Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Giovanna tugged slightly on the leash.
“Come,” she said.
I followed her.
The corridor outside the control room felt cooler than my skin. My bare feet padded almost silently on the stone. My mistress walked ahead of me in her heels and immaculate jacket, and I followed because the leash required it and because some more troubling, more inward thing required it too. We passed through the old stone passages of the mithraeum with their dim, smokeless torches and their Roman severity, and I tried not to think about where we were going.
The scents reached me, though, and I couldn’t keep my mind off our destination: food. Warm bread, roasted meat, coffee, citrus, olive oil. Human voices, too, layered over the smell in a low communal murmur that made my stomach contract with sudden, almost painful hunger.
The refectory lay beyond a pair of heavy doors standing open beneath an arch of dark stone. It was much larger than I had expected, with long tables and benches arranged in disciplined order beneath a vaulted ceiling. Lamps cast a warm, flattering light that made the old stone look golden.
Men in suits sat at some of the tables with women at their feet or beside them. At other tables sat only women. Some of the girls wore nothing but their leathers, their collars catching the light.
Others wore exquisite dresses—silk, satin, clinging things in jewel tones and pale neutrals—over which their collars somehow looked even more shocking. A few had their hair beautifully arranged. A few looked like they had wept very recently. I swallowed hard as I noticed that one nearly nude girl, who was just putting a cup of coffee in front of a man in a suit, bore the marks of the mastix across her backside, just as I did.
The room quieted, not entirely, but enough for me to feel the shift. Eyes moved to me. So many eyes.
Giovanna stopped just short of the threshold. The leash tightened.
“Down,” she said.
I looked at the floor, then at her shoes, then up at her face. “Here?”
Her expression altered so slightly that another person might not have noticed. I had spent enough time under her hand already to understand that it meant I had asked a foolish question.
“Yes,” she said. “On all fours. You are not even a full columba, and so you are not ready to enter among full initiates the way a true person does.”
Heat flooded my face. Behind us the corridor felt empty and exposed. Before us the refectory seemed to glow with the promise of observation. For one absurd second I thought of refusing. The thought had no weight: it was simply a flare of old selfhood, academic and upright and indignant.
Then I knelt. The stone bit coolly into my knees, and I lowered my hands to the floor as well. My braid slipped over my shoulder. The leash hung down from Giovanna’s fist to my throat in a graceful curve that made the reality of the thing look decorative rather than absolute. I hated that. I hated more that some part of me thrilled to it.
“Good,” she said.
She led me, that way, into the hall.
The sounds changed at once. Conversations resumed, but altered, and I could tell they had shaped themselves around me. I could hear the murmurs, mostly in Italian but a few in English, as Giovanna guided me along the side of the room toward a lower section, almost like an annex, where several younger-looking women knelt or sat on cushions at floor level beside shallow trays and bowls.
“The new one Bellatrix Hestiaea…”
“So blonde.”
“Very pretty.”
“She’s an archaeologist, apparently.”
I kept my eyes lowered, but not so low that I couldn’t see shoes, ankles, the hems of dresses, the bare calves of girls in cuffs, the polished leather of men’s loafers. One pair of stiletto heels paused near me, and a woman’s voice, amused and soft, said in accented English, “Poor little bottom. She’s obviously been used nicely.”
Laughter, not cruel exactly, but not kind either.
Giovanna brought me to an open place near the wall where a low leather mat had been laid out. Beside it stood two bowls of dark ceramic on the floor, smelling of delicious food, and a third smaller one with the distinct scent of water full of minerals. A folded cloth napkin lay nearby on a little wooden stand, inaccessible except by permission, I presumed.
“This section is for new columbae,” Giovanna said, loud enough for the nearby girls to hear. “Girls who still need their defiant, wild instincts corrected.”
My throat tightened. She gave a small, efficient tug on the leash and I settled where she wanted me, my knees on the mat, my hands just in front of them.
One of the bowls held a thick stew with beans and chunks of meat in it. The other contained torn bread, olives, and slices of orange. The smell made me sway very slightly.