The pain was burning up from Jonathan’s knees like hot-white fire. Sweat crawled down his back and he bit his tongue to keep from crying out.

He was kneeling on a dark wood contraption in the Admiral’s office, facing the Admiral’s desk. He’d been ordered to kneel there as soon as he was ushered in, and the Admiral hadn’t looked up from the papers on his desk since.

The Admiral’s office smelled of waxy candles, sweat, chocolate, and a vague whiff of alcohol. It wasn’t a pleasant mix, and combined with the heat of the room and the sharp ache in his knees, it was enough to make Jonathan want to throw up. His shoulders were burning from being twisted back into the handcuffs after he’d changed into a drab uniform, and his stomach clenched with hunger. He’d gone from shivering in the boat to sweating in the stuffy heat of the Admiral’s office. The one-piece gray garment he’d been given was stained and threadbare, and it stretched from his neck to his ankles like a prison uniform. He blew his hair out of his eyes and tried to keep his arms from going numb.

The Admiral sat behind a huge desk made of dark, shiny wood. His thin hair was mostly gray and was slicked down across his head with some kind of oily grease. His nose was the size and shape of an eagle’s beak, and above were two shiny eyes, black as olives, that looked too small for the rest of his face. His eyebrows looked like two monstrous, bushy cockroaches crouched on his forehead. A patchy shadow of stubbly whiskers grew on his cheeks and chin. He was wearing a dark blue uniform jacket with fancy brass buttons, like they wore in the navy. It might have fit him when he was younger, but now his neck fat squeezed over the top button of the collar, and his belly bulged out from under the bottom three buttons, which were undone. He sat shuffling through some papers, sipping from a glass of brown liquid, and stuffing chocolates into his mouth. A crinkly pile of shiny gold wrappers grew by his elbow with each chocolate he devoured.

A blond-haired boy, a little older than Jonathan and kind of chubby, stood in the corner with his hands crossed in front of him. He was watching the Admiral with eager eyes, and from time to time shot a smug smirk Jonathan’s way. He looked like a teacher’s pet, but the kind that bites.

The only light came from ten or eleven tall white candles, flickering here and there from brass holders around the room.

“Brandy,” the Admiral said at last. His voice was deep and breathy. Like a dragon’s.

The boy in the corner sprang forward. He pulled a bottle from a shelf and poured another splash of brown liquid into the Admiral’s glass. The Admiral didn’t move except to exhale and raise one of his cockroach eyebrows. The kid frantically reopened the bottle and sloshed more brandy into the glass. The Admiral scowled and smacked his lips but picked up the glass and took a loud, slurping sip. The kid returned the bottle to the shelf and scurried back to his corner.

“Jonathan Grisby,” the Admiral finally said. He said Jonathan’s name the way most people might say the word diarrhea.

Jonathan swallowed.

“Yeah.”

The Admiral’s glass froze halfway to his mouth. His eyes slid to the kid in the corner, then back to Jonathan. The kid practically ran over to Jonathan, then leaned down to hiss into his ear.

“You gotta call him sir or Admiral, dummy!”

“What?”

“Sir! Call him sir!”

The kid retreated back to his corner, and the Admiral set down his glass.

“Jonathan Grisby,” he said again. The whole room seemed to wait.

“Yes,” Jonathan replied. Then, “Sir.”

The Admiral smiled with half his mouth. He tapped the papers with his finger.

“This is a terrible crime you’ve committed, Jonathan Grisby.”

Jonathan didn’t answer.

“I suppose you, like most criminals, insist you are innocent?”

“No,” Jonathan replied quietly, his eyes downcast. “I did it. Sir.”

“Hmmm. I see. Unapologetic. Unashamed. No lesson learned yet, then?” The Admiral’s face twisted into another half smile. “It will be learned, though. It will. We have wonderful ways of teaching you lessons.” He took another wet sip of his brandy and swished the alcohol around in his mouth.

Jonathan swallowed a dry breath. He felt a warm bead of sweat start down his forehead.

With a grunting sigh, the Admiral rose to his feet and slumped around the desk to where Jonathan knelt in misery.

“Take, for example, the ingenious piece of furniture you’re currently enjoying. Are you comfortable?”

“No, sir.”

“Of course you’re not,” the Admiral spat. “And nor do you deserve to be.” He caressed the age-polished wood with chocolate-stained fingers. “This device is known as the Sinner’s Sorrow. She was here even before myself, a lovely leftover from one of Slabhenge’s former lives.” The Sinner’s Sorrow was made all of wood, and rose as high as the Admiral’s bulging belly. At its base was a rail where Jonathan’s knees rested, a long piece of stained wood that was sharpened to a vicious edge that was biting at his flesh like a dull saw blade. At its top was a slanted, flat desktop and an old inkwell. “Who knows how many lunatics and criminals have knelt here, paying the price for their evil.” The Admiral’s eyes, blurry from liquor, lapped hungrily at the wretched wood of the Sinner’s Sorrow. His gray tongue licked at his dry lips. “How does that rail feel on your young knees? It burns, doesn’t it?”

Jonathan looked up, straight into the Admiral’s eyes for the first time. “No,” he answered in a level voice. “It doesn’t burn, sir. It just hurts.”

The Admiral raised an eyebrow and sniffed. “Yes, well, you would know, wouldn’t you, Jonathan Grisby?” Jonathan looked down quickly, stung by the man’s words. The Admiral cleared his throat and took a step back. “You’re just the latest degenerate to feel her bite. And she is just one of the tools we use at Slabhenge to educate and civilize and correct. And you will be corrected. A crime as wicked as yours will require quite severe correction.” The Admiral leaned close so that Jonathan could feel as well as hear his next words in his ear. “You have done terrible things, haven’t you, Jonathan Grisby?”

