The Maiden, chapter sixteen
Sep. 13th, 2009 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maculategiraffeI think I've mentioned before that I hardly ever get writer's block (which I think of as not knowing what to write next, or being unsure where a story is going) but I get "writer's lassitude" where I know damn well what comes next but I just don't feel like writing it. Someday I'll learn that I should just write anyway. Nothing gets me over writer's lassitude like writing. And not writing is very bad for my constitution.
So. Short chapter this time, sorry, but it gets us somewhere. Thank you so much to everyone who is still reading, and especially those of you who have been kind enough to comment. It really really helps, when I'm in a funk, to know that there are people who care whether updates arrive or not.
Rita hadn't liked the looks of the center when she went there to choose Sean-- a grim, squat building of gray concrete, with few windows-- and she liked it even less now, knowing what went on inside. She'd brought Leah with her this time-- one of the benefits of having two assistants was that you usually didn't have to overwork either one-- and as they crunched up the gravel driveway, Leah shuddered at the sight of the building.
"It looks like pictures of old prisons," she said. "Can we go to the boys' high school after this, so I can grant a couple of dozen boys my protection?"
"I'd rather you didn't," said Rita. "But I'm hoping we can make this place a little less awful."
Leah wrinkled her nose. "How? Tear it down and start over?"
"Something like that," said Rita, and knocked on the door.
It opened very quickly, revealing the directrix herself, who looked even more anxious than she had in the mirror; she bowed deeply to Rita, who inclined her head in return and introduced Leah.
"Hi," said Leah neutrally.
"Come in, please," Martha said, and led Rita and Leah through a dingy, badly lighted corridor into a sumptuously furnished sitting area, lavish with glowing lamps, wallpaper, paintings, sofas and bookcases filled with beautifully leatherbound classics that looked so pristine Rita suspected they'd never been opened. In the center of a lovely patterned rug knelt a broad-shouldered, coarsely handsome man, dressed in a brown uniform, his head shaved, his hands bound tightly behind him, a rubber bit tied between his teeth. Accepting the invitation to sit-- Leah beside her, notebook in hand-- Rita looked quizzically from the kneeling man to the directrix.
"If you'd prefer punishment for all the guards," said the directrix, a worry line puckering her forehead between the eyes, "that can be arranged. Jack here was the head of all of them, though, and I thought-- as an example, at least-- you might want to speak with him first."
Considering the gag, Rita was fairly sure "speak with" was meant as a euphemism.
"Surely the head of discipline should be a woman," she said mildly.
"Well, of course--" Martha's hands fluttered involuntarily in the air-- a bad indication of the kind of control, or lack thereof, she exercised in general. "Jack reports-- reported-- directly to me. But-- as you noted in your letter-- our funding-- and female employees are expensive."
"I see," said Rita. "That should certainly be one of our priorities as we restructure. Are you the only woman here?"
"Yes, magistra."
Rita didn't have to glance sideways at Leah to picture the expression on her face.
"And do you feel," she asked, still mildly, "that you alone are equal to the responsibility of maintaining discipline?"
"It would seem not," said Martha unhappily, with a quick glance at Leah and an equally quick glance away.
"I wouldn't expect you to be," said Rita. "We must look into getting you enough funding to maintain a proper staff here. No one woman should bear the responsibility of-- how many men do you have here?"
"About two hundred," said Martha, "give or take."
"You don't know exactly?"
Martha's brow furrowed. "I'd have to check my records, magistra."
"I see," said Rita, privately more and more appalled. "Well, first things first. What are Jack's exact responsibilities?"
"He supervises the other guards," said Martha, "and approves disciplinary proceedings-- preliminary ones, I mean, that don't require female intervention."
"What kind of discipline can he authorize?"
"Oh-- things like solitary confinement," said Martha, "and deprivation of food, and minor corporal punishment for infractions."
"And what kinds of infractions would be punished by those things?"
