Page 180 of Insolence
She passes me her handiwork:
I found notes.So manynotes… D runs experiments down there. As soon as she started as Prioress. Keptbusyher first few years in the temple.
“Fuck,” I say softly. Hand it back.
She adds more:
They go mad.
Her attention snaps to me. She waits, eyebrows raised.
“Whogoes mad?”
She adds the next word so hastily she has to squeeze in one more for context, inserting it between two others:
They go mad. starved Demuns.
My mind barely latches onto what she’s saying before she’s off to the races writing and underlining again. She doesn’t stop. The next revelations pour from her pen as if she’s been yearning to spill them for a century:
That sick bitchexperimentedon them.For years. Final stages they rip own hair out. Tear fingernails off. Gouge out eyes. MONSTROUS.
“Oh, Lydia.” My gaze rises to hers. Barely tamping down the nausea souring the back of my tongue, I murmur, “I’m so sorry you had to discover all of that.”
What makes it worse is not having anybody to discuss it with. Digest it properly.
Instead the information has festered and become a wound she can’t resist picking during her idle moments—even when she doesn’t want to. I’m well familiar with that level of isolation.
Done putting down her next two sentences, she shoots me a look. Taps the fountain pen’s nib against the thick paper above the wordchaosuntil ink spatters and drips.
Horrified, I gape at the words. My throat is so dry it sticks to itself.
Awful things happen down there. Her twisted “chaos evaluations” are ongoing!
“‘Chaos evaluations,’ for fuck’s sake,” I finally mutter, swallowing past my growing dread.Leave it to her to give her little torture sessions a punchy name. “Deirdre’s flat-out insane. Fucking around withchaosis beyond moronic.”
Lydia’s attention is back on writing.
The handmaidens. Most of them turn out demuns. Once 18 hits, they’re taken down and caged. Allowed to feed first time. Induce Anchoring.
Again, the only thing I can do is gawk, posture going slack. Wishing I didn’t know this shit.
No handmaidens have turned eighteen since I’ve been here. I can’t remember by how much, but Enid’s damn close.
After that kept far away from any source of life force. Starved. she makes them suffer formonthsbefore letting them feed again. Records everything they do to themselves.
More ink droplets land on the paper with how furiously she’s cramming in the last bits near the bottom of the sheet. I stare at her hand dragging through and smearing, my stomach folding in on itself. As much of a sick cunt as Deirdre is, I had noideashe was capable of such atrocities.
It’s an effort to force my next questions past the shock and revulsion. “So you’re saying it’s onlyafterAnchoring that a starving demun will become destructive? Start hurting herself if she can’t feed?”
She nods, still writing. Scratches out a wrong word with hasty slashes of her pen. Plugs on ahead. I can barely make out the last of it through the smeared ink at the bottom of the sheet:
Theothershumans are sold off by 19. Menial labor
A chill runs through me, starting at the top of my head. I already knew about the last part and sincerely wish I didn’t. I’ve always assumed she shoved spheres into their hands before getting rid of them. But the rest of it?
Goddess. It’s a nightmare I never imagined. “And I suppose she keeps the demuns here. Subjects them to the ritual after these so-calledevaluationsof hers?” Mages too, certainly, if I know anything about Deirdre.
Lydia’s sharp huff is clear:What do you think?
