Outcasts of the Worlds

by Lucas Paynter

  “Well, we were her guests,” Mack pointed out. “Maybe she was just tryin’ to be a concerned host?”

  “And that, in part, is why I cannot help but believe that you three wanted to be noticed,” Thunau went on. “The High Priestess spoke of you two in particular—” she turned to Flynn, “—but being found in their company has done you no favor … beastman.”

  There was a hint of skepticism in the Inquisitor’s voice, as though she’d just been told what Flynn was and didn’t quite believe it even now. Jean gave a derisive smirk at the Inquisitor’s words, before a series of rapid patting sounds ensued, hands against cloth.

  “Hey!” Jean burst out. “These fuckers stole my spork!”

  “Your property is in the possession of the church for the time being, pending your fates.” Thunau spoke with grated patience. “You carry such strange vestments, though … where are you from, again?”

  “Desert folk, bitch.”

  “Of course, as the guardsman said,” the Inquisitor responded dismissively—it was the answer she was expecting, but not the one she’d hoped for. “Which of you to start with? The smaller boy looks half broken to begin with, but you, girl—”

  “You’re going to take me.” Flynn sat down against the wall of his cell. It might be the last moment of comfort he’d enjoy for hours.

  “Am I? And why is that?”

  “A feeling,” Flynn told her—though calling a certainty such was an insult to it. “You strike me as the kind of person who likes to eat her dessert first.”

  Carmella’s index finger brushed against her lower lip contemplatively. “You are an enigma—savage, yet intelligent enough. The Goddess has graced you with such gifts, yet you spurn her love?”

  “You know, you can just take me,” Mack offered to deaf ears.

  Disappointed that the kid hadn’t learned better, Flynn was glad that Mack had at least gotten off Earth before it could really bite him in the ass. The cell door opened and Flynn stood back up with just enough time to see the punch in the gut coming. He braced for the worst of it and doubled over as much in show as in pain. He found himself quickly shackled and then tugged violently out of his cell by his new chains.

  “Flynn!” Jean yelled. “Just give me twenty ticks and I’ll—!”

  “Don’t do anything,” Flynn wheezed, inhaling a painful breath to stop Jean from acting rashly. “It’s not time to leave yet.” Jean shook her bars, and they rattled ineffectually as one of her own was taken away.

  *

  The High Priestess of Cordom slept late that morning. The exhausting hours and impossible encounters made sleep easy, but even had the previous night not taken a toll on her physically, she no longer cared to bother with her daily routine. She had already been remiss in leaving the cathedral early the day prior, and one of her laity would inevitably notice her absence today. It didn’t matter. The only person alive with whom she’d shared her impiety was captured and awaiting torture, if it hadn’t already started. All Chariska could do was lie in bed and wait. Worst of all, she had no one to pray to in her fear that they would come for her too. Every noise outside left her uneasy; every knock on the door sent her skin crawling.

  She waited until after midday to slink out of bed, pressing low on her bare feet, ratted hair falling over her eyes. Leaving her usual wraps and beads aside, she pulled from her closet the sort of non-descript tan blouse and dress she’d seen people in her congregation wear. Chari had occasionally thought of trying to pass through the town undercover to avoid well-meaning harassment, but she’d never before found the nerve for an attempt.

  Any resolve she had to enact this plan was quickly dashed when she left the room, and sank back to reality. Chari began to sense concretely the absence that had been growing in her home. A stagnant air rushed through the hollows, familiar and unwelcome. Chari found her way to the kitchen warmed by stale sunlight, where she drew a small pot out and mixed in it enough stew for one. Stirring listlessly, she reminded herself, This is what I wanted. The pot on the wood-burning stove shuddered subtly at another knock on her front door, but she paid it no mind. She found and uncorked a bottle of wine that she reserved for special, ceremonious occasions while her lunch simmered, then tilted the bottle back and slaked a longstanding thirst.

  If Flynn had already given her up, then let them come. It only seemed right.