"Disobedience or backtalk," said Martha. "Disruptive behavior. In cases of extreme defiance or violence, of course, he would refer them to me."
"How often does that happen?"
"Not very often," said Martha. "In fact, I can't remember the last time. He-- I thought he handled things very well."
"You reposed a great deal of trust in him," Rita observed.
Martha nodded. "I did, magistra. I'm deeply sorry that it appears to have been misplaced."
"Let me suggest," said Rita, "that we go over your accounts, first of all-- if you would put yourself to the trouble of getting them out for me. Leah can help you sort out the relevant information. And while you're doing that, I'd like to speak to Jack alone."
Martha didn't seem too disconcerted by this-- if Rita had had to guess, she would have bet on Martha's being relieved that Rita was going to take out any dissatisfaction with the running of the center on Jack's vulnerable head, rather than pursuing it with the person who was really responsible. Rita's anger was fierce, and her power was responding to it; she'd have been happy to take it out on someone, if the person who deserved it most hadn't been a woman.
When Martha and Leah had repaired to Martha's office, an equally sumptuous apartment adjoining the sitting area, Rita looked down at Jack, whose face was white and shiny with sweat and tears; he looked up at her with the bit in his mouth, trembling.
She considered him for a few moments in silence, and then reached out-- his whole body spasmed, briefly, as if she'd unleashed the power in her hands-- and undid the gag, extracting the bit carefully from his mouth. It already had deep bite marks in it.
"Do you remember a boy here named Sean?" she asked.
He shook his head, his eyes huge and fixed on her, watery and swollen.
"He was here for two years," said Rita. "He left less than a week ago. Surely you must remember him."
He shook his head again, and gave her a pleading look.
"You may explain why," said Rita.
"No names," he said in a low, slightly hoarse voice that sounded as if he'd been screaming for awhile. Combined with the tooth marks in the gag and his general cringing demeanor, Rita was guessing that Martha had already punished him, for getting her in trouble with the magistra. The fact that Martha hadn't bothered to mention this to Rita didn't make Rita think any more highly of her. "Here. Just-- just numbers."
"You don't know the names of any of your charges?"
Jack shook his head.
"Were you instructed by your protectrix to refer to them only by number?"
He nodded.
"Sean's number was 86693."
Recognition dawned in his eyes; he nodded again, guardedly.
"What do you remember about him?"
"Skinny," said Jack, and when she nodded, inviting more, "Weak. Big crier."
"Not very popular?" Rita suggested.
Jack shook his head.
"Was he bullied often?"
Jack nodded.
"Is it the guards' duty to keep that from happening?"
He looked up at her, seemingly puzzled.
"Bullying," Rita clarified. "Assault. Theft of food. Is it part of their job to prevent those things?"
"I don't know," said Jack, after a moment.
"You don't know what the duties are of the men you are supposed to supervise in their duties?"
He shook his head again, more tears springing into his eyes as he obviously braced himself for pain.
There was no need for him to do so. Rita didn't particularly like him, or the adjectives he'd chosen to apply to Sean, but it was hardly his fault he'd been given unclear instructions, and she wasn't going to punish him for the failings of his superiors. She would have cheerfully punished Martha, but that was going to be a more circuitous business, beginning with figuring out where her funding was going (not one single female employee?) and ending, Rita devoutly hoped, in her summary firing. In the meantime, she'd have to get at least one trustworthy woman in here, ostensibly to help Martha out, really to make sure no worse atrocities occurred before Martha's removal. Jack would need to be demoted, and women placed in the position of supervising the male guards. Ideally, she thought, there should be at least one female supervisor for each four or five guards.
"How many guards are there altogether?" she asked Jack, who answered through chattering teeth, "T-- tw-- twenty?"
She put a hand on his back-- his body jerked again, as if it had taken a horrific jolt, though she knew her control hadn't slipped-- and stroked it, impersonally, soothing him the way she would have soothed someone else's panicking horse.
