The silence in the cell is thick, and as the night wears on, it seems like the darkness gets deeper. I’m normally not bothered by things like that, but when morning comes, I’m pretty happy to get out of there.
A guard takes me up to the parade ground where the rest of the prisoners are waiting, standing in rows. I see Corwin at the end of the second row, his face covered in mosquito bites and bruises. He’s watching for me, and when I come out into the light, he looks relieved. I wink at him and take my place in the third row.
There’s a platform set up in front of the parade ground, equipped with a stock and a lectern. My old friend Temple Captain Jacob Harris is bolted into the stocks, stripped to the waist. His back shows marks of old beatings, and we are obviously here to witness him having another session.
I guess that’s what the Brotherhood calls “reform”.
Brother John gets up on the platform and starts preaching, and I ignore everything he says. Instead, I look around at my fellow prisoners. They’re all dirty and gaunt, and the clothes they’re wearing are nothing but rags and tatters. Most of the inmates are women, but there are a few men who stand together in a separate row off to the side of our main group. They have a prime location to see Jacob’s whipping, which is now underway.
“Face forward,” one of the prisoners near me hisses, “or you’ll be next.”
I turn and watch the beating continue. Jacob’s face is bright red, and he’s struggling not to cry out as Brother John flogs him with a short whip, the lashes landing across his bare back. I remember putting fingernail scratches on that broad back, and I feel bad for him. I’m the reason he’s here.
Scratch that. His idiotic adherence to piety and the old saw that confession is good for the soul is why he’s here. It’s not my fault that he decided to go to the Temple and come clean. More to the point, by my lights, is that I’m here because of him. He should be feeling bad for me.
I’m not so upset for him anymore.
When the beating is over, they unlock him from the stocks and drag him, insensible, into the building behind the platform. I’m thinking that’s where the infirmary is, because the stone structure is smaller than the one whose basement I’ve been enjoying for the last several hours. I hope he’ll be okay. I could make a salve for those wounds that would keep them from scarring, but I doubt they’d let me. Besides, the masochistic twerp probably wants the marks.
Brother John starts pontificating to the group of men, and I see Lucas Mason, the other man from the boat that brought me here, standing with them. I guess that’s the adulterers, and I’m with the witches. I prefer my companions.
I can only count six guards, which can’t possibly be right. We witches outnumber them three to one. Despite their numerical disadvantage, they look confident and unbothered. They think they’re absolutely in control. I guess it’s the rifles that make them feel that way, and the fact that we don’t have any weapons.
Well… we don’t have any weapons they can see.
I don’t feel any anti-magic effects on this jail, and I don’t see any charms or sigils that would prevent me from using my powers. It’s confusing, because all of these witches with me should be able to just summon an elemental or some other conjured beastie and fly out of here. I can’t figure out what’s keeping them from acting.
I roll my neck and stretch my arms, and in the process, I draw a little sigil. It’s a simple spell, just a water purification spell, and I can feel the magic rolling out of my solar plexus through my hands. It slides out into the air, and the spell goes off. The puddle at my feet turns crystal clear.
Nobody seems to notice, and nothing blocked the magic. So why are all of these other witches so cowed?
After the warden finally gets as sick of the sound of his voice as the rest of us, he goes into the smaller building, and the guards point their guns at us.
“Into the tower!” the leader barks.
Now that he mentions it, I guess the main building sort of does look like a tower, but a square, short one. We witches are marched in single-file, and the adulterers are taken into the smaller building. I guess they’re too good to be housed with us. The tower is made out of concrete shaped like stone blocks, sort of like the architect was trying to mimic castles and dungeons. There’s one room in the center that reaches all the way up to the very top of the tower, and a skylight lets in a sorry beam of sunshine, too filtered through the filthy glass of the window to be much good as illumination. The cell blocks are stacked in rings around the central room, and the bars are made of what looks like sturdy steel.
The guards pull one of the witches aside. She’s a huge woman, broad as an ox, even though she’s not fat. She’s built like a mountain. She could lay some serious hurt on a person, and she could probably take the guard who’s talking to her and break him in half over her knee. I really don’t want to have to tangle with her.
It’s pretty obvious that she’s like the halfway step between guard and inmate, because after he talks to her, she comes marching over to me.
“Kathleen Goode?” she says. Her voice is surprisingly light. I expected something throaty and deep, but she could do voice-overs in cartoons.
“Yeah,” I nod.
“Come with me.”
She leads me to an
