Chapter Twelve

“You’re going to make a mess of yourself if you don’t get a hold of your ire,” Lexia said, while she dabbed a clean white cloth on Delila’s ass and thighs.

Delila was sobbing, her head buried in the brocade pillow at her face. “Ouch, that stings,” she protested.

“Fier was especially hard on the thighs, they burn don’t they?” Leaving Degas offices, Delila returned with Fier to the hallway alcove, not even waiting for morning light. She’d been ravaged with fifteen sharp cuts, six hitting her upper thighs.

“They hurt like hell,” Delila told the woman.

“More advice, my pet,” Lexia said. “You have to consider yourself lucky to be here at Outer Island. Even if you don’t think so, you have to put on that guise for Degas. You cannot show your fury, not for any reason, and especially not before the customers.” Lexia dabbed the welts listening to the girl’s “ouches” and “ooooos” as the liquid made the wounds burn. “Whatever is your rage about anyway?”

Delila heard the question, but she had no answer. The reason behind her rage was not clear to her, and all the things that were trying to spill from her mind sounded so ridiculous that she dare not speak them.

“You know this place is better than the topside sweatshops?” Lexia asked.

“Yes.”

“Better than the mines?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Are you sure? Do you know what hellholes those wretched places are, how they sap the nerves and the minds and the passions from women, so they leave there like shells of people, only to be blown away by the first wind that rises when they return to the world? You’ll die before you’re thirty if Degas sends you back. You might even die before your time’s up. Many do.”

“Perhaps that would be easier,” Delila replied.

Lexia slapped her ass. “Hush! You don’t want to die, and you know it!” She slapped her again, a reproachful smack to which Delila jerked and issued another “ouch!” “Accept your fate, and quit brooding over it. You’ll surely never square this in your head. Just take the pleasure and be happy. Forget that this place makes no sense, anymore than the world on the outside makes sense.”

“I’m married,” Delila said. “I don’t know how I can take pleasure when I have a husband that I love who is already suffering for my crimes.”

“Married, still?” Lexia said. “After your crimes, he still wants you?” Hardly believable.

“I’m to have conjugal visits,” Delila added, as she hoped for some sympathy.

“My, how interesting?” was Lexia’s comment.

“How shall I ever face my husband, bad enough to face him for my adultery, but after I’m used . . . ?”

Lexia thought a moment about the young woman’s plight. It had been a long time since anyone in Outer Island was married. No one subscribed to New Victoria’s rigid mandates, and to have a married woman in their midst made them all violators of a most extreme sort. The idea intrigued the impertinent Madam, even as it was fraught with personal remembrance.

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you, Delila,” she finally replied with a good dash of kindness in her voice. “This makes Degas duplicity particularly inspired, even though it makes the moral dilemma more extraordinary for you. But perhaps my original advice is the best. Accept your fate, don’t try to wrestle with it. When you face your husband, face him as a willing submissive to the disciplines proscribed by law. You know you can tell him nothing of this anyway. I’m sure Degas procured your silence. Your two lives will simply have to remain separate.” The woman considered it an odd and somewhat amusing dilemma, though she was reasonably serious in her remarks for Delila’s sake. “One thing’s for certain though: you have no choice but to obey Degas. You can be sure that once you’re in Outer Island, there’s no returning to the other world before your stint in over. If it’s ever over. You can’t even think of it.”

Lexia returned to her task, swabbing Delila’s fresh wounds with disinfectant. Delila continued the little shrieks when the pain of it hit.

“If it’s over?” she repeated back in a whisper.

“Don’t worry over it, darling. Two years is a long time. Even in this suspended arena away from the maddening life, things happen.”