"This isn't primarily your fault," she told him, as the tremors subsided under her hand, and he knelt quietly at last, his head hanging down, his own hands still bound behind his back. "You were given no better orders to obey, no guidance that would have helped you behave as you should have been taught to behave. You've been punished by your protectrix?"
He nodded, slowly.
"You won't be hurt further today," said Rita. "You are suspended from your position, pending a review of your employer's accounts. She'll notify you as to your duties while on suspension."
She reached behind him and severed the ropes at his wrists with a flick of power that didn't touch his skin. Immediately, as if he'd been struggling to do this all along and only the ropes had prevented him, he seized her skirt in both fists and clutched at it like a lifeline, gazing up at her imploringly.
"Mercy," he whispered.
"I said you wouldn't be hurt further."
"She'll release me," he said, and cleared his throat. "From my job, from her protection. She said she would, after you were done with me. I'll be-- unprotected, I'll just be one of the, the men-- please, lady, have mercy, I need-- your protection-- anyone's protection-- please--"
Rita hesitated. Part of her was grimly satisfied with the outcome: the man who hadn't intervened when unprotected men were raped, beaten, and starved in front of his eyes would have the same fate visited on him. But she couldn't conscientiously sentence anyone to that, no matter what he'd sanctioned-- and what about all the other men at the center, guards and inmates alike? Could she consider them safe from further indignities, once she was gone? Could she make them wait as long as it might take to get Martha replaced?
What she needed was another woman to leave here with Martha, not just in the long term, but right now, before Rita herself left. Not Leah-- that would never do, even if Rita herself could spare her. She needed someone strong, firm, decisive, unsentimental, with a gift for organization and a healthy resistance to being fed any kind of line, and who was neither afraid of men nor excessively susceptible to them. Someone Rita could trust implicitly, and right now.
"Damn it," she said out loud, and then, "Stop that-- you're going to tear my skirt. Let go. I need to get to my purse."
As Jack keened quietly to himself on the floor-- though Rita couldn't pity him too much, not after what he'd allowed to happen to Sean-- she pulled out her pocket mirror.
"Emily?" she said, when her sister's curious face had come clear. "Listen, I need a really big favor."
So. Short chapter this time, sorry, but it gets us somewhere. Thank you so much to everyone who is still reading, and especially those of you who have been kind enough to comment. It really really helps, when I'm in a funk, to know that there are people who care whether updates arrive or not.
Rita hadn't liked the looks of the center when she went there to choose Sean-- a grim, squat building of gray concrete, with few windows-- and she liked it even less now, knowing what went on inside. She'd brought Leah with her this time-- one of the benefits of having two assistants was that you usually didn't have to overwork either one-- and as they crunched up the gravel driveway, Leah shuddered at the sight of the building.
"It looks like pictures of old prisons," she said. "Can we go to the boys' high school after this, so I can grant a couple of dozen boys my protection?"
"I'd rather you didn't," said Rita. "But I'm hoping we can make this place a little less awful."
Leah wrinkled her nose. "How? Tear it down and start over?"
"Something like that," said Rita, and knocked on the door.
It opened very quickly, revealing the directrix herself, who looked even more anxious than she had in the mirror; she bowed deeply to Rita, who inclined her head in return and introduced Leah.
"Hi," said Leah neutrally.
"Come in, please," Martha said, and led Rita and Leah through a dingy, badly lighted corridor into a sumptuously furnished sitting area, lavish with glowing lamps, wallpaper, paintings, sofas and bookcases filled with beautifully leatherbound classics that looked so pristine Rita suspected they'd never been opened. In the center of a lovely patterned rug knelt a broad-shouldered, coarsely handsome man, dressed in a brown uniform, his head shaved, his hands bound tightly behind him, a rubber bit tied between his teeth. Accepting the invitation to sit-- Leah beside her, notebook in hand-- Rita looked quizzically from the kneeling man to the directrix.