Jonathan lowered his head and didn’t answer. The Admiral wheezed out a phlegmy sigh and took a step back.

“But all that begins tomorrow. You’ll see. You’ve arrived late. It’s nearly all-dark time. Only one little thing remains to be done.”

He reached for something from his desk and slid it onto the Sinner’s Sorrow’s little writing surface: a pen, and a blank piece of paper.

“At Slabhenge, all of our boys write a letter home to Mommy and Daddy every day. To let them know that you are safe and sound and that their investment is paying off. The mail goes out in the morning, and yours is the last letter we need.”

“What do you want me to say?”

The Admiral’s eyebrows dropped. The corner kid shuffled over and squeezed the back of Jonathan’s arm in a hard, vicious pinch. “Sir!” he spat into Jonathan’s ear.

Jonathan tried to shift from knee to knee to ease the growing pain.

“What do you want me to say, sir?”

The Admiral turned his hands palm up and spread his fingers.

“Whatever you like.”

Jonathan frowned at the paper and thought of all the things he’d like to say to his parents.

“I can’t write with my hands cuffed, sir.”

“Of course not.” The Admiral tossed a heavy ring of keys to the chubby kid, who jangled and fumbled behind Jonathan until there was a click and Jonathan felt his hands finally swing free. He rubbed his sore wrists and wiggled his stiff shoulder sockets. With a quick glance at the Admiral, he picked up the pen and scribbled out a few sentences, then folded the paper and handed it to him.

The Admiral unfolded the paper.

“Dear Mom and Dad,” he read aloud. “This place is just as terrible as I deserve. Give my love to Sophia. Jonathan. Hmm.” The Admiral shook his head and clicked his tongue. “No, no, this won’t do. Try it again, Jonathan Grisby. You can say whatever you wish, of course, but you cannot speak poorly of our fine institution. We don’t want them regretting the difficult decision they made to send you here. So, again, without the parts about Slabhenge.” The Admiral slid another blank piece of paper across the desk.

“My parents didn’t send me here. Sir.” Jonathan knew that it wouldn’t help him at all to argue, but he felt he had to say it. “A judge did.”

The room hung in taut silence.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” the Admiral asked, and his voice was darkly low and quiet. Jonathan didn’t answer. “Yes. A judge sentenced you to a reformatory for your heinous crime. But he gave your parents several choices, did he not? And they chose Slabhenge, did they not?”

Jonathan swallowed. All of his trembling parts screamed at him to let it go. But he couldn’t.

“Yes, sir. But … only because it was the cheapest. They had to … to pay for half, and we don’t have—”

“Enough!” the Admiral interrupted. He bent down low so Jonathan could look into his shiny, bloodshot eyes. “Everything that I wish or need to know about you and your pathetic life, I have already read. You are here because they sent you. And, yes, we save money at the same time that we save souls here at Slabhenge—even souls not worth saving. Since I now know how very frugal you are, I shall make extra certain that we don’t waste a single unnecessary dime on your care, other than the discipline required to correct your corrupted character. Now, the letter!”

Jonathan resisted the urge to wipe the spittle off his face that had flown there from the Admiral’s mouth. He blinked down at the paper through the sweat that was dripping into his eyes. His knees throbbed. He scrawled another message and handed it to the Admiral.

“No,” the Admiral said after reading it. All the teasing was gone from his voice. “Longer. More pleasant. And mention our food.”

“What food, sir?”

“Our delicious and nourishing food.”

“But I haven’t had any food, sir. And I’m starving.” Jonathan’s stomach growled as he spoke.

The Admiral ground his teeth and blinked his eyes slowly. “Write the letter, Jonathan Grisby. Then dinner.”

It took Jonathan seven tries to write a letter that the Admiral would accept. By the time he was done, his stomach was rumbling loud enough for all three of them to hear, and the boy in the corner was glaring at him with open hatred. The Admiral had gone through three more gold-wrapped chocolates.

“There,” the Admiral said, folding up the final letter and slipping it into an envelope. “It shouldn’t have been that hard. Awful things happen to boys with awful attitudes.”

Too late, Jonathan wanted to answer, but he bit his lip and kept his eyes on the cracks between the stone blocks of the floor. His hair dangled down in front of his eyes and he let it stay.

“Brandy,” the Admiral said, and Jonathan heard the kid hurry to fill his glass. The Admiral walked to the door and opened it.

“Mr. Warwick. Show Jonathan Grisby to his quarters.”

“Yes, sir, straight away.”

Jonathan’s head shot up.

“What about my dinner?”

A pair of rough hands pulled him up from the agony of the Sinner’s Sorrow and yanked him toward the door. The Admiral yawned as Jonathan was paraded past. He held out his hand to stop them, his fingers pressing into Jonathan’s chest. He smacked his lips and leaned down to speak into his face. The sour mix of chocolate and liquor on his hot breath made Jonathan’s stomach curl.

“Do you really think a boy who wastes six pieces of paper to write a simple letter deserves to be spoiled with food? Hmmm?” Jonathan’s heart sank into his aching belly. The Admiral’s eyes slithered to the man who was pushing Jonathan from behind. “No pillow for this one, Mr. Warwick. He doesn’t have a brain worth cushioning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will see you in the morning, Jonathan Grisby. Do try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a very hard day for you.”