Page 2 of The Devil's Viking

She heard distant footsteps now and she automatically stiffened and screwed her closed-up eyes tight enough so she saw colors behind her eyelids, then forced herself to relax again. She was pretty sure that the Guardian wouldn’t do a bed-check –because the milk should have taken full effect on all of us by now, so what is there to check?– but you never really knew. Some of these jerks were all puffed-up on their own power and a roomful of drugged, helpless women lying there prone, open to a man’s gaze and touch, was a tempting thing. Iris knew that: she knew it for a fact.

Thatknowledge was why she was lying there, counting seconds and heartbeats, planning to flee the only home that she’d known for the past year. She was going to escape into the early-February night in a nightgown and winter boots – dash straight into the abyss with nothing but hope and a bit of cash that she had stolen in the course of her Office duties and then hidden behind some books.

Truthfully, though,thatknowledge about the men was onlyonesmall thing about the Garden of Divine Light that had led her to this night. It was weird to think that sexual assault was a minor motivation for her upping and going, but that was a fact.

The Garden hid muchworsethings than that; it hid many of them.

So many.

Iris heard footsteps enter the women’s room and she almost shuddered when she heard the man’s voice: it was Guardian Jonah and he was the one that she feared and detested the most. He was a short, ugly, brutish creature with wrecked teeth and deep pits in his cheeks from acne. He gloried in being an absolute pig, knowing full well that one of the woman-servants would have to go and clean his vile mess; he’d stand there and watch the woman scrub the floor or scrub the stains out of his underwear or scrub his toilet, grinning the whole time.

He treated the women like they weren’t human and that was another thing that Irisknew: she and her eleven sisters werelessthan human for the men. And for Gideon, she and her sisters were only human in the sense that they were warm bodies made of flesh and blood, though tainted by sin by virtue of being female – and Gideon made sure that they all carried the reminder of that sin on their flesh. After all, he told them, they were weak vessels, weak-minded, weak in body and spirit. They were just weak, warm bodies to be used for his pleasure and bent to his will… byanymeans necessary. Violence. Threats. Punishments. Torture. Starvation. Solitary confinement.

Murder.

And of course nightly glasses of sweet, warm vanilla milk with crushed-up drugs, presented as something comforting and cozy, but which were yet another tool to guarantee compliance. The milk kept the women quiet and asleep through the night and allowed the twelve Guardians to relax and take a break from anything except what they wanted to do – unconscious women don’t require guarding, after all. It wasthisarrogant male dedication to laziness and selfish fun that was going to work in Iris’ favor.

As she listened to Violet drink her milk and say goodnight to Guardian Jonah before changing into her nightgown, Iris lay quiet and still, reliving the night that she realized that she’d been drugged every bedtime for six months. It was the night that had changed everything.

Every woman-servant had a series of tasks that changed day-to-day depending on need, but they did have a few dedicated ones, things just for them alone. Iris’ last task of the day was to prepare the milk before bed. She’d been instructed over and over to warm the milk, add vanilla, and then add a heaping tablespoon of the white powder in the sugar container. Itwassugar, for sure, but what Iris now knew was that it was mixed with some kind of sleeping pill all crushed up – and she’d been stirring it into her Garden sisters’ drinks. Theirs and her own.

Iris had never liked sugar, never liked sweet stuff, not even as a kid. She’d added the sugar to her own milk every night because she’d been told to, until the one night that she just didn’t. To this exact second that she lay in her bed waiting for Violet to fall under the drug’s effects, Iris remained awed by this tiny act of rebellion, this decision that had been motivated by nothing more than a sense ofI don’t want the goddamn sugar.

She’d been exhausted from an eighteen-hour day of washing laundry by hand and cooking and office work, and had been drained from the night before because it had been her turn to be called to Gideon’s room for the Ritual, and she’d been longing to just get to bed and fall into mindless, blissful sleep.