"If you'd prefer punishment for all the guards," said the directrix, a worry line puckering her forehead between the eyes, "that can be arranged. Jack here was the head of all of them, though, and I thought-- as an example, at least-- you might want to speak with him first."
Considering the gag, Rita was fairly sure "speak with" was meant as a euphemism.
"Surely the head of discipline should be a woman," she said mildly.
"Well, of course--" Martha's hands fluttered involuntarily in the air-- a bad indication of the kind of control, or lack thereof, she exercised in general. "Jack reports-- reported-- directly to me. But-- as you noted in your letter-- our funding-- and female employees are expensive."
"I see," said Rita. "That should certainly be one of our priorities as we restructure. Are you the only woman here?"
"Yes, magistra."
Rita didn't have to glance sideways at Leah to picture the expression on her face.
"And do you feel," she asked, still mildly, "that you alone are equal to the responsibility of maintaining discipline?"
"It would seem not," said Martha unhappily, with a quick glance at Leah and an equally quick glance away.
"I wouldn't expect you to be," said Rita. "We must look into getting you enough funding to maintain a proper staff here. No one woman should bear the responsibility of-- how many men do you have here?"
"About two hundred," said Martha, "give or take."
"You don't know exactly?"
Martha's brow furrowed. "I'd have to check my records, magistra."
"I see," said Rita, privately more and more appalled. "Well, first things first. What are Jack's exact responsibilities?"
"He supervises the other guards," said Martha, "and approves disciplinary proceedings-- preliminary ones, I mean, that don't require female intervention."
"What kind of discipline can he authorize?"
"Oh-- things like solitary confinement," said Martha, "and deprivation of food, and minor corporal punishment for infractions."
"And what kinds of infractions would be punished by those things?"
"Disobedience or backtalk," said Martha. "Disruptive behavior. In cases of extreme defiance or violence, of course, he would refer them to me."
"How often does that happen?"
"Not very often," said Martha. "In fact, I can't remember the last time. He-- I thought he handled things very well."
"You reposed a great deal of trust in him," Rita observed.
Martha nodded. "I did, magistra. I'm deeply sorry that it appears to have been misplaced."
"Let me suggest," said Rita, "that we go over your accounts, first of all-- if you would put yourself to the trouble of getting them out for me. Leah can help you sort out the relevant information. And while you're doing that, I'd like to speak to Jack alone."
Martha didn't seem too disconcerted by this-- if Rita had had to guess, she would have bet on Martha's being relieved that Rita was going to take out any dissatisfaction with the running of the center on Jack's vulnerable head, rather than pursuing it with the person who was really responsible. Rita's anger was fierce, and her power was responding to it; she'd have been happy to take it out on someone, if the person who deserved it most hadn't been a woman.
When Martha and Leah had repaired to Martha's office, an equally sumptuous apartment adjoining the sitting area, Rita looked down at Jack, whose face was white and shiny with sweat and tears; he looked up at her with the bit in his mouth, trembling.
She considered him for a few moments in silence, and then reached out-- his whole body spasmed, briefly, as if she'd unleashed the power in her hands-- and undid the gag, extracting the bit carefully from his mouth. It already had deep bite marks in it.
"Do you remember a boy here named Sean?" she asked.
He shook his head, his eyes huge and fixed on her, watery and swollen.
"He was here for two years," said Rita. "He left less than a week ago. Surely you must remember him."
He shook his head again, and gave her a pleading look.
"You may explain why," said Rita.
"No names," he said in a low, slightly hoarse voice that sounded as if he'd been screaming for awhile. Combined with the tooth marks in the gag and his general cringing demeanor, Rita was guessing that Martha had already punished him, for getting her in trouble with the magistra. The fact that Martha hadn't bothered to mention this to Rita didn't make Rita think any more highly of her. "Here. Just-- just numbers."
"You don't know the names of any of your charges?"
Jack shook his head.
"Were you instructed by your protectrix to refer to them only by number?"
