbled away.

  ‘NO!’ This time she shouted and thrashed, railing against them with all her strength. Desperate.

  But the Ripers’ weight held her fast.

  No one cared for her protests, intent as they all were on the play of the knife.

  It sliced into her. Two strokes, three … and then it stopped. Brand’s fingers probed the wound she’d made and tugged.

  The obedience strip tore from her thigh in a spray of warm liquid.

  Brand held the bloody sight aloft and gave a hoarse crow.

  Faintness crept upon Retra. It called her towards a numb, white oblivion. But a voice snatched her from its release.

  ‘Brand! What barbaric thing is this?’

  The Ripers melted away, leaving the scarred woman alone astride her.

  ‘Look, Lenoir. I am freeing her. She was monitored. Hobbled.’

  ‘You’ve cut her to do that? Hurt her. What about Enlightenment, Brand? Would that not have been a better way?’

  ‘Why would she deserve that?’ Brand traced bloody fingers along her face scars, leaving clotted trails.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she? She’s an innocent.’

  Brand thrust the grisly strip at Lenoir. ‘Innocence is but another constraint. Ixion is not a place for innocence.’

  ‘Fool. You have torn her artery! Wounds like this need deep sleep to heal and she can no longer do this. Petite nuit is not enough. You risk her premature death. Ixion is not a place for that. You will be disciplined for your actions!’ The voice that projected so easily across distance now filled the chamber like a pouring of foundry lead, crushing whatever it fell upon.

  Lenoir struck Brand with a gloved blow that sent the Guardian crashing to the floor.

  His gaze fell to Retra and the searing heat of it seemed to cleanse her. ‘Graselle, take the girl and prepare her,’ he said.

  Retra sensed another person at her side but her eyes remained with Lenoir. Beautiful, so beautiful … to see him this close almost took away her pain.

  Or maybe the woman carrying the burning candle, who’d crept close to her at Lenoir’s bidding and put her hand hard on the wound, had done that …

  ‘Retra, listen to me. I am Graselle. If you want to live you must be Enlightened.’

  Retra heard the woman but couldn’t see her. She lay in the dark of a curtained recess and smelt the cavern’s incense around her still. Soft moans nearby. And, more distant than that, chanting.

  Her heart moved in slow, lethargic beats. ‘Where – am – I?’

  ‘This is a secluded crib kept for those who ail, or are dying in a way that is not prescribed.’

  ‘Am I dying?’

  ‘If you’re lucky you will be,’ whispered a fever-pitched voice on her other side.

  Retra turned her head on the pillow to see who spoke but the darkness was too thick for her barely open eyes.

  ‘Shut your loser’s mouth, Lottie. You did not heed our rules so you paid,’ said Graselle.

  ‘Beast-woman,’ whispered back Lottie. ‘Nothing more. Lenoir’s pet.’ She started to cough.

  ‘You ignored the rest rule and now your body has failed. You were greedy. You had your time and you burnt it too quickly.’

  Neither said any more.

  Slowly, Retra began to distinguish outlines. Graselle, she discovered, sat at the end of her bed in a high-backed chair, her pale face as grey as the moon behind clouds.

  The sick girl, Lottie, lay across from her in another bed, her knees drawn up.

  ‘I feel strange,’ Retra said softly. ‘Heavy. And something is cutting my leg.’

  ‘It’s a tourniquet. Your body can’t stop the bleeding. It’s struggling to heal the wound because you can no longer sleep,’ said Graselle. ‘It drags all your energy for healing but it is not enough. Your mind must help it.’

  Retra let Graselle’s words float and settle in her mind. ‘How do I do that?’

  Graselle stood and began to rub her arm with a cool, scented lotion. ‘Your kind shouldn’t come here. The change is too great for Seals. Yet you have chosen it and rejected your society, so you must learn quickly or perish.’

  Lottie thrashed her legs around. She moaned again, loudly this time. Damaged sounds. ‘Give me … something … it hurts, Graselle. Please …’

  ‘It is against our rules.’

  ‘Please help her,’ Retra begged. ‘She sounds –’

  ‘No! It’s forbidden.’

  ‘What if you were her?’ Retra begged. ‘What if you hurt like her?’

