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“What?!” I have to rush to keep up with their steps. “Your brothers attackedme.”
Outside on the steps, the man with the grip on me comes to an abrupt halt and I stumble into his back and almost fall. The sounds of murmurs rippling across a crowd register as I right myself.
My already racing heartrate increases to a wild thump in my chest. Below me, the courtyard is packed with people. What must be the entire village is assembled and silently staring up at us. Somewhere a baby wails pitifully. In the distance, a dog barks.Mother help me, this is to be a public indignity?The pounding in my chest becomes painful.Have I’ve miscalculated?
A throat clearing off to my right is jarring in the eerie quiet. Teo. He’s radiating enough officious smugness to last a lifetime.
“What is this?” My voice is strong despite the quaking behind my ribs.
“This is you paying for your crimes.”
I lift my chin. “By whose authority?”
He hesitates briefly, but forges ahead anyway by turning to the crowd. “People of the Mountain Lion, in accordance with our laws, Amarinata D’heilar will give restitution to the Cyrun family for the death of their son, Carson.”
This sends a much louder ripple through the crowd. It seems that this is as much news to them as it is to me. Teo motions to my captor and I’m dragged down the steps to where two waist-high posts have been driven between the cobbles about nine or ten feet apart, thin ropes dangling from each. The villagers have formed a semi-circle around the spot.
The man roughly turns me, putting my back to the crowd. I feel stupid standing there while he shoves up the long sleeves of my dress and binds my wrists with the ropes, but what else can I do? I’ve made my choice, and now I have to accept the consequences. I’m almost grateful that the ropes are slack until he starts looping them around the tops of the posts to pull them taut. With my arms pulled away from my body to form inverted V’s, the ropes soon begin to bite into my skin.
Are they going to leave me out here like this to suffer? For how long? Hours, days?Panic begins to well in my chest.How long before Luka returns?I’ll freeze to death overnight. If only I was wearing my vest.
Teo comes down the steps and I twist in my bonds to track his progress over my shoulder.
“Restitution is a cornerstone of our society,” he pontificates. “Without it we –”
“Are you really trying to justify this?” I ask loudly, disgust overcoming my fear. “A man tried to rape me. I defended myself. That is the end of it.”
Teo only gives me a haughty lift of his brows as he gestures to someone. Before I can turn to see who it is, they’ve taken a hold of the collar of my dress and a cold blade touches the back of my neck before it slices down through the material of my dress, all the way to my waist.
Lurching against my bonds, I desperately try to face my assailant. “What are you doing?” The frigid air licks at my back when the dress and my shirt both gape open. My gorge rises as helplessness slithers up from my belly.
“Whore!” rings out from the crowd as if inspired by my exposed flesh. That’s followed by, “Go back to where you came from!”
“Well said, my fellow Mountain Lions,” Teo gloats.
“Stop this madness,” yells a voice, a female voice. I think it’s Daysa, but for all my yanking and twisting, I can’t see far enough around. I can still see Teo though, and . . .Is that a whip in his hand?My thighs start to tremble. My fists clench, then jerk open. With the ropes pulled so tight, the blood trapped at my wrists makes my fingers throb painfully, and for a moment, I lose myself to the panic. But as I open and close my hands, I’m reminded of how I’ve been obsessively tracing the mountain lion Trudy drew for me since Luka’s departure. I take a deep breath. I need to stay calm if I’m going to survive this. I can do this. For Luka. For a chance at love, and family, and community. I can do this.
More insults fly around me, but also more support. It heartens me somewhat to hear some women speak out against –
The first strike of the whip comes without warning, painting a line of fire across my shoulder blade and wrenching the air straight from my lungs. Shocked to my core, I can’t scream or cry or thrash. There’s only the pain as my legs threaten to buckle out from under me. Struggling for breath, I hear the snap of the whip after the fact, ringing in my ears like a crescendo.
“Kata, no!”
Kata?
Another snap jangles my nerves, but it doesn’t bring any agony.
“Stop!”
I crane my neck around. Yvette is crouched down by Kata and murmurs in the crowd begin in earnest.
“Get out of the way!” Teo orders. “How can you be so stupid?”
From my periphery, I watch Yvette stand. “No.”
“No?!” Teo turns to Crion. “Get them out of there!”
“No,” comes again. I swing my head in the other direction in time to see Daysa join Yvette and Kata. Noise in the crowd increases.
