The Mirrored City by Michael J. Bode Page A

of you. After that, you will be branded and banished from House Ibazz and possibly Baash, if you are not sentenced to death. We will never know what became of you. Shannon will believe you abandoned her. A letter already awaits her when she returns.”
    Lyta fumed. “You are making a mistake.”
    Safina laughed. “I’m correcting one. Enjoy the absolution chambers, child. Perhaps the confessors will learn who exactly in Dessim you’re hiding from.”
    Lyta flung her tea on Safina’s face. “I poisoned your daughter because she was a bitch like her mother!”
    Safina shrieked in agony as the guards grappled Lyta. She closed her eyes and didn’t resist.

    The confessors left Lyta strapped to the chair for hours. In the dank undercroft, the only light came from a sputtering oil lamp set amid dozens of rusty instruments of torture, staged for maximum intimidation. She saw long pointed tools, along with blades and other contraptions for which she could only imagine the purpose. They hadn’t touched her yet. The confessors wanted her to be terrified first.
    All she could think about was Shannon, finding that forged letter. How Lyta wished Shannon’s second sight could view through Lyta’s eyes. She had faith in their love. Shannon wouldn’t be tricked, and even if she was, she would flee to Dessim to find Lyta without a second’s hesitation. Perhaps that was the second part of Safina’s revenge—sending the poor girl to the wild streets of Dessim to be eaten by the wolves that preyed upon desperate pretty girls.
    Lyta knew what she had to do. She just needed to wait for Shannon to get back home.
    The confessor emerged from the hallway outside the room. He wore a featureless golden mask with a mesh slit for his eyes. He was a hulking man with bone pale skin, covered in Patrean tattoos. The confessors, considered soulless, did not receive the sacrament of sun except during the solstices and equinoxes.
    “It is my right to offer prayer at sunset,” Lyta announced.
    “It is,” the confessor intoned. “But you are one hour from reprieve. Now let us begin.”
    The large man paced around the table of instruments and selected a long sharp spike.
    “Please,” Lyta pleaded. “Before you begin, is Shannon upstairs? I must know that she made it home safely.”
    The confessor caressed her hand. “You have lovely fingernails…”
    “Just tell me.” Lyta stared into his eyes. “I will confess all to know she is safe.”
    He grunted and stared hungrily into her eyes through the metal mesh. His eyes were brown. And confused.
    Lyta glanced down at her hand. The long metal tool had been inserted beneath her fingernail, she noted. She didn’t miss the sensation of pain, but in situations like this, it would have been helpful to have an inkling of how she should react.
    Lyta ripped off the leather restraint on her other hand and punched his mask as hard as she could. He flew backward against the table of torture instruments, breaking it to splinters as the metal implements rang loudly against the stone floor. She pulled the long spike from under her fingernail and tossed it into the confessor’s exposed throat.
    The other arm restraint tore easily and she examined her finger. It was already healing. After tearing off the leg cuffs, she walked out of the room. Two Patrean guards blocked her way, so she killed the one on the right by grabbing his head and breaking his neck. Turning, she found the one on the left had buried a scimitar in her gut. She kneed him in the stomach and knocked him back several feet.
    Lyta slid the blade out of her stomach. It was bloodless.
    The blade went into the guard’s guts. He might live if a healer found him in time. The Fodders were just doing their job; she could hardly bear them animosity.
    Striding down the confessor’s hallway to the stairwell, she found two more Patreans stationed there. They drew their blades the second they saw her. Lyta tried to grab the edges of their scimitars with