Free A Painted Goddess by Victor Gischler Page A

withdraw.”
    “Wait. Withdraw?” Her eyes darted to the Moogari eager to undress her. She didn’t want the Fish Man around watching her bathe, but the idea of being alone with these strange nonpeople was suddenly unsettling.
    Find some courage, okay? This is what you’ve wanted for as long as you can remember .
    “Leave me with them,” she said. “It’s okay.”
    He grinned, turned to leave without another word.
    The Moogari seemed to take this as some sort of signal and went about undressing her again. At least they weren’t rushed or rough about it. She imagined it was what it must be like to be a proper lady with handmaids in attendance.
    Sort of.
    Indeed they were quite polite, folding her clothes and setting them aside, hanging up her belt and weapons near the fireplace. From somewhere, they’d produced a large brass tub and were building a fire under it. Maurizan flashed on a memory, her mother and grandmother describing what it was like to get the Prime. The pride. The excitement.
    But each time it had started with a bath.
    When Maurizan was naked, they helped lower her into the tub. The water was the perfect temperature, and soon she felt her muscles ease. She wondered if maybe this wasn’t half the point. Her skin needed to be perfectly clean for what was to come, yes, but it couldn’t hurt if she were also relaxed. The Moogari began to scrub her with sponges. They were so polite and sexless that she felt no apprehension about this.
    Eventually one of the Moogari offered a hand and helped her from the bath. Others surrounded her with soft towels and dried her. One of them put her red hair up in a bun so it wouldn’t hang down her back. She was escorted to a padded mat and through hand gestures was made to understand she was supposed to kneel.
    She went to her knees.
    Maurizan heard one of the Moogari chanting in his strange tongue, and she glanced to the side, saw him arranging needles and bottles on a small table, a thick leather-bound book open next to him.
    Everything that had been relaxing about the bath vanished now. She remembered more of her mother and grandmother’s stories. The discomfort. The pain . The hot pinpricks down their spines. It was the price one paid for the Prime.
    The Moogari formed a circle around her, hands clasped in front of them, heads bowed reverently, all save the one who came up behind her, still muttering his incantations. When the first needle plunged into her soft skin at the nape of her neck, it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

    At last it was finished.
    Maurizan’s knees were sore, every muscle aching. For a time, she thought it would go on forever, the fire beneath her skin as the Moogari sewed a trail of pain down her spine with the tattooing needle. They all stood back from her now, the one who’d worked the needle motioning for her to stand.
    She tried it and almost failed, legs shaking, her whole body trembling with the strain. Her mother had tried to warn her, but nothing could have prepared the gypsy for the sheer physical toll. And yet . . .
    When she stood, she sensed something.
    Something on the horizon of her consciousness. Something so close. If she could just . . . reach out . . . and . . .
    Maurizan tapped into the spirit.
    Power flooded through her, filling her, lifting her. Perfect awareness threatened to overwhelm her, and yet she could control it. Through sheer willpower, she was the perfect master of herself. Every smell, every sound, every sight. Her mind arranged it and made a perfect picture of the world around her.
    She heard light footfalls behind her, bare feet on the grit of the floor, and could tell from the weight distribution and the rhythm of the movement that it wasn’t one of the Moogari. She turned, knowing it was Kristos.
    Maurizan was aware of her own nudity, and somewhere distant feelings of embarrassment reared. These feelings weren’t useful, though, and she made them go away.
    “You’re tapped in now,