Page 13 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

As soon as I thought it, I knew why Seelia would never do so. If she did, whatever judgment she was preparing to suffer would be extended to those who’d received my aid. And if I knew anything about my roommate after so many evening walks together, I knew betrayal was not in her.

But something wasn’t right. This judge knew that without some understanding of Valutara, I would be dead. Which meant she must know I hadn’t been calling the Will to mend my own body. Did this judge also know how I had been using my Sheason skills?

A dull ache started in my chest. That sensation of being on the verge of an unwanted understanding. Not like learning that the woman you love has been lying with another man. But that she loves that man. Not betrayal, but loss.

Seelia made no defense. And she never explained to her accusers anything of our time together. Not while I stood listening, anyway. I had no idea how long she’d been there, or what she’d said before I arrived.

The woman who’d last spoken nodded and stepped back, seeming to take Seelia’s silence for confession. A second woman, this one dressed in the close-fitted attire Mal soldiers wore to battle, came forward. She pulled out a short knife and took hold of Seelia’s queue of hair with her other hand. In a graceful motion, she cut away the braid. Then, she went to work on the remainder. With ungentle speed, she used that same knife flatwise to shave Seelia’s head. The scraping sound reverberated around the small atrium.

A knife does not a good razor make. Even an exceptionally sharp one. The pull across Seelia’s scalp was brutal. It left me with the impression of a sheep being shorn in wool season. Even from where I stood in the shadows, I could see the angry red scrapes across Seelia’s scalp, drawn by the rough shearing.

The tears in my friend’s eyes, though, didn’t strike me as tears of pain, but of shame. She never yelped or whimpered. And soon enough, she knelt alone again, her own hair a ring around her on the stone atrium floor.

Then a third woman, wearing gloves, lifted one of the brass pitch bowls and came forward with the steaming dish. From her pocket she drew out what looked like a paintbrush. Without hesitation, she dipped the brush into the bowl, and began applying hot pitch to Seelia’s scalp.

I expected a scream. I expected her to thrash and finally fight back. I expected others to rush forward to hold her in place. None of that happened. Only her face betrayed the pain she must have been feeling, a mask of agony. And even then for just a moment or two. Then her face relaxed. She had deepened into Valutara.

The woman with the pitch didn’t stop with Seelia’s scalp. She painted my friend’s face, too, leaving clear her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. After that, she moved on to her shoulders, her back, and finally her breasts.

Seelia soon slumped to her side, convulsing. Those around the atrium silently withdrew. It had all happened so fast. I stood in shock. But that’s not why I hadn’t intervened. I could have. I had energy enough to have dealt with those who’d savaged her.

I hadn’t interceded because I knew she wouldn’t have wanted me to. That was the hardest part of it: knowing I could have helped, believing she was wrong to submit, and still respecting her choice enough to watch her suffer. Perhaps I’d learned something of Talenfoier, after all. In more cities than I could count, I’d raised a rendering hand careless of the law or customs of those places. I observed one razor-simple sanctity: I defended those who couldn’t do so for themselves. I’d not found a time when this felt immoral. Though it had set me at odds with the rest of my order. I respected my Randeur, our Sheason leader. I respected every Sheason, come to that. But I’d stopped waiting for them to wake up to changes that might threaten the east. It was why I’d come for the ingot of steel the Mal unrightfully possessed. But in this moment I’d held my defiance in check. For Seelia.

When the atrium had been clear a full minute, I rushed to her side. Her eyes widened at the sight of me.

“You saw. Pitch of pine,” she said, her lips trembling.

Looking into her eyes, I understood. Her punishment could have come any of a hundred ways. The way they’d chosen said much about her offense. Covered with scalding pitch, a simple everyday element, applied quickly, with a brush. It was base. And the scars would be a mark of shame on her. Some that others would see. Some that would mar the delicate skin she showed only those she chose to take to her bed.

She hung in my arms like an overlarge doll. “Will you be all right?”

“Because I’m female?” I heard the tease in her weak voice. “There you go. Arrogant again.”

“Not because you’re female.” I looked over the hot pitch still clinging to her skin. “Because you’re a friend.”

“Who told you this?” She tried a smile, but it seemed to cause pain in her burned cheeks, and she let it go.

“They did this because you started teaching me Valutara. To manage my own pain.” It was suddenly harder to look at her ruined skin, knowing I was responsible. I cast my gaze about the atrium, pretending to watch for others who might discover me there.

“Look at me,” Seelia said. Her voice came like iron, cool and hard.

I did as she asked, and found her eyes glassy with tears. “Assumptions make you weak. Not you, in particular. All your kind. You use them like facts. It’s more of the arrogance that leads you down wrong paths.”

“You’re really going to lecture me right now?” I said, mildly incredulous. “You’re going to start a comparison of cultures, while you lie burning beneath a cake of pine tar?”

She grew quiet in voice and body, and in the look she cast me. I felt that feeling again, the one that tenses on the air before a hurt comes.

“I didn’t teach you the footings of Valutara to save you from cruciation.” She swallowed, the act slow and clearly painful. “I did it so you could preserve your energy to help those we walked each evening to find.”

I shook my head at the obviousness of her admission, and felt relieved. I’d braced to hear something more wounding.

“You’re not understanding me.” She took a long breath, and I could see her own consummate ability with Valutara. Her body relaxed beneath my arms as she embraced the pain more fully.

“Talenfoier is many things. It is knives through flesh. Hot tar on skin. It is suffering in order to end self-deception and your own mistaken paths.” She took another breath, pausing a long moment before saying, “And its sufferings are meant as partings.”

“Partings?”

She nodded, shame touching her face again. This time, though, it didn’t seem to be the shame of her chastisement.