  *

  Very little blood had stained the instruments in the Inquisitor’s chambers. An elaborate pulley system served as the centerpiece to the cold, torch-lit heart of Siehron Manor, connected to a rail-track bolted into the ceiling that allowed them to move their victim around the room as needed. A basin of stagnant water stood by one wall for drownings, complemented by a nearby table upon which sat an assortment of tools—including a whip, a mallet, and a pair of small knives. A bucket of ready-made torches waited on the floor nearby, and a few pieces of flint and steel rested on the counter above.

  Flynn had only the split-second between being forced into the room and being shoved to the floor to take this in. His shirt, which had become increasingly discolored with dirt and blood, was cut from his body and discarded. They left his pants on, and a momentary fear of how far the Inquisitor might go passed.

  The way out tugged at the back of Flynn’s head, somewhere below this chamber, below the cells. He took a breath and closed his eyes as they bound his hands to a hook before hoisting him in the air, a few feet from the ground. The rope chafed his wrists. A weighted ball was fastened to his ankles, but he was suspended just low enough that it was left dangling against the ground, scraping against stone. Flynn’s body strained as torso and legs rebelled against arms, and he shuddered with the looming dread of worse pain to come.

  Thunau examined Flynn’s body, her pursed lips revealing her suppressed repulsion. At such close proximity, Flynn found himself equally scrutinizing the lines of age in her face, the strands of gray that played a winning battle against the black in her hair. Her smoked spectacles hid whatever feelings her eyes might have shown as her hands feathered lightly from the thick hair on his chest up to his face.

  She pushed a finger under his upper lip, finding purchase against one of his pointed incisors before flicking off from it. The action sent subtle reverberations through his skull, and it would have been so easy to just bite her. Flynn knew it, and his torturer did too. Both knew just as readily that it would have only made things worse for him.

  Flynn breathed a secret relief that in her examinations she did not discover the splits in each of his fingers where his claws protracted. The thought of the damage she could do there was worse than the idea of her shoving needles beneath his fingernails, although currently, needles didn’t seem to be on the menu.

  “You and your comrades made quite a scene, animal,” Thunau said to him. “I was asleep when they brought you in, but the stories claim Hapané’s rage rocked the ground below you. Genuine must have been Her desire to see you in chains.”

  “Maybe that was her way of vouching for us,” Flynn said. “Perhaps you should have let us go?”

  “Do not presume to speak for the Goddess, petty creature.”

  I could say the same, Flynn thought but refrained from saying.

  Thunau glanced back at the lackey who had taken a place at the crank and nodded to him. As the man worked the mechanism, the rope holding Flynn aloft contracted and the weight bound to his ankles increased from annoying to problematic. Flynn now felt the strain pulling against his knees and hips as the stress on his elbows and shoulders worsened and every bone seemed to want to come apart. Muscle fibers pulled thin and skin stretched taut, but the weight was not enough to break his body yet. Although Flynn knew it would take more than this to undo him, he behaved as though he’d already met his limits, lest his torturer take notice and increase the burden.

  “Comfortable?” Thunau’s tone was teasing.

  “Not … really.” Flynn strained.

  “It will get worse. You think it’s painful now? In ti
me, nerves will fray and snap and you may not be so spry as you were when you struck at the Goddess’s own in the dark of night.”

  I’m here because I choose to be, Flynn reminded himself. The fight could have been fiercer, bloodier, and the dead would have littered the roads. Flynn, Jean, and Mack could be miles from Cordom, in search of some other way off TseTsu. But nothing out there was certain, and so they were here, with one definite avenue.

  Flynn didn’t need to exaggerate the effectiveness of Carmella’s technique; each cry of pain was genuine. The first lashing caused him to pull his legs and the weights at his ankles along with them, triggering worse pain, worse strain. After that, he suppressed the instinctual urge to retract himself inward from the pain as it burst in his flesh.

  “The High Priestess hasn’t been outside today,” the Inquisitor informed him after many lashes. “She was escorted home last night, but has been reclusive during hours that she is normally seen about town.” Another lash. “Why is that?”

