Judgment II: Mercy (19 page)

He left her lying on the desk when he was done. She turned her face away so she wouldn't have to watch him leave again, and he fastened himself back into his pants without a word.

Picking up his fallen switch, he said, "You should go to the Assembly block for fighting me." He wrote out two Demerits: one for Resisting Chastisement, and the other for Physically Striking A Master. "Either way, they aren't going to go easy on you."

She didn't look at him. "I don't care."

Mercy waited until he left the library before she peeled herself back off the desk. She sat down gingerly, his forceful entry having left her sore, and picked up the slips. Curling into a ball, she hugged them to her chest.

* * * *

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

It was the middle of the night when Mercy heard the door of her closet open. She was still awake, still groaning, every movement a fresh shock of agony that laved the lower half of her in fire.

It had taken Master Wilhite, the Black Master on duty, forty minutes to clear the four white-buttoned stigmas from her tunic. For the sin of burning two Demerit slips, he had given her ten strokes apiece in addition to the initial six for Laziness. For striking Shipe with the book, his cane had crossed her buttocks with vindictive force no less than sixty times. She'd had to be carried back to her closet and was left to sleep as best she could atop the blankets, her punished flesh the color of deep and overlapping bruises.

Not that that had stopped Master Cobb from seeking his own entertainment shortly after the guards had gone. No, he'd simply rolled her onto her back, and while she mewed and gasped, draped her knees over his shoulders and pumped into her aching sheath until he found his own completion.

Tweaking her nipple rings while she groaned and struggled piteously to roll back onto her stomach, he had then bid her a fond goodnight.

As the faint splash of the hall lights dimly flooded her walls, Mercy buried her head in her pillow. It was halfway through her mind that Cobb had returned to again sate his hunger for the pleasures of her aching body, when she heard a woman's voice, "She looks as bad as you did, Mahogany."

Mercy froze, her eyes opening wide as Mahogany replied in a flat, dead tone, "She didn't have to beg my forgiveness or kiss my feet in front of an entire Assembly."

173

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

Mercy sucked a breath to call out for Cobb, but she was jumped on from behind, her head wrenched back by a fistful of hair and cloth shoved deep into her mouth.

"You owe me, mistress," Mahogany said nastily, as she and two of the three females who'd accompanied her dragged her from her cot and dumped her on the floor. "Kiss my feet!

Help her, Brook."

A red-headed Elite hit the back of Mercy's head, knocking her to the stone floor and shoving her head down towards Mahogany's bare toes.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Mahogany demanded. "I kissed yours. I did it in front of an Assembly! Do you think you're better than me?"

Mercy looked down at the woman's bare feet, but she couldn't make herself touch her mouth to them. Instead, as evenly as she could, she spat the cloth from her mouth and said, "I can't control what the masters do, but if you lay one hand on me, you will be put back on the Assembly block. And so will your friends."

Mahogany stared at her with something akin to hatred.

"She must still think she's a mistress," said the fourth Elite. A willowy blonde, she laughed nervously from where she stood sentry at the door, nervously peeking out of it.

"Pearl," Mahogany said coldly. "Shut the door. Hold her for me, Sashay."

Arms grabbed Mercy from behind and Mahogany slapped her hard across the face. Mercy cried out, her cheek stinging, and when she looked back at Mahogany, it was as though she could see the anger roiling within her.

174

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

Behind her, Brook snapped out, "She's not better than us.

Teach her a lesson!"

Mahogany drew back her fist. She swung like a prize-fighting champion, her knuckles connecting solidly with Mercy's nose, and she felt the cartilage crunch. Blood spurted everywhere. It was as if a red flag had suddenly been waved.

While Pearl watched for guards at the door, the other three converged on Mercy, kicking and punching. Sharp nails scoured the flesh of her stomach and thighs as someone raked the rings from her nipples, ripping them out of her breasts. Her cry was abruptly stifled when Sashay sank a fist into her gut, doubling her over. Mercy fell to the floor, retching.

Something too hard and solid to be a fist struck her across her back. There was a dull crack and pain exploded through her chest. Brook yanked up on her hair, and they fell off balance and smashed into the cot, which broke.

Vaguely Mercy heard Pearl's frantic screeches from the doorway, "Don't kill her! What are you doing? You're going to get us all whipped!"

Mercy curled into a fetal ball, struggling to protect her head as Mahogany grabbed a broken leg off the cot and began to pummel her—her shoulders, chest, and legs. She heard bones breaking under the blows. A roaring filled her ears and everything went blessedly black.

* * * *

175

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

Hushed hysteria trembled in Brook's voice. "Look at all the blood!"

"Is she dead?" Sashay whimpered. "Did we kill her?"

"Oh my God ... Oh my God..."

Mercy tried to open her eyes, but there was only blackness. A deafening pulse kept pounding in her ears, drowning out the whisperers huddled around her. She tried to call for help, but there was only a liquid gurgling.

Hands took hold of her arms and Mercy's whole world exploded in white-hot pain as she was partially lifted from the wet ground.

"Get her feet," Mahogany said. "We'll hide the body."

"Oh my God!" Pearl wailed.

"Would you shut up! You're not helping!"

"Hide the body?" Brook half-whispered and half-shrieked.

"Where? Where could we possibly hide it?"

"In the refuse room," Mahogany said. "If we're lucky, she'll get carted out with the trash and no one will ever be the wiser."

"No..." Sashay began to pace. "No, we ... w-we should just leave her here."

"What if someone finds her?" Pearl wailed. "Oh my God, what if they find her dead?"

"Then the whole mountain will catch a whipping,"

Mahogany snapped, "but it'll be ten times worse if they find her alive and she tells them what happened! Now get her damn feet!"

