Faith of the Fallen

"Dear Creator, but Nicci's father is a monster," she would complain as she wrung her hands. Some of her friends would murmur their sympathy. "Why must he burden me so! I fear his eternal soul is beyond hope or prayer." The other women would ask in grim agreement.

Her mother's eyes were the same dull brown as a cockroach's back. To Nicci's mind, they were set too close together. Her mouth, too, was narrow, as if fixed is — . place by her perpetual disapproval. While Nicci never really thought of her mother as homely, neither did she consider her beautiful, although her friends regularly reassured her that she most surely was.

Nicci's mother said beauty was a curse to a caring woman and a blessing only to whores.

Puzzled by her mother's displeasure of her father, Nicci had finally asked why had done.

"Nicci," her mother had said, cupping Nicci's small chin that day.

Nicci eagerly awaited her mother's words. "You have beautiful eyes, but you do not yet see with.them. All people are miserable wretches, that is the lot of man. Do you have any idea how it hurts those without all your advantages to see your beautiful face? That, is all you bring to others: insufferable pain. The Creator brought you into the world 1 for no reason but to ease the misery of others, and here you bring only hurt." Ha mother's friends, sipping tea, nodded, whispering to one another their sorrowful b ` firm agreement.

That was when Nicci had first learned that she bore the indelible stain of so shadowy, nameless, unconfessed evil.

Nicci gazed into the rare face looking up at her. Today this girl's dark eyes would see things they could not yet imagine. Those big eyes eagerly watched without seeing. She could not possibly understand what was to come, or why.

What kind of life could she have?

It would be for the best, this way.

The time had come.

CHAPTER 8

Before she could begin, Nicci saw something that ignited her indignation. She whirled to a nearby woman.

"Where is there a washtub?"

Surprised by the question, the woman pointed a trembling finger toward a two story building not far off. "There, Mistress. In the yard behind the pottery shop are laundry tubs where we were washing clothes."

Nicci seized the woman by her throat. "Get me a pair of scissors. Bring them to me there." The woman stared in wide-eyed fright. Nicci shoved her.

"Now! Or would you prefer to die on the spot?"

Nicci yanked free a well-worn, reserve studded strap bunched with several others and secured over Commander Kardeef's shoulder. He made no effort to stop her, but as she gathered up the strap, he seized her upper arm in his powerful grip.

"You had better be planning on drowning this little brat-or maybe cutting off hunks of her hide and then stabbing out her eyes." His breath smelled of onion and ale. He smirked. "In fact, you start in on her, and while she's screaming and begging for her life, I'll begin separating out some young men, or perhaps I'll select some women to be an example. Which would you prefer, this time?"

Nicci turned her glare down at his fingers on her arm. He removed them as he growled a warning. She turned to the girl and whipped the strap twice around her neck to serve as a collar, twisting it into a handle in the back so she could control the girl with it. The girl squeaked in choked surprise.

She had probably never been handled so roughly in her entire life. Nicci forced her ahead, toward the building the woman had pointed out.

Seeing how angry Nicci had suddenly become, no one followed. A woman not far off, undoubtedly the girl's mother, began to cry out in protest, but then fell silent as Kardeef's men turned their attention on her. By then Nicci already had the perplexed girl around the corner.

Out back, drab laundry, deformed and crumpled from its ordeal on the washboard, and now stretched and pinned to lines, twisted in the wind as if struggling to escape. Smoke from the fire pit peeked over the top of the building. The nervous woman waited with a large pair of shears.

Nicci marched the girl up to a tub of water, drove her down on her knees, and shoved her head under the water. While the girl struggled, Nicci snatched the scissors from the woman. Her chore completed, the woman held her apron up over her mouth to muffle her wails as she ran off in tears, not wanting to watch a child being murdered.

Nicci pulled the girl's head up out of the water, and while she sputtered and gasped for air, began clipping her dark, soaking wet hair close to the scalp. When Nicci had finished cutting it off in sodden clumps, she dunked the girl again while leaning over and scooping up a cake of pale yellow soap from the washboard on the ground beside the tub. Nicci hauled the girl's head up and then began scrubbing. The girl screeched, flailing her spindly arms and clawing at the strap around her neck by which Nicci controlled her. Nicci realized she was probably hurting her, but from within the grip of rage, it was only a dim realization.