She stopped in the center of the room and waited. She’d learned that much, at least.Don’t speak until spoken to. Don’t move until directed.
“Close the door,” I said.
She did as she was told.
I stood and came around the table. The moonlight entered through the narrow window at an angle, catching the silver in her hair. I looked at the wall instead.
“Strip.”
A pause. Just a breath’s worth. Then her hands went to the laces of her tunic.
I turned my back while she undressed, not out of modesty, but because I needed a moment to compose the prayer.
Let my eyes be instruments of discernment. Let what I see be only what Drenath requires me to see. No more. Let my hands be Drenath’s hands.
When I turned back, she was standing with her arms at her sides, her chin up, and her eyes fixed on something in the distance in that way she’d developed. It was always as though she was looking at something I couldn’t see. It irritated me.
I began at her hairline, as I always did. And I was systematic as I always was. The Blessed Texts were explicit: the witch’s mark could appear anywhere, and the examiner who rushed was the examiner who failed. I parted her hair in sections. Checked behind her ears. The back of her neck.
She is dirty.
The thought arrived fully formed. Not my voice exactly, but more the voice of discernment, which the Boundless granted to those who sought truth earnestly.
She is filthy with her own depravity. Can’t you smell it on her?
I couldn’t smell anything except the lye I’d given her when she bathed and, beneath that, something faintly like cold water. I moved to her shoulders, where I could see the fading marks from the scourge. They’d healed cleanly, which I noted without feeling. The body’s repair of itself was a constant.
Spread her legs.
That voice was different. It was lower, and it came from somewhere in the dark parts of my mind and moved downward when I didn’t silence it quickly enough.
This time, I silenced it.
“Hold still,” I said, because she’d shifted her weight.
Her jaw tightened, but she held still.
I worked down her arms until I reached her hands. Then I inspected each of her fingers, as well as the webbing between them. A witch’s secondary marks were often small, as simple as a discoloration, an extra fold of skin, a spot that didn’t bleed when pricked. I carried a pin for this purpose in my breast pocket. I hadn’t used it yet. I was saving it for the moment that I found something worth testing.
Touch her.
I was touching her. That was the point. This was examination.
That’s not what I mean, and you know it.
I moved to her torso. I kept my gaze clinical, telling myself her body was architecture and nothing more. Just walls and beams. Nothing more than that.
She’s beautiful. Look at her. All men desire her. You desire her as well.
The anger came fast and clean, which was a mercy because anger was clarifying. I used it to push the other voice down into whatever lightless place it came from, and I held it there.
“Turn,” I said.
She turned. I checked her back, her shoulder blades, her spine, the dimples above her hips. I saw nothing. No mark. Not yet, anyway.
You won’t find it there. You know where it will be.
“Kneel,” I said.