  She sensed Graselle hesitate.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She disappeared between the curtains.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lottie panted. The unpleasant taint of her sweat drifted between them.

  ‘What happened to you? What’s wrong?’ asked Retra.

  ‘I burned too bright. I saw too much.’ She cried a little then.

  Retra wanted to comfort her but as she tried to sit up blood trickled from her thigh wound and she lay down again, afraid. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw what happens to us … I know where we go …’

  ‘You mean when we’re withdrawn? You know what it means?’

  But Lottie rambled on then with words that made little sense: half-finished thoughts about her sisters and her home.

  Eventually she fell to a kind of murmuring quiet that lulled Retra’s senses. Perhaps the girl was not as sick as Graselle had said. Perhaps she had just taken too much of the tonics and would recover.

  But, suddenly, Lottie came upright. She stumbled across to Retra, grasping her with hot, shaky hands. She climbed onto the bed and fell across Retra’s chest. Her breath began to rasp. ‘Mama … I want Mama …’ Tremors wracked the girl.

  Retra obeyed an instinct that ran deeper than her Seal training – deeper than anything she knew. She patted the girl’s back, soothing the distraught stranger.

  After a while the tremors eased and Lottie sighed, nuzzling into Retra’s neck.

  Then she became heavy and still.

  Forever still.

  Graselle came back too quickly and Retra knew she’d been waiting outside the curtains, listening.

  ‘I – can’t – breathe,’ Retra gasped.

  Graselle pulled Lottie’s body roughly from Retra, levering it onto the other bed. ‘Knew it wouldn’t be long before she went. They get angry for a while before the end, and then they want their mama. They always want her.’

  Retra couldn’t stop her tears. They poured down her face and slid around the nape of her neck.

  Mother.

  Graselle lit a small candle on the wall behind Lottie’s bed. ‘They’ll come and get her soon, while she’s still warm,’ she said almost to herself. ‘But we must prepare you. I’ll cover her or you may find her a distraction.’

  She drew a cover from a large chest of drawers at the foot of the bed and laid it across the dead girl.

 
It did nothing to calm Retra. Her teeth chattered and the silent tears turned to sobs.

  ‘Shut up!’ Graselle slapped her once, across the cheek. ‘You don’t have much time yourself.’

  Retra didn’t care. Not even the thought of Joel mattered right now. Even in Grave, Mama came when you called. Mama cared when you were dying.

  Retra wanted to go home.

  Graselle shook her arm. ‘Stop it! Lenoir will skin me if you die. He’s got a point to prove with Brand.’

  When Retra didn’t stop, Graselle slapped again and again until the stinging and the force of it broke through her misery and replaced it with anger. The tears dried up and the Seal in her returned.

  ‘That’s better.’ Graselle stripped the last of her clothes and sponged her thigh with warm water. With each wipe, the sponge filled with blood. She muttered her disapproval in short harsh syllables as she re-packed the wound hard with clean white cloth. ‘Should – stem it – enough – give him – time.’

  ‘Time?’ Retra whispered. ‘What for?’ She felt drowsy, slowed by the efficient movements of Graselle’s hands, and the life seeping from her.

  Graselle leaned her face in close. ‘Drink this!’

  She lifted Retra’s head so she could pour cool drink into her mouth, dabbing the spills with her fingers. It tasted like honey and lemon.

  Then she put the cup down and lifted Retra’s shoulders from the bed, sliding a black silk shift over her head and arms. ‘It’ll be hard for one like you but don’t fight it. Give in to it and all will be well. He’ll heal you.’

  She laid Retra back down then and attended her feet and hands, rubbing them and then dabbing the toenails with something that Retra couldn’t see.

  Lastly, she rubbed scent in the bend of her elbows and behind her ears. Then she dressed her hair as if she were pampering a favourite doll.

  Panting with her efforts, she straightened and arranged the silk across Retra’s breasts. ‘There. You’re not beautiful, but something, sure enough,’ she said to herself.

  Ripers carried her through more tunnels, so many different ones that she lost sense of time and direction. She’d become separated from her surroundings by a mind-mist, but a vague, innate sense told her that they climbed upwards.