He nodded.
"Sean's number was 86693."
Recognition dawned in his eyes; he nodded again, guardedly.
"What do you remember about him?"
"Skinny," said Jack, and when she nodded, inviting more, "Weak. Big crier."
"Not very popular?" Rita suggested.
Jack shook his head.
"Was he bullied often?"
Jack nodded.
"Is it the guards' duty to keep that from happening?"
He looked up at her, seemingly puzzled.
"Bullying," Rita clarified. "Assault. Theft of food. Is it part of their job to prevent those things?"
"I don't know," said Jack, after a moment.
"You don't know what the duties are of the men you are supposed to supervise in their duties?"
He shook his head again, more tears springing into his eyes as he obviously braced himself for pain.
There was no need for him to do so. Rita didn't particularly like him, or the adjectives he'd chosen to apply to Sean, but it was hardly his fault he'd been given unclear instructions, and she wasn't going to punish him for the failings of his superiors. She would have cheerfully punished Martha, but that was going to be a more circuitous business, beginning with figuring out where her funding was going (not one single female employee?) and ending, Rita devoutly hoped, in her summary firing. In the meantime, she'd have to get at least one trustworthy woman in here, ostensibly to help Martha out, really to make sure no worse atrocities occurred before Martha's removal. Jack would need to be demoted, and women placed in the position of supervising the male guards. Ideally, she thought, there should be at least one female supervisor for each four or five guards.
"How many guards are there altogether?" she asked Jack, who answered through chattering teeth, "T-- tw-- twenty?"
She put a hand on his back-- his body jerked again, as if it had taken a horrific jolt, though she knew her control hadn't slipped-- and stroked it, impersonally, soothing him the way she would have soothed someone else's panicking horse.
"This isn't primarily your fault," she told him, as the tremors subsided under her hand, and he knelt quietly at last, his head hanging down, his own hands still bound behind his back. "You were given no better orders to obey, no guidance that would have helped you behave as you should have been taught to behave. You've been punished by your protectrix?"
He nodded, slowly.
"You won't be hurt further today," said Rita. "You are suspended from your position, pending a review of your employer's accounts. She'll notify you as to your duties while on suspension."
She reached behind him and severed the ropes at his wrists with a flick of power that didn't touch his skin. Immediately, as if he'd been struggling to do this all along and only the ropes had prevented him, he seized her skirt in both fists and clutched at it like a lifeline, gazing up at her imploringly.
"Mercy," he whispered.
"I said you wouldn't be hurt further."
"She'll release me," he said, and cleared his throat. "From my job, from her protection. She said she would, after you were done with me. I'll be-- unprotected, I'll just be one of the, the men-- please, lady, have mercy, I need-- your protection-- anyone's protection-- please--"
Rita hesitated. Part of her was grimly satisfied with the outcome: the man who hadn't intervened when unprotected men were raped, beaten, and starved in front of his eyes would have the same fate visited on him. But she couldn't conscientiously sentence anyone to that, no matter what he'd sanctioned-- and what about all the other men at the center, guards and inmates alike? Could she consider them safe from further indignities, once she was gone? Could she make them wait as long as it might take to get Martha replaced?
What she needed was another woman to leave here with Martha, not just in the long term, but right now, before Rita herself left. Not Leah-- that would never do, even if Rita herself could spare her. She needed someone strong, firm, decisive, unsentimental, with a gift for organization and a healthy resistance to being fed any kind of line, and who was neither afraid of men nor excessively susceptible to them. Someone Rita could trust implicitly, and right now.
"Damn it," she said out loud, and then, "Stop that-- you're going to tear my skirt. Let go. I need to get to my purse."
As Jack keened quietly to himself on the floor-- though Rita couldn't pity him too much, not after what he'd allowed to happen to Sean-- she pulled out her pocket mirror.
"Emily?" she said, when her sister's curious face had come clear. "Listen, I need a really big favor."
