Anukis realised two ribs were cracked, and she bit her tongue against the pain as she shifted her weight. She ran her hands over her naked, pale skin, up and down her legs, over her hips and belly, stroking her flanks, searching for tears in flesh and damage to muscle and tendon within. Finally, satisfied, Anukis walked around her cell, hands tracing contours on the walls and pausing, occasionally, at odd-shaped slots and sockets. These were for the mobile torture devices of the Engineers and Cardinals. She had heard of such things; but never witnessed. With a cold chill she grasped her position, and understood with clarity that her opportunity might come sooner than she realised.
Anukis moved to the cell door for analysis. It was brass, thick and very, very heavy, a solid slab with only a hand-sized portal through which to feed prisoners. Anu’s fingers traced the join between door and the metal wall-it was precise, as befitted a religion and culture of engineers and metal craftsmen.
As she stood, she heard a lock mechanism whirr and took a hurried step back. The door swung inwards, silently, and a figure was outlined. It was the athletic figure of Vashell, the light source behind him, his features hidden in darkness and shadow.
“Have you come to gloat, bastard?”
His fist lashed out, slamming Anukis’s face and dropping her to the floor. He stepped forward, and his boot smashed her face, stamped on her chest, and as she lay, stunned, bleeding, he stamped on her head.
Vashell pulled off a pair of gloves and moved, sitting on her bed, reclining a little, hands clasped around one armoured knee. He smiled, his brass fangs poking over his lower lip, and his eyes were dark, oil-filled, glittering first with resentment, then with amusement at Anukis’s pain.
She lay, wheezing, head spinning, and it took many minutes for the effects of the blows to subside. Finally, she sat up, coughed up blood which ran down her breasts and pooled in her lap, in her crotch, an ersatz moon-bleeding.
“Ten years ago we played in my father’s garden,” he said. “We ran through the long grass, and you giggled, and your hair shone in the winter sun. We walked down to the river, sat watching the savage fast waters filled with ice-melt from beneath the Black Pikes; and I held you, and you told me you loved me, and that one day we would be together.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Your memories are twisted, Vashell. It didn’t happen like that.” She coughed, holding her breast, blood staining her chin like a horror puppet. “You chased me. I struggled. I asked for you to leave me alone!”
“Liar!” he surged to his feet, face contorted into a vachine snarl. Inside his mouth, gears stepped and wheels spun.
Anu was crying as she looked up at him. “Vashell,” she said, gently, “I never said I loved you, I never loved you. You saw what you wanted to see. You pursued me for a decade, and never once did I give you reason to believe I returned your love; I was careful, because you were an Engineer Priest, and I knew to anger you would be fatal.”
Vashell subsided, and sat again, staring at her, his expression unreadable. “I loved you,” he said, simply.
“You captured me, had me beaten. Just now, you kicked me like a dog. How can you sit there and say you loved me?”
“You betrayed me!” he snarled, spittle flying from his fangs. “You made me a fucking mockery amongst the Engineers; you have undermined my authority, lowered my rank, and you sit there and wonder why I strike you? That is my right, fucker. You have earned the beating, and much, much more. You are impure. Bad blood. A Heretic. No true vachine would have led an Engineer Priest on such a pretty dance.”
“I led you nowhere! You are a fool, Vashell. Weak and stupid, brutal and savage. What could I possibly see in you to love? And you know what the worst thing is?” Her voice dropped, her face lowered, and her eyes were dark, staring up at him, submissive, subservient, and yet totally in control at the same time. “If I, a simple ill-blood, would not take you as wife, would not mother your children, then what pure-blood vachine would ever touch your corrupt and deviated shell?”
Vashell did not reply in words, only in actions. He knelt by her, looking down at her pale white flesh, her slender limbs, her feminine curves, and with his clenched fist, claws curled tight, he pounded her face again and again, and took her head in his hands and rammed it against the floor, and even as she lay, bleeding, head spinning, not even understanding what hit her so mercilessly, so he suddenly halted and rocked back on his heels, crying a little, tears on his cheeks. He leant forward, low, and kissed her smashed lips, her blood running into his mouth like the finest Karakan import; he kissed her, his tongue sliding between her lips and his hand moving down her throat, over her breasts, stroking her belly, dipping between her legs to play for a while as she lay, panting, chest rising and falling in rapid beats, and she finally coughed, eyes flickering open…
“Get off me!” she screamed, and Vashell rocked back, stood and swiftly left the cell. The door slammed shut, and Anukis was left, crying and alone, battered and bleeding, abused and frightened, on the cell floor.
Kill me now, she thought. For I am nothing more than a slave.
A female vachine entered after a day of bad dreams, and with a bowl of water and a rag, cleaned the blood from Anukis’s body with gentle strokes and soothing clucks. Anu opened her eyes, watched the vachine, an ugly specimen where the clockwork had become mildly disjointed, misaligned, and merged with the flesh of her face so that gears and cogs were openly visible against her cheeks, on her tongue, inside her bone-twisted forehead; whilst she was still vachine, it was considered vulgar to have such a show. And yet like any disease, this was totally uncontrollable.
“There you go, little lady,” said the woman.
“Thank you,” said Anukis.
“Soon have you good as new.”
“What’s your name?”
The vachine smiled. “I am Perella. I’ve been assigned by Torto, one of the five Watchmakers, to tend you during your stay.”
“Where am I?”
“The Engineer’s Palace, of course.”
Anukis groaned. When you entered the Engineer’s Palace, as one such as she, it was a rarity you left. At least, not with the same number of limbs, cogs or brain platters.
“Do not fret,” said Perella, kindly. “I’m sure everything will be all right.”
“You are kind.” Anu’s voice was stiff. “But can I ask, do you know why I’m here? I am impure. I cannot take blood-oil. I am a Heretic.” She bowed her head, accepting her shame.
“To me, you are just another vachine.” Perella smiled. “It is my understanding that your…condition, comes through no fault of your own. It’s a simple unmeshing, something over which you have no control-despite what religious fanatics might believe. Shh. Someone approaches.”
Footsteps slapped the metal walkway, and Vashell appeared. He smiled warmly at Anukis. “It is good to see you well.”
“What?” she snarled. “You beat me unconscious and arrive to make pleasantries? Go to your grave, Vashell, and enjoy the worms eating your eyes.”
Vashell made a gesture, and Perella hurried from the room. Vashell’s face darkened, and only then did she see the collar and lead he carried. He moved forward, fastened the collar around her throat and wound twin clanking chains around his gloved gauntlet. “Come with me. We’re going for a walk.”
“You would parade me naked?”
“Heretics deserve no dignity,” he said.
Anu snarled then, a vachine sound, and her fangs lengthened showing the gleam of brass. Vashell laughed, and tugged on the chains making Anukis stumble; she righted herself with difficulty, through her broken bruised frame, and he dragged her out into the corridor where the metal grille walkway dug viciously into her naked feet.
Anu’s face burned red as Vashell led her like a dog, tugging occasionally as if for his own amusement. They moved away from the prison block, and back to the hub of the Engineer’s Palace. As they approached from the prison arm so they passed more and more vachine, and several Engineers and Cardinals who stared at Anukis with distaste, some with open hatred, baring fangs in a show of aggressive challenge. Anu kept her head high, meeting the gaze of every pureblood, challenging them, snarling back with her own hatred and loathing.