  The Inquisitor’s aim was practiced and deliberate. Where Flynn’s fur had not patterned itself—from the sides of his belly wrapping around his back, his elbows and under his forearms—she struck, raising welts where the damage would be worst, where there was no chance of something in between muffling the injury.

  “We were out late in the night,” Flynn breathed heavily. “Perhaps she just caught a cold.”

  “Perhaps,” she responded cynically. “High Priestess Jerhas has saved many doubting souls from ever entering my chambers. If something you have done or said has shaken her faith …”

  Thunau shook her head with shallow pity.

  The room was not warm, but enough sweat had beaded upon Flynn’s skin to fill a mug. Thunau’s demeanor remained icy as she rested, watching as the pull of gravity worked against him.

  “You’ve … been doing this long?”

  The lash across his chest confirmed enough, cutting right through whatever protection his hide should have offered. She was eager but restrained, perhaps more by the rules and laws of the church than by experience and time. Torture was not her purpose so much as it was the means to her goal, one she would nonetheless take her time in reaching.

  Give the shrew up. The voice surfaced in Flynn’s head, nearly six months forgotten and better left that way. What a convenient conscience you’ve grown, albeit more like a tumor considering the way you’ve lived. The bodiless voice gave pause before asking, Just why are you doing this?

  There were a number of good reasons not to, the least of which being that Flynn knew he was the only way anyone was leaving TseTsu, and his death likely marked final entrapment for the others. In the Inquisitor’s eyes, though, death was his only escape, and she was too practiced to let that happen by accident. How far she would break his body to draw false confession was the point of uncertainty. If only enough of him remained that all he could do was hobble from TseTsu to the next world, it would fall short of a life worth living. Flynn’s heart beat with quickening fear that he fought to suppress. He looked up, contemplating whether he could slide his claws out and, at doing so, how long it would take to saw the rope at the angle his hands were bound.

  Give her to me, Thunau would demand, if she even suspected.

  But for the smallest utterance—Chariska Jerhas is a nonbeliever—he knew Inquisitor Thunau would not cut him down. It would buy him some peace and quiet, but only for a while. It would get Chari into the manor whether she wished to come or not, and odds were good that Mack would no longer be able to keep Jean complacent and she would break out within a few days’ time. At best. Even in the dead of night when they’d been brought in, there had still been numerous guardsmen walking the halls. Escape, if not timed right, could be suicide. Better to stick to the plan.

  Somewhere between the Inquisitor’s proselytizations, Flynn came back to reality. One of the lackeys forced water down his throat and he choked, his mind returned from a fugue. While he could tell a few hours had passed from the change in light beyond the door, he could not be certain if he had blocked the pain out or had simply blacked out. Either way, he found himself very grateful for TseTsu’s shorter days.

  “You will find it in you to beg the Goddess for understanding,” Thunau promised. “And before that tiny faith dries up, I will present you to the world long enough to shear you from it.”

  Welts had formed across his body, and the skin was broken in some places, although not enough for serious bleeding. His breath was heavy and erratic.

  “You seem rather complacent for all this pain,” she observed.

  Is this in atonement? Rebecca asked, her voice emanating from behind his torturer. Flynn craned his head, his vision bleary, but there was no one there.

  “It’s just that I can take the pain.” Flynn spoke in strained breaths. “I know what you’re doing. I know you have your limits.”

  “Limits?!” Thunau demanded, offended. He might have been the first to speak to her in such a way, after suffering so much.

  “You do enjoy your work … enjoy being down here. So you play it out. This is someplace you can feel comfortable. The cells. This torture chamber.” She examined Flynn intensely, trying to fathom how he knew such a thing, when he followed with, “You grew up in a place like this, didn’t you?”

  Flynn had seen further than Thunau was prepared for. Taking one of the small blades in hand, she thrust it furiously into his leg. Screaming because he had to, he yet found it in him to laugh. “Carmella, Carmella, that’s not going to do anything. You didn’t even knick an artery.”