Mercy's scream of pain was a hoarsely gurgled exhale as she was heaved up off the floor, and the deafening pounding 176

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

became an overwhelming roar that carried her back into the blackness of nothing.

* * * *

"Is she dying?" Brook whispered.

Trying to cry softly, Pearl moaned, "She's bleeding all over the floor! I can't wipe it all up, it's just smearing!"

"Get the door," Mahogany said.

"Shh! Somebody's coming!"

A hand clamped over Mercy's mouth. Her entire body was drowned in agony as she was shoved up against a wall, and the four frightened Elites leaned into her. It felt like knives stabbing into her shoulders, back and hips. She coughed a bloody breath and lost consciousness again.

* * * *

It was very cold, and she could barely breathe. Every time she tried it felt as though red-hot knives were jabbing into her back and side.

Mercy...!

Painless darkness lapped at the edges of awareness, one side offering oblivion while the other stung her with cold.

"Mercy? Where are you?"

"Can you hear us?"

She shied from the sound of the calling men and let the nothingness overtake her again.

* * * *

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

The sound of rummaging, of empty aluminum cans clanking together and the rustling of plastic bags, lifted her back into a vague sense of now. The smell of trash drifted assaulted her nose, but she couldn't move to get away from it.

"Bloody clothes," Cobb said in the distance.

Boyden swore. "We must be getting close."

"Has anything like this ever happened here before?" This from someone Mercy didn't recognize. Her face felt caked and stiff, and she tried to turn her head, but a stab of pain shot through her neck.

"Mercy! You get your skinny butt out here!" That voice she recognized very well, and it started her from the darkness that was beginning to creep back over her. "Where the hell are you? You answer me, goddamn it!"

She was so cold. She couldn't feel her toes. She couldn't see; she couldn't move. She tried again to turn her head and felt her forehead press up against something hard. The same hardness, she belatedly realized, that she lay on and which was pushing in at her from all sides, squashing her into an unwilling ball.

She was in a box. Her legs were tucked around her with her knees almost touching her nose. Pain burst all through her when she tried to move just enough to find her arms. She sucked an involuntary breath and the knives returned with a vengeance, stabbing into her back and up through her chest into her lungs. She vomited.

178

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

Somewhere beyond the pain, she heard Boyden snap,

"Shut up! Listen!"

The warm drip of blood and bile coursed down over her almost numb hand, at least enough for her to recognize that one arm was beneath her. Experimentally, halfway expecting for it to hurt, she flexed her fingers and touched the side of the box. She scratched at it with her nails.

"Mercy?" Boyden called again, and again she scratched at the inside of the wooden box.

She tried hard not to breathe, each shallow gasp when she failed sending the knives plunging back under her broken ribs.

"Over here!"

The digging resumed even closer now, almost right above her.

"Damn! How deep did they put her?" That was from Cobb, and he sounded as though he were right over her head.

The box jostled sharply, as though someone had grabbed hold of one end and lifted, and the knives sent her gasping back into unconsciousness and blessed relief from hurting sensation.

* * * *

She couldn't remember a whole lot from the first week or two of her recovery, and most of what she did recall was blurred and faded, like a dream. She remembered Master 179

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

Doctor Moulton smiling down on her as he said, "Boy, this takes me back to my army days. I haven't had to put someone back together like this since the war!"

And she remembered weaving in and out of wakefulness: sometimes to the light, with Shipe holding her hand or caressing her face, and sometimes to the dark, with the warmth of his body stretched out in bed beside her.

She was given a private room somewhere near the very top of the fortress. During the day, it was brightly lit and had a window. A window. She had almost forgotten what one of those looked like. For one hour each day, Shipe, who for three months never left her side, would roll her bed over to it so that she could see out. The snow-capped mountains were beautiful, especially at sunrises and sunsets, when the birthing or dying light of day would paint the snow and the skies in brilliant shades of orange, pink, and brilliant blood red.

If she was extra good and didn't itch at the casts that covered nearly all of her but for one arm, or complain about the pureed food that Moulton made her eat, sucking it through a straw for the weeks that her jaw was wired shut, then Shipe would sometimes open the window and the cold mountain air would caress her face. It was early spring, and she could smell the bloom of the flowers in the valley below.

Tane came to visit only once after most of the casts were off. It was the morning Master Doctor Moulton finally unwired her jaw.

"I want a burger," she was saying as the door swung open.

180

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

"Too bad," Shipe replied. Sitting in his chair beside her bed, he didn't so much as glance up from the newspaper he was reading. "You get jello."

"Good morning," Tane said, and came inside. He held up a small paper bag. "Beware hardened masters bearing gifts."

"Is it a burger?" Mercy asked.

The newspaper crinkled as Shipe dropped it into his lap.

"Less talking," he snapped, then gave her a warning look. "No screaming until your lungs are fully recovered."

She shoved her plate of jello aside and folded her arms across her chest. She wasn't particularly successful at keeping a neutral expression on her face.

"Moulton's going to proclaim her well and throw her back into circulation," Shipe told Tane. "And I'm going to put her right back up here."

The Mountain Lord smiled and handed Mercy the small bag.

"Peppermints!" she crowed as she looked inside.

"To help wean her off the morphine," Tane said, and handed the second gift to Shipe: a small, round, hand-held paddle, nestled in a white box with a blue ribbon on top. "Also for help while she's weaning herself off the morphine."

She wasn't as thrilled with that as she was with the candies, but Shipe took it from the box and tested it against his palm. The crisp smacks made her bottom tingle.

"What about my gift?" Shipe asked. "Did you get them?"

"As requested." Tane passed over an oversized manilla envelope. "Where will you go?"

181

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

"I haven't been home in a while." Shipe slid his finger under the top flap, tearing it and spilled two passport books into his hand. He opened them up to look at the photos.