She’d been fed up and done, and unlike all the other long, brutal days when she’d felt this way, she hadn’t wrestled the negative thoughts and emotions into submission. That night, Iris had allowed her resentment to build and her anger to grow – and she’d decided that shejust didn’t want the goddamn sugar.

At the time, she had thought it a small thing, a private revolution of one. A risk if she was caught breaking one of Gideon’s approximately nine thousand iron-clad rules, to be sure, but in the end it was mostly just a childish little temper tantrum, just something to give her a brief respite and a giggle to herself at the end of yet another day when she’d had no reason to smile. She’d regretted going to the Garden for months and months anyway, ever since she’d been sent to the basement, and that night she’d just snapped at last.

It was a small thing…but it ended up being the thing that changed everything.

Thatchange had led her to not putting sugar in her milkthe next night, and the night after that, and on and on – all of which had then led her tothisnight.

It had taken six months of not stirring the drug-laced sugar into her milk, six months of practicing at night to unlock doors with a hairpin while her sisters slumbered, six months of covertly finding every blind spot between her dorm room and the world outside. Six months of refusing to put the half-teaspoon of sugar in her mandated morning tea as well – and suddenly she saw everything soclearly. The cloudy fog was gone, lifted and melted away, and Iris felt like herself for the first time since walking through the gates of the Garden. She also understood that she had spenta yearbeing drugged into obedience and subservience, day and night.

With her newfound clarity, she had spent six months sneaking around the compound observing the men’s routines and schedules, all while preparing tea for the others and cooking and cleaning and giving none of her furious thoughts away. She had suffered through the drug withdrawal on her own, running overthatold familiar battleground with a grim, weary acceptance and faith that itwouldget better… and after five shaky, shaking days, it did. Just like the last time.

The morning dose of ‘sugar’ was much smaller than the evening one, and she knew that it was to keep the women on their feet and functional enough during the day to perform their chores and duties, but hazy enough to be malleable and docile. Their thoughts were jumbled and slowed downjustenough to keep them from thinking too much – and made them far more receptive to Gideon’s bullshit sermons and pronouncements. All of this made her solitary rebellion against his orders all that more astonishing, made her private defiance nothing short of miraculous.

So for six months Iris had carefully watched her sisters and seen their dreamy, zombie-like calm as they floated around doing their chores without protest or even a flicker of independent thought and Iris had copied them perfectly. Outside, she was a silent, dutiful woman-servant; inside, she was scheming feverishly and wishing death on every man who crossed her path.

It had been an entire half-year of stealing money and praying that nobody noticed, a half-year of planning this night, of running over it in her head again and again while pretending to be lying in a drugged stupor in her bed, or washing dishes in a mock drug-trance. She’d rehearsed her escape so many times now, it felt like she’d done it a thousand times.

She hadn’t, though. Tonight was the first time.

And the last, if they catch you.

Violet’s breathing was even and deep now, and Iris knew that she had to go. Her eyes still closed, she ran over her route one last time, checking and double-checking that she remembered everything.

She opened her eyes and got to her feet.

Then she sat down on the edge of her bed, suddenly intensely, overwhelmingly afraid.

It would be easy –so so easy– to stay here in the Garden, she knew. She could start drinking the morning tea and the warm bedtime milk again and fall back into the haze, slip under the consciousness of the realities of life, float away into the world of having no power and never having to make any decisions. She had her tasks, her duties, her routines. It was all so familiarhereand that made it safe in ways that the world outtherewas not.

She hadno ideawho or what was waiting outside that fence – what if that thing or person wasworsethan what she had and knew in here? It’s not as if her lifebeforea year ago had been so wonderful; it’s not like she had anyone out there waiting with bated breath for her return. At least in this ward, she had her sisters and their absolute love for her. She loved them too and she was worried about what would happen if she left.

She should stay for them… for Daisy, Zinnia, Rose, Dahlia, Camilla, Tulip, Cassia. For all eleven ofthem.

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