  One of the Inquisitor’s escorts—the one who had flinched when Carmella took up the blade, Flynn noted—moved in as she drew it carelessly from Flynn’s flesh, tearing skin as she prepared to strike again with more lethal precision. The man caught her arm, shouting, “Inquisitor!” and Flynn did not need to see to know the anger burning in her eyes.

  She seethed with more than wounded pride, breathing through her teeth as her arm twitched, desperately wanting to kill Flynn. He had no desire to invite death, or learn whether Scytha would come for him personally if the Inquisitor finished him off. She looked up at her victim, who shared with her only the briefest smile, to let her know he had gotten to her. That was the final straw for Thunau.

  “How do you know these things of me?” she demanded. “If you were taught our tongue by a jailer or prisoner from Teague, then they have done well.” Coldly, she added, “See how you like hanging there for the night, animal. Repent in the morning when your limbs have gone dull and perhaps then we might speak with civility.”

  Flynn suppressed a scoff and it came out more like a choke. The torches were doused and he was left alone, with only fading daylight and the flickering fire outside his door, coming in through cracks and bars. The tears came at last, burning his hot cheeks. Thankful that it had passed, he let his claws free and began sawing at his bonds. He had no desire to stay up there through the night, and the pain in his body was terrible enough as it was.

  *

  Jean hung against the bars at the far side of her cell, if only to get away from the fecal odor rising from the pit on the other. She’d had to squat and use the rancid hole to relieve herself earlier, which had only made it worse. More than her easily stretched patience, it was the reeking scent getting to her. The fire in her sinuses made her sick, made her sweat in these cool chambers, made her want to break the cell doors down and shatter the face of the first idiot who would try to stop her from leaving.

  “Makes ya pine for Civilis a little, don’t it?” Mack asked, pinching his nose shut.

  Jean’s forehead bowed against the bars, too narrow to push through. She rubbed the back of her neck where the scab had long since peeled off. “Not even a little.”

  This wasn’t imprisonment—it was a test of her patience for certain, but whatever the Saryu thugs who locked her in thought, it wasn’t really imprisonment. Not when she could leave whenever she wanted. Tension trembled in her palms and the bars rattled a lit
tle even though she didn’t touch them. When it came time, she wasn’t going to waste hers on something so delicate as a lock. The real question was whether the bolts in the stone wall would strip first or if the hinges holding the door shut were going to shatter.

  Jean wanted them to remember that she’d been here. Here. She shook her head at the word. “Why the fuck am I here?”

  “This one of those profound philosophical questions, or one of those more in the moment things?” Mack asked.

  “The other one.”

  “Flynn-o asked us to wait,” he replied with a shrug. “So we’re waitin’.” He tugged his bars, to no avail. “Well, you’ve got more choice than me.”

  Flynn. “Mack, buddy … am I usually the type to take orders?”

  “After that waitressing gig in Little River? No. No you don’t.”

  Why wait, just because someone tells you to? Why throw a fight and get locked up in some rank cell?

  “Ya think he’s still alive?” Mack tried to look down the hall, sounding a little worried. Flynn was probably being whipped or beaten or who knows what in a room that at least had to smell better than theirs.

  “Ya, he’s good.” Jean desperately hoped that she wasn’t a liar. She couldn’t get a bead on her own answer, so instead she asked Mack for his. “Hey, Mack? What about you? Why’re you okay with followin’ him around?”

  “I think he just needs someone. I don’t really think he’d be okay if he was alone. Sure, he helped us out of that prison and off that crazy planet … but everything between all that, I think we’re all he’s got.”

  “Maybe …” Jean thought it over.

  A year lost in a cell overlooking the world because she’d overreacted. A year of her life, a year of Mack’s. A gun placed to her best friend’s head because she hadn’t thought ahead, hadn’t thought whether it was smarter to give up a little for the chance to keep a lot. She used to think she could take the world.