When the sun pierced the moth-eaten fabric of my curtains, I kept my eyes closed.
Acolytes in the neighbouring rooms opened doors and windows, and blurred voices seeped through the walls. Water gurgled up from the boiler in the basement. I had slept badly. My sheets tangled around me like vines.
Renewal duty. Again.
I sat up. Goose bumps prickled across my bare arms; the corners of my window panes were washed white with mist. Outside, the sky was overcast. A good thing. Less evaporation on cloudy days, a higher chance of rain. But I could not bring myself to care.
I dressed. No robes today, they would not be needed. I made my bed, and set a jar of salve and flask of water on my sideboard. Every movement took a conscious effort. One small action, then another. I squared my shoulders and left the dormitories.
The world outside had developed a raw, over-saturated quality. On the street, voices rang loud and crass. Colours smouldered. Even the air tasted sour, contaminated by the press of thousands of other people. I came to a stop halfway across the bridge spanning Pearl Boulevard. My skin burned, but the sweat running down my back was ice-cold.
First, I could hear Millie saying, remember to breathe.
In and out. I counted each exhalation and imagined myself alone in some vast, empty place, with only the sky surrounding me. I let the city fade.
Allow yourself to experience the fear. Denying the panic won’t make it stop. You can’t reason with feeling.
By slow degrees, the heart-thumping nausea began to recede.
But remember that feelings will pass eventually. The fear is real, very real and very frightening, but it’s also only a reaction. The feeling itself won’t harm you.
I watched the people pass below the bridge. Children, free from school for the rest day, laughed and shoved one another. A toddler sat on his father’s shoulders. He stared up at me with enormous dark eyes.
I carried on. Left to join Weaver Road, then onto Calamite, then Steel.
The Renewal Wards pressed up against the eastern wall, overlooking the old execution grounds. Enforcers stood on either side of the front door.
One more time, I told myself. One last time, and then Rhyanon said she would get me out of this.
The Wards differed from the surrounding buildings. Thick walls, few windows, metal barbs around the frames and along the gutters. The plaster was chipped and stained with long streaks of dark mould.
I raised my wrist to show the Enforcers my tattoo. The women gestured for me to enter the building. None of us spoke or smiled, and I appreciated that. There was no expectation of social nicety here.
The foyer smelled of camomile and soap. The door on the left led to the cells; the one on the right to the purification chambers. A mosaic of the night sky covered the wall behind the front desk.
The Masked Sister on duty looked up when I approached.
“Elfreda Raughn,” I said.
The woman’s eyes glinted through the thin slits in her mask. She nodded, and noted down my name. Like all Masked Sisters, she wore gloves, a floor-length dress, and a head wrap that concealed her skin and hair. Everything was bone-white, from the mask to her shoes.
She indicated that I should continue. No matter the circumstances, she would not speak.
“This is the name given to me upon my birth, by my mother, Kirane, so named by her mother, Lenette.” My voice was smooth as the surface of water. “This is the name I now forget, this is the affectation I lay aside.”
The Sister drew a circle with her hands, absolving me of vanity. Shorn of my name, I followed her through the right door, into the first purification chamber.
The floor sloped to accommodate the pool in the centre of the room. Steam drifted up from the water. I took off my clothes and shivered. Sprigs of herbs hung from hooks in the ceiling. Their fragrance mingled with the warm steam, dizzying and humid and hard to breathe.
I lowered myself into the pool. The edges were rough as sandpaper and bit into my hands and the soles of my feet. I slid down until the hot water reached my chin.
“This is the body given to me by Kirane, so given by her mother, Lenette. This body is a vessel, this flesh is an oath. I give it freely.”
The words were familiar on my tongue. Oblates rehearsed the verses for years before their induction, each syllable and vocal intonation practised until the words ceased to have meaning. I submerged my head and counted to thirty. From the doorway, the Masked Sister observed me. When I rose from the water, dripping, she drew the second circle to acknowledge my emptiness. I was of history, not blood.
We walked to the second chamber. The air prickled against my skin. Cooler here. The room was windowless and quiet; oil gleamed in shallow ceramic bowls on a stone table. Water from the pool gathered at my feet.
“To the Star Eater is this flesh committed. By the Star Eater is this flesh consecrated.” I placed a drop of oil on my lips, throat, sternum. “All is as she wills.”
The Masked Sister lifted a candle from the table and traced the flame down my chest. I did not flinch. It passed too quickly to burn me; I only felt the heat.
The Sister doused the candle between her fingertips and set it down. Then she bowed, gesturing reverence with splayed fingers. Until the completion of the rite, I would be equal in status to the Star Eater herself. And, from this point on, I was forbidden to speak.
Covered lanterns lit the Chamber of Renewal, casting soft, rosy shadows across the walls. The bed had new sheets and stood in the middle of the room like a threat. Another door on the left, and a silver bell beside it, which the Masked Sister rang. She took up her position behind the headboard, and I lay down. My breathing sounded loud in my ears.
All is as she wills.
All is as she wills.
All is as she wills.
The second door swung open. A Masked Sister entered. She bowed to me, hands spread. I gestured readiness—as she wills, as she wills—and the woman retreated from the room and ushered in her charge.
He was a large man. Not fat, just big, like someone out of perspective in a painting, a figure superimposed from a different scene. Late thirties, with smooth white skin and lank hair. Probably a Minor Quarter dweller, he had that bearing, maybe a merchant or craftsman. The Sisters had exposed him to the herbs for several hours to make him more susceptible to a compulse, which lent his eyes a feverish, wandering quality. He too was naked.
The lock on the door clicked. I saw the man’s shoulders stiffen as the compulse took hold.
The Sisterhood had a simple problem, and it had devised a simple solution. Simple, efficient, multifunctional, and the foundation of our rule of Aytrium.
We could not fuck men without the risk of infecting them, but neither could we afford the death of our lineage. Only Sisters were able to wield the lace that preserved Aytrium.
And yet, who would have us? Who would we have? Men who strayed too close to the Star’s fire got burned, so what we needed were men to set ablaze.
He staggered toward the bed.
And so, convicts. The only crimes that led to the Wards were murder, rape, and treason. The man before me had committed one of the three. Anything less than that, and he would be hauling rocks in the mines or waiting out a sentence in jail.
The first time, I had cried. Just once, and it had made no difference. After that, I learned to seal off a part of myself. I separated into my body and my mind, and only the body was hurt. Eleven Renewals, eleven men, and I knew the name and crime of every one of them, just as I knew which of them broke down, which embraced their fate with vicious abandon, which cried for their mothers, which begged for mercy. I bore their names inside of me.
One last time.
Compulses were only strong suggestions—they could not control a person entirely. My safety lay in the hands of the Masked Sister behind the bed. And although my body flinched, I never made a sound.
When it was over, they took him away. I shut my eyes. He might have been infected before he ever set eyes on me. The Order made the best use of its resources; a multitude of Sisters could perform the rite with the same man. A few weeks, then the signs would show. Maybe longer, maybe less time. It varied. But whether by my body or another, his degeneration was inevitable. Once he had outlived his usefulness, the Sisterhood would banish him to Ventris. Drop him like a stone into the clouded abyss, so he would never disturb Aytrium again.
The Masked Sister performed the gesture for gratitude and bowed out of the room.
We could not conceive without the rite, without sex, without this. We could not just take their seed and bury it in our bodies. That had been tried, over and over, but it seemed that for a Sister to fall pregnant, a man needed to suffer infection.
And so, somewhere below, my father and grandfathers stalked the unknown dark. My victim would join them, and wander, and hunger. Haunts never die.