The sharp scrape of metal against stone stalled Raeia in her tracks. Heavy breathing, fabric tearing and the familiar scathing curses of Scilla guards made her want to flee. 

She looked to her right, to the meek hallway and the long line of processing room doors on both sides. One of the doors was left ajar, sending a sliver of orange light along the ground to Raeia’s feet. A warning; a summoning. 

The elevator creaked upwards, into position. Heart skittering, Raeia watched the rusted doors slide open and closed in her face. Then she allowed curiosity to guide her away from her duties and the promise of a warm shower. 

The walls of Keeper House had dampened overnight, as was common during the winter months, and Raeia felt a chill cross her skin as she walked. It was too narrow for her to escape the bite from either side, and the ceilings provided only cold, dim light. There were certain panels which always flickered off. A moment of semi-darkness, enough to make her pause. But then she remembered herself and the vows of protection she’d made, and the criminal that had been dragged up from the island’s shores that morning. 

She kept walking, cleric robes rustling, too loud. 

Raeia usually did her best to avoid this particular hallway. It led to nowhere, at least, not anywhere she wanted to be. Level Four was for cleansing and processing; communal shower hubs and isolation units for initial rounds of questions and bodily exams. 

Her first week at The Arabella still haunted her, yet Raeia couldn’t help but continue towards the sounds of struggle. 

She arrived at the door just a moment before it burst wide open. An Ibictor, clad in a Scilla-blue guard uniform, was thrown out across the hallway floor at her feet. He groaned and clasped at his chest. 

Curated habit made Raeia reach to help Ibictor Ivan back to his feet but he slapped her hand aside and returned to the room. She followed him into the processing unit and froze. 

Two more Ibictors grasped the criminal Raeia had seen that morning. A helmet of deep blue steel covered the prisoner’s head, clamping shut round her throat where the skin was rubbed raw. One Ibictor clasped her hands together, the other held her in a neck lock. Both seemed pushed to their limits, haggard breaths and torn uniforms, despite her slight body already constrained by dozens of sleek chains. They glinted, obsidian and deadly beneath a filthy grey prison uniform. 

Raeia noticed the bump, the familiar swell of pregnancy. ‘No, don’t–’

Ivan pierced the prisoner’s arm with a needle and emptied out the clear contents of the syringe. The prisoner let out a feral, frustrated sound from behind the blue metal as her body slumped. 

‘Cleric, get that chair.’ Ivan demanded as he discarded the needle while the other Scillas supported the slouching body.

‘She’s pregnant,’ Raeia gasped, refusing to move to his order. ‘How could you–’

Ibictor Ivan cursed a barrage of insults and went to retrieve the chair himself. He placed it in the centre of the room. Far from the counter which ran around three sides of the unit, and far enough from the table at the centre so the prisoner couldn’t reach it with her legs. There was nothing markedly offensive on the counters, just cleaning supplies and some documents, but Raeia knew bowls and pens could make versatile weapons in skilled hands. 

Hands. The prisoner’s hands were bound by metal mittens that matched her helmet. 

In seven years as an Arabella cleric, Raeia had seen all manner of people forced into clerichood, but none had ever been subjected to this level of constraint from day one. She had watched the prisoner arrive that morning while she was out picking flowers. Had watched the way the Scillas carelessly dragged her up the seventy-four steps in all those restraints. They’d laughed at her stumbles.

As much as she itched to intervene, she knew doing so would only make everything worse for both of them. The best Raeia could do was wait. 

She watched as the ibictors let the unconscious body slide onto the chair. They didn’t take a moment before attaching a series of clips and straps around her body and limbs to keep her secured in place. 

The prisoner’s head lolled back, chains clinking. The Scillas were masters of torment, but Raeia had the dreadful feeling a far more wicked power had something to do with the restraints. 

‘What are you doing here?’ Ivan came to stand before Raeia and blocked her view. He was a large man by any standard, but there was an aura about him that had made Raeia uneasy from the day he arrived in her third year. She hadn’t been surprised to learn he prowled The Arabella in search of girls who wanted certain kinds of attention. Often, he took them without their want. He had never accepted that Raeia was gay, and had twice, forcefully, tried to convince her otherwise. 

‘I heard–’

‘Thought you’d get first dibs on her?’

Raeia knew better than to reply defensively, but her cheeks flushed in anger nonetheless. Ivan grinned. 

‘She’s secure. We will station outside,’ one of the other guards said as she limped by. Ibictor Janice. The one who had restrained the prisoner by her neck. The shoulder of her uniform had been torn fully free from the body, and one of her back pockets had ripped, leaving a badly bruised thigh on display. The other guard, Ibictor Ferdia, hadn’t escaped a battering either. He nursed a bloodied, broken nose as he followed Janice out. 

Raeia studied their disarray and then looked back at the prisoner whose body began to twitch in its return to consciousness.

Ivan frowned only briefly. He returned to the new cleric and drew a knife, one of three strapped to his thigh.

‘Ivan…’

He sent a vicious grin over his shoulder and began to hack the cleric’s old uniform off. When he was finished and dozens of scraps lay on the ground, he returned to Raeia. He patted her shoulder and the weight of his hand remained far longer than necessary. He leaned down so his face was level with hers. ‘I need some breakfast before I deal with this one. Come back after your shift and clean her up for me.’

Her blood pulsed with the urge to run from his hidden threats, but Raeia did not flee. She dipped her head in faux respect and waited for him to leave. Then she went back into the unit and retrieved a towel from beneath the sink. 

The Arabella housed those in need of reformation, and Raeia had been reforming for seven years. Most clerics served their reformation sentences over a course of a few months. Most clerics were admitted for bringing unwanted life to the world; unwanted babies; illegitimate lives; disaster children. Raeia had been admitted for taking life. 

She was glad to see the towel remained draped over the prisoner, a sad attempt at keeping her warm after Ivan’s disrobing. It left ribbons of bruised, ashen skin and grey-black ink on display.

As Raeia took a wide berth around the seated figure, she wondered if she was more like this prisoner than anyone else on the island. Only murder could bring such distressing treatment, surely. Only rage could keep someone alive under the circumstances this cleric endured. 

Her feet and heart ached from hours of standing and bending over cots and cradling crying newborns and soothing new mothers, but she kept her steps light as she could. Chains sang as the prisoner twisted her head, listening to the movement. 

Raeia continued to the sink, hoping to project a feigned calm, even though her heart hammered so frantically that her ears throbbed. It was one thing to witness the end of an unfair fight, and quite another to be alone in a locked room with the criminal who had nearly bested three Scilla ibictors. 

The criminal’s breaths were sharp, raw puffs of air through the small slit by her nose. Dread tugged at Raeia’s gut at the thought of being trapped and blinded in such a way. The Scillas were capable of many tortures but this was more bestial than the other torments Raeia had experienced and heard of. She knew better than to underestimate a gaunt body, but Raeia also felt a pull to wrap a comforting arm around the new cleric’s bony shoulder and whisper that things would be okay, even though they wouldn’t.

‘You smell of flowers.’ 

chapter continued >>>>