The Left Hand of God

8

Every few minutes Kleist and Vague Henri would light the candle Cale had stolen from the Lord of Discipline and look at the girl. They had agreed it was best to keep an eye on her every now and again. After all, there were nine candles, so they could afford to be generous. They had seen people go quiet in the way the girl was quiet and with that odd sightless stare, usually in boys who had taken more than a hundred strokes. If they stayed like that for more than a few days, they were taken away and never came back. Those who pulled themselves together often used to start screaming in the middle of the night, weeks or even months later-in Morto’s case it had been years. Then they vanished, too.

This, they told themselves, was why they kept checking on the girl. If she started screaming, maybe someone would hear.

Every time they lit the candle, Vague Henri would say to her, “It’s going to be all right.” She did not respond except by shivering every now and again. The third time they lit the candle, Henri remembered something from the very distant past, a phrase that came into his head, something comforting he had once heard and long forgotten. “There, there,” he said. “There, there.”

But there was another reason they kept lighting the candle besides checking on the girl: they couldn’t stop themselves from looking at her. They had both come into the Sanctuary as seven-year-olds from a life that now seemed as remote as the moon. Vague Henri’s parents had been dead since not long after he was born. Kleist’s parents had sold him for five dollars to the Redeemers, and had been only a little less brutal toward him. They had not seen a girl or a woman since they came through the great gates of the Sanctuary, and all that the Redeemers had told them was that women and girls were the devil’s playground. If, by any chance, they were to see one when they left the Sanctuary for the frontier or the Eastern Breaks, they were immediately to cast their eyes down. “The body of a woman is a sin in itself, crying out to the heavens for vengeance!” There was only one woman who was to be regarded without disgust and alarm: the mother of the Hanged Redeemer who, alone among her sex, was pure. She was the source of compassion, perpetual succor and solace-though what these virtues entailed the boys had no idea, none of these qualities ever having come their way. About what it involved, this business of women being the devil’s playground, the Redeemers were equally vague. As a result, Kleist and Vague Henri were driven to watch the girl by an intense curiosity, mixed with fear and no little awe. Anyone who could get the Redeemers into such ecstasies of loathing and hatred had to be very powerful indeed and, therefore, in ways they could not begin to guess at, worth being afraid of.

At the moment, shivering and terrified in the candlelight, the girl did not seem like something fearful. She was still, however, fascinating. She was, for one thing, such an extraordinary shape. She was wearing a linen shift of fair quality, much better than anything the boys had ever worn, tied around her waist with a cord.

Kleist gestured to Vague Henri to move away and bent his head to whisper in his ear.

“What are those humps on her chest?” he asked.

Vague Henri, with as much deference as possible, considering he had no knowledge of how to behave toward a woman, held the candle toward her breasts and looked at them thoughtfully.

“I don’t know,” he whispered at last.

“She must be fat,” whispered Kleist. “Like that shit bag Vittles.” There were, of course, no fat boys at the Sanctuary. There was barely an ounce between all ten thousand.

Vague Henri considered this.

“Vittles is saggy and round. She goes in and out.”

“Go on, then,” said Kleist.

Vague Henri thought about this for a moment.

“No, I think we should leave her alone. I suppose,” he added, “he must have given her a beating.”

Kleist let out a deep breath as he considered the girl.

“She doesn’t look like she could take a hiding, not one like the kind Picarbo can hand out.”

“Used to hand out,” corrected Vague Henri. They both grunted with a strange satisfaction, given that his death had put them in so much danger. “I wonder why he beat her.”

“Probably,” said Vague Henri, “for being the devil’s playground.”

Kleist nodded. It seemed plausible.

“What’s your name?” asked Vague Henri, not for the first time. Again she did not reply.

“I wonder how long Cale will take,” said Vague Henri.

“Do you think he really has a plan?”

“Yes,” said Vague Henri, with a tone of complete certainty. “If he says something, he means it.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re so sure. I wish I was.”

Then the girl said something, but so softly they couldn’t hear.

“What did you say?” asked Vague Henri.

“Riba.” She took a deep breath. “My name is Riba.”