Free Our Lady of the Islands by Jay Lake, Shannon Page

clearly. His lettuce-green smock and tight canvas pants looked like naval regalia, though if he’d been a serviceman, he clearly wasn’t any longer. His dark eyes held her with terrible intensity.
    “She awakens!” he cried, as Sian’s gaze met his. He bent over her, holding a long bone stripped clean, almost bleached. A thigh bone, maybe — but from what? Not ox or cow; no wild animal so large roamed any of Alizar’s islands.
    “What — who are you?” Sian cringed away from the massive bone, still on her back, only managing a crablike movement of a few inches. Everything hurt, her head worst of all.
    The man straightened up and gazed out at the assembled masses, then looked down again at Sian and said in a quiet voice, “I am the Priest of the Butchered God.”
    The crowd murmured louder — a benediction, a ritual response. Then their noise died back once more into a low chanting growl.
    However ambivalent her own religious convictions, she could not imagine honoring this man with such a title. “Do you have a name?” she asked, wondering at her own temerity. He could strike her again — no doubt he would.
    The man leaned forward; Sian cringed. “I have cast off my secular name. I exist now only to serve the Butchered God.” Again, the answering murmur as the crowd pressed closer.
    Only then did Sian notice they were all men. Where were the women who had been in the prayer line? And their eyes…she recognized their shared expression. It was the look of men who think themselves released from the ordinary rules that bind society. The look of a feral mob.
    “What do you want from me?” she cried. “Release me. I mean you no harm.”
    “We mean you no harm either, lady, though we must harm you anyway, I fear.” The priest touched the long bone to her face. His cheeks and forehead were beaded with sweat and his eyes were shot with blooded veins. He had the air of a madman, and all these mad people followed him. Where was Pino? He would never have … but then, what had he done?
    Sian could smell her own fear even as she smelled the violent intent of the men around her. Still she struggled to keep her strength of will, pushing herself up to a seated position, her elbows scraping against the rough stones of the street. “Then release me at once.”
    “You are Domina Kattë, are you not?” asked the would-be priest. “Cousin to the Stirpes Alkattha?”
    She grew even more frightened as she considered the meaning of this. Had she been attacked because of her distant relation to the ruling family? “Why do you ask?”
    “Answer me, woman!” From ‘lady’ to ‘woman’ in the twitch of an eye. The crowd pressed a step closer. One man near her feet rested a hand at his belt as he looked her up and down.
    “I am cousin to the Alkatthas, yes.” She kept her voice strong, though it threatened to break. Would they rape a member of the ruling family?
    The priest loomed over her. The low torchlight flickering off the nearby buildings carved eerie lines in his young face, gone suddenly sad. “Then you are fit to carry the god’s message to those who rule.”
    Sian breathed a sigh. They wouldn’t rape a messenger they were sending to the rulers, surely. As she drew breath to respond, he smacked her hard in the face with the bone.
    Reeling, Sian fell back against the hard stones, her head bouncing on the same spot that had been struck before. Sick and dizzy with the pain, she cringed and curled up, trying to protect her belly as her mouth filled with blood.
    The priest stood over her, his face grim. “It is a hard passage, lady. I am … sorry, but you will understand.” He raised the bone and dealt her another blow, on her shoulder.
    Sian screamed and rolled over, but the priest kept beating her, now on her arms and back. Understand what? She kicked out toward his feet, but he merely struck her ankles and knees, forcing her to draw them back, protecting her arthritic joints. She tried to scrabble to her