Page 177

‘Next’ turned out to be the same place Mather had introduced them all to the church’s idea of ‘service’ the previous day. She assumed it was yesterday, at least. Who could tell time with no windows? No natural light? Forget about clocks.

The priest in the white cassock stood waiting in the center of the room as the Vicers filed in under the eyes of the guards. He had an assessing eye for each of them, though his features gave away nothing.

Behind him stood a line of clergy in black—the same group from their first encounter, if Buckeye’s quick survey of faces was accurate. The priests—aside from their leader—were without cassock today, vested only in black shirts and trousers. The square inserts of clerical collars shone white at their throats, another type of bondage in plain sight. More ominous still: the room was no longer empty.

Today, at the foot of each priest, save Mather, a long mat lay on the floor. The sort pre-Delineation folk might have used for frivolities like exercise routines. Some red synthetic material enclosed just enough padding to keep abrasion and bruising from the stone underneath away from limbs and joints.

Had Mather chosen red as some sort of meaningful aesthetic? Buckeye sensed a flair for the dramatic around the man who so readily denounced others. Or maybe he’d had no part in the appearance of the mats other than to order their presence today. Either way, they were a livid slash right down the middle of the stark room.

Arrayed along the back wall, threatening on yet another level, were a series of metal configurations. Square tubing put together in what could have been a large painter’s easel, if painters needed manacles welded to their equipment. One for each Vicer.

Buckeye shivered. She ought to be delivering fucking mail right now. Instead she was here, allowing grey-clad guards to chivvy her into a line in some basement level hell beneath a Covvie church. In Virtue, of all goddamn places.

Elijah Mather stood between the Vicers and the priests, who faced off like pieces on some obscene chess board.

“All who are prepared to serve the Church step forward.”

His voice was a cold dash of water. Gooseflesh popped out all over her arms and legs.

Four of the lustworkers took a step towards the clergy. Only two were from among the three who’d volunteered first the last time. Why one of them would balk now, she didn’t know. They’d already done the deed.

They all had, really. Some of them under more duress than others.

Yeah? Well fuck them. They want to run my ass on the Treadmill of Doom again? Fine.

Buckeye was no more ready today than she had been yesterday. This was not her gig. If she’d wanted to service johns—gussied up in priest robes or no—she’d’ve asked for work from Maggie Bone. These pious assholes could literally go fuck themselves.

Mather surveyed the line, waiting for anyone else to submit to their fate. When he saw there were none, he nodded. “I imagined there would be more quick learners in the Territories,” he said. “But no matter.”

His eyes cut to the four who were either the most easily cowed or the smartest among them and tilted his chin down in acknowledgment. “You may begin.”

Amid some deep breaths and sideways glances, the first of them stepped toward the priests, who—in some eerie bit of unrehearsed choreography—moved to meet them. To direct them onto the red mats. To begin to speak instructions in hushed tones. The lustworkers began sinking to

their knees. One, she noted, was the woman from the straight jacket incident.

“We will wait until the rest of you are ready,” Mather said.

No sooner had that statement put all her senses on high alert, than the remaining priests moved past their leader, each toward a stubborn Vicer on the opposite side of the room.

They’ll wait?

A black shirtsleeve brushed past her left elbow, and then Buckeye heard the drag of metal casters over stone. She swallowed, unable to look, cold rivulets from her wet hair dripping down her back. Her muscles squeezed up, clamped tight, when male fingers touched her shoulder, urging her to move back.

From mid-line came a woman’s shriek. Every head turned to see a damp redhead wrenching her body away from a priest. A guard melted out of the stonework on the back wall and Buckeye was grimacing and shaking her head even as the baton came out and the pitch of the wail ascended.

There was no time to focus on others, however, because a priest was guiding her left arm behind her back.

Every instinct told her to lash out. To spin on her heel and grab his hair, to bash his temple against the wall. But now there was no reality she could get her hands on. There was no way to rationally grasp which action or inaction of hers might provide the worse outcome. Fear was paralysis, a cloying mist that kept her docile while the manacle closed over her wrist. Her other arm followed, both hands stationed behind her tailbone, a length of metal tubing some cold truth between her shoulder blades.

The same happened all down the line.

What does he mean, ‘they’ll wait’? Why do we need to be tied up to wait?

And wait for what?

The priest lowered himself to squat near her feet. It would be so easy to cave in his nose. One well-placed kick. But Buckeye just stood, mind on the guards’ batons, deciding for once that the devil she did know was in fact the worse of the two, for now.

When hands found her ankle, the priest’s touch was gentle. As though she were some breakable thing. He drew her leg to one side, speaking quiet words to himself, probably in Latin, as he fastened another manacle.