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Sem looks at the disciple, and everyone else is looking at me. The silence is killing me. "What is going on? Why are you all looking at me?"
"It seems as if I misunderstood," the disciple says. "The goddesses agree with Sem. He should receive all of your punishment."
I look over at Sem, but his face is unreadable to me in the dim candlelight.
The doctor comes over to me and puts a necklace around my neck. It's long and has a silver medallion on it that sits coldly between my breasts. I don't let go of the prayer candles I'm holding because I don't know what to do.
Out of the corner of my eye, the medallion catches my eye, and I notice that it's blinking with a little green light, on and off, on and off.
"There's two of you," Sem whispers.
"What?"
"That green light is a baby's heartbeat," he says emotionally.
I'm pregnant. I'm not sure how, but then I remember that birth control is only ninety percent effective, and in Greece, we really were testing that limit as I'd never done before. In addition, with the amount of semen he produces every time he orgasms, should I really be surprised? And maybe Alliance sperm is stronger too.
"About sixteen weeks?" I ask Sem, the doctor, or anyone who might know.
"Yes," Sem says. "It is a gift from the goddesses to protect you from my sins and show us mercy.
I look up at the disciple. He looks angry he won't be whipping me today. Then I look over at Sem. "I hope you receive some mercy."
"Nothing can hurt me now," Sem says confidently, but I look at the whips with the cattails that are being exchanged for an even bigger one, and I am skeptical.
The doctor motions for me to remain silent, and I do because I worry I'll make Sem's punishment worse.
Once the candles are all lit again, the doctor says something I assume is ceremonial and joins the men in green with the whips. The man in green that was behind me moves away. No one tells me I can move, though, so I don't.
The man in green behind Sem remains there, and the disciple begins to count out the first lash. "One."
I wince for Sem as the whip and all its cattails hit his muscular grey back and slide across it immediately, causing a red streak.
"Two."
This lash is stronger this time and breaks his skin, and blood starts leaking out of his wounds.
"Three."
More skin is broken. I know tears are running down my face, and I wince every time the whip is cast. I want to look away, but I must watch it as it's the least I can do since Sem must endure it. Sem isn't crying in fact, he's taking it all very well. The candle between his hands is still steady.
"Four, five, six…" It goes on at a steady pace. The man in green continues, and Sem continues to bleed but stays conscious and does not scream out despite the pain he must be feeling. Finally, at twenty-eight lashes, the disciple is satisfied.
I feel ill from what I've witnessed. I try to wipe the tears from my face with my arms because I’m still holding the candle, but it doesn't help. The tears keep coming.
Sem forces out a prayer. His voice raspy, "I thank the goddesses for correcting our behavior and forgiving us. We will forever walk in their light."
I repeat exactly what Sem has said because he said it in English, and I know he did that for me to repeat. Once this is done, the disciple nods to the men in green, take the prayer candles from us that had to be replaced three times during this encounter, and bids us to "Always walk in the goddesses' light."
Once they leave with the disciple, Sem collapses forward on the stone floor in a pool of his own blood, and the doctor rushes over with a medical palmer and immediately starts healing Sem's back.
I touch the side of Sem's face and put my face on the floor next to his. His eyes are closed.
The doctor says something in Alliance, but I don't know what he's said as he refuses to wear a translator.
In a few minutes, Sem's wounds are completely healed, and he's stirring. After a few more minutes, he sits up, and the doctor gives him some water to drink from a ceremonial cup, not unlike the one we used yesterday for our marriage ceremony. Then the doctor helps us both to our feet and then leaves the shrine.
We're alone in the candlelit shrine with the smell of blood in the air and the statues of the deities looking at us.
