To Rise or Fall: Chapter 6

Merin walked through the dining room as nonchalantly as she knew how. It wasn’t as hard as it would have been in her home. She kept her head down like she was expected to do and spoke softly if she spoke at all. She sat with the other initiates, eating as quickly as she could with her mangled hands. She slipped rolls from a bread basket nearby down her sleeves when no one was looking and ignored the strange look she got from the woman beside her when the basket was empty. Her dinner mates were murmuring, glancing over their shoulders. She tried not to listen. The complaints made her scalp prickle. The priestesses had already shown what they thought of anything other than contentedness.

Excusing herself, she showed her hands to a priestess who wouldn’t know she had already asked to go to the infirmary once. The nurses were the only people she liked here. They smiled and laughed. The infirmary had windows everywhere. They were bigger than the one in the hallway. There were colors other than white, black, and gray. The yellow that danced on the outside, twirled around the hugeShe managed a small grin as she pushed open the doors of engraved wood that was almost black. There was singing. That was the first time she’d heard anyone sing since she’d been kicked out of her house.

The nurses coddled her, cooing over her hands, making more promises. She was careful to hold her arms so that none of them would notice the bread in her sleeves. She tried to downplay the relief that blew through her as she took the wad of leaves wrapped in a square of white linen. There were two neat squares. She took one and popped it in her mouth, sucking. “Thank you,” she muttered around the leaves, feeling herself relax. Her pain would soon drain away into pools of nothing. She would be dragged in too, but that had become less and less of a horror as the days went on.

The youngest nurse, barely out of girlhood, gently bandaged Merin’s hands again. “Your hand should be much better now,” she sighed.

The supervisor, a solid woman of middling age, was overseeing with a frown. “I’m worried about you taking so much of this. We’ll have to wean you off soon.” She pointed at the last cube, carefully folded in the linen. “Don’t you dare take that until tomorrow around this time. Too much of this in your system will do nasty things.” For the first time Merin had ever seen, the grey haired nurse wasn’t smiling or trying to be reassuring. “I understand,” she breathed, leading Merin toward the door, away from the gaggle of nurses chatting and observing. Not many priestesses found need of the infirmary, so the five sisters were always interested in a patient walking in. “You’re miserable. Get off of this crap.” She motioned toward the white linen again. “And come see me again. I think you’d like it better in the infirmary, and we’d like you to be here.” She opened the door for her. “I can’t have nurses on any drugs though. Not when they can get it whenever they want. Kurgris is nasty. I wish there was something else so effective.”

Merin stared at the supervisor. Part of her screamed to deny any accusation that she didn’t like the temple. This was a trap. The rest of her looked into friendly blue eyes and nodded slowly. “I know, Sister. I’ll try. I would like to be in the infirmary.” Her hand fisted around her little packet.

The woman patted her shoulder, looking concerned. “Take what you have left tomorrow and come back in three days. I won’t give you anything if you come before.”

Merin nodded again, panic constricting her chest as she walked down the dark hall. Two days without Kurgris? She shuddered. Her hand throbbed without it and the muscles within seemed to cramp. Some nights when she was kept awake, the strangest thought would come to her. The hand didn’t want to be there. It wanted to follow the dark cloaked form, and sometimes, she thought the darkness that had charred her hand was creeping up her veins, crawling in her heart, so she could be taken back to that tiny grey room. She often woke from dreams where she was melting into the stone chair, unable to clamber out as the three robed figures approached.

She hunched her shoulders as she ran past the hallway full of the rooms her dreams featured and opened the door. The boy was sitting on the red curb in front of the door, looking bored out of his mind. She sat beside him, not thinking about her habit, and offered him the bread. “I couldn’t get you anything else.”

He devoured the first roll, so she handed him a second. He studied her over this one. “Yer not like those oth’r ones who come outta that place.” He glanced at the temple reproachfully. “My mates got caught goin’ through the trash once, an’ this woman came out wi’ a whip! One of ‘em’s still got a scar. That’s why I ran, I thought you’re gonna get a whip.”

She frowned, suddenly worried about your friend. “Don’t hang around temple windows if you can help it. There aren’t a lot of people like me.”

He ducked his head, cramming the rest of his roll into his mouth. He took the last one she had to offer and stuffed it in his pocket.

“But I’ll try to meet you next week?” she said casually as she got up. “This time.” She didn’t look down at him as he stared up, smiling.

“More food?”

She nodded, heading toward the door. “More food. Meet here. I want to avoid running if I can manage it.”

She disappeared into the temple.

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Bana glared at Ghym darkly as they walked home. Ghym had brought extra clothing as if she had known Bana would need them, and Bana was sure her teacher had known she would need them.

Ghym finally muttered, “You got something to say?”

Bana faced forward again, shoving her hands in her pockets impetuously. Only the wind rattling through the narrow alleys they were taking home could be heard for a moment. “You said he wouldn’t be bad,” she hissed.

“I did no such thing.” Ghym winked at a man sprawled on a stoop. “I asked if you wanted to get hit. I didn’t promise he would be the answer to your prayers.”

Bana bit back a cry as a fellow pedestrian jostled her. The grocer had been careful. There wasn’t a mark on her visible skin. “You knew,” she declared hotly, tears searing her eyes. “I don’t know how, but you did, and you let me walk up to him without a warning.”

Ghym pushed her against a peeling blue wall roughly, pressing the most tender spots until Bana did cry out. “You think you can be one of the fallen without running into a few rough ones? You’re stupid. You think this is as bad as it gets? You’re more empty headed than Elmanya. This is the price you pay for being of the fallen. It’s not fun. It’s not a game. This is your job. You don’t do your job, we don’t get paid. You’re on the street like trash. No one will pick you up then. You’ll be worse than the fallen.” She jabbed one bony finger into a burn just beneath Bana’s ribcage before releasing her.

Bana was sullen and silent the rest of the way home. She said nothing to any of the other women, and they, recognizing the first walk of shame, gave her a wide berth. She locked herself in the rooms she shared with four other girls who were all out working. She stripped of the silks, feeling dirty with them on, and stared at her torso. Bruises marked her breasts. Burns littered her stomach. Some were just rectangles where he had heated a metal bar and laid it on her skin. Others, like the one on her rear, resembled brands with curving letters. Other places still, were where he had held her skin directly to the flame.

She was unable to tear her eyes away as tears blurred her vision and slipped down her cheeks. She was surrounded by all this richness. Silk sheets. Silk curtains. Gold and silver jewelry with real stones. Fine smelling soaps. It all made her sick to her stomach. She pulled her old dress from the bottom of a chest and pulled it on. It was heavy and coarse after all of the weightless material she’d had on. If she thought she wouldn’t bring the wrath of the harem upon her, she would have gone on a mad spree, tearing every shred of silk to unusable scraps.

She left to room and visited Elmanya instead. The girl was a shadow on the pure white sheets. She looked like she had lost weight, and her eyes were overly bright with fever. The single healer wrung her hands, wiping the girl’s face with a damp cloth.

The healer looked at Bana, worry sharpening normally sensuous features. “She’s with child,” she breathed.

Bana sat in the chair beside Elmanya’s bed heavily, blinking up at the healer, her hand groping for the infirm’s hand. “Not...”

The healer nodded solemnly. “She carries a god-child.”