The school was a mix of familiar and unfamiliar to Hepsa. It was clear in its architecture that it had been based on the same designs as the Church's other schools across the Cluster. Like the temple, whole dragonbones were built into the walls and acted as support structures. Smaller fragments of bone were stacked and layered between ribs, forming interlocking patterns that were reinforced with mortar and dragonbone concrete.
But the layout had been greatly modified to suit the city’s packed design. It sprawled upward, rather than outward, with white stairs spiralling six floors up. Hepsa wished modesty had been taken into account for the school’s construction as she and Itham ascended all six to the Watchful Sister’s office.
Before they entered, Pimala paused and gestured for Itham to take a seat in the hall and wait. Without question, he nodded and sat as the Sister brought her inside.
Hepsa thought to ask why her father had to wait. Every other time he had enrolled her into school had been a simple affair. The Sisters would ask questions about her education and health, and then send them on their way. But Pimala was quick and ushered her in before she could mouth the words.
“Why must my father wait outside?” she finally asked when the Watchful Sister had already taken her seat at her desk. Hepsa took a quick glance around the room instinctively, like a captured animal searching for a means to escape its cage.
There was just a small window, flanked by two heavy-looking bookshelves, in an otherwise grey and featureless room.
“Your age,” the Sister said, “you are fifteen, not a girl anymore. When two women speak it is best that a man isn’t around. Sit.” She motioned for the chair on the other side of her desk. Hepsa sat.
Pimala began by producing a true rarity, something Hepsa wouldn’t have known existed if Devad had not told her of how it was used to help navigators on especially arduous expeditions. A dragon brain.
The original specimen must have been a small dragon, but even still, it barely fit into a jar of preserving fluid that was thrice the size of Hepsa’s head. Copper wires projected from the lid onto the brain, so that when the Sister completed the circuit with a tap of a copper needle, small jolts shot into the organ, preserving information as memory.
“I did not catch your name,” she said.
“Hepsa.”
The Sister paused her needle stroke for a moment and then looked up, her piercing green eyes almost seeming to glow with the sunlight through the window. “Family name?”
“Oh, uh,” Hepsa stammered and fidgeted in her seat. “I don’t know. My father’s an orphan. All he knows is that a group of sailors left him at an orphanage.”
“Mother’s family?”
“I don’t know my mother,” she said. “Neither does my father.”
Despite the veil, Hepsa could tell she was looking at her with a raised brow, waiting for a further explanation.
“He says he’s known a few too many women to be sure of one, although he’s absolutely certain we’re blood.” Hepsa held out her arm. “He says I couldn’t have gotten this tone from my mother.”
The fabric over the Sister’s brow wrinkled as she punctuated her notes with a great deal more pressure.
“And where and when did you last attend school?”
“Ser Dugallow’s Academy for Children,” Hepsa answered comfortably. “Little more than five decades ago.”
“You spent fifty years in the Dragon’s Sleep?” Pimala asked, though it sounded more like a statement. Hepsa nodded. “Then you’ll schedule a health inspection with one of our nurses. Prolonged use of the Sleep can damage the body. But before that, there are more pressing questions. Beginning with your father.”
“What?” Hepsa’s head spun briefly to the door. “Why? I thought this was about my enrollment.”
“Your father brought you onto his ship, though you could have stayed in the care of your school and the Church. Why?”
“For work, I suppose?” Hepsa slowly shook her head, trying to understand the question. “It’s a fifty-year journey. We’d never see each other again if he had left me behind.” She found that her answer flowed easily off her tongue, most likely because it wasn’t a total lie. If her father had left without her, most likely she would have been imprisoned or executed for apostasy.
“During your sailing, were you ever known by your father, or any of the men of the crew?”
Hepsa blinked. “What kind of question is that? Of course my father knows me, he’s my father. And the crew was like my family as well.”
The Watchful Sister rapped her quill against the jaw, and Hepsa knew she had answered wrongly, somehow.
“I meant, ‘Did they know you intimately?’”
The question lingered for a second in Hepsa’s mind before it dawned on her what the Sister was asking. Immediately she recoiled, jumping out of her chair.
“No! Of course not!” she raised her voice. “How is that even something you’d think to ask?”
Pimala simply raised a hand, deflecting her anger, and pointed to the chair for her to sit down. “It is dangerous to leave sailors unchecked. Their kind are often the most likely to be led astray by impiety. The distance between stars is great, and there are no churches or temples in space.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Thankfully, Hepsa said in her head, biting her tongue to keep the words from coming out.
“Incestuous relations and acts of sodomy are always a risk aboard such ships, and we must be ever vigilant against them.”
“My father and his crew were nothing like the men you speak of,” Hepsa repeated again, calmer now though her tone was no less firm. The Watchful Sister nodded. She sat back down, glaring at Pimala now and frustrated that she could not see the woman’s face to know what thoughts she was thinking.
“And what of you?” Hepsa noticed the Sister’s eyes flicker down to her legs. “Have you ever known a man intimately? A woman?”
Hepsa ground her teeth, but quickly gave an answer before the Sister could grow suspicious. “No,” was all she could muster without raising her voice.
The woman nodded. “Then you will not protest an inspection to verify all you have said?”
Suddenly, Hepsa felt the rage and blood drain from her face. “How do you plan to do that?” she asked, hoping the answer would not be what she feared. It was.
“A nurse can perform the inspection if you prefer, but it would be quicker if I did it now. There’s no need for worry, all Sisters are trained in healing and medicine.”
“You’re going to check my hymen? Here and now?” Hepsa could not help but stare at the window, wondering if she could survive a six-story fall.
Pimala nodded. “I can verify whether your virtue has been spoiled.”
Spoiled? The Sister spoke of her as if she was a piece of fruit. Hepsa felt her privacy was being violated just by being asked to prove herself. Her virtue was intact, but even if it wasn’t, whose business was it but hers?
It made it all the worst that she knew she was in no position to argue. “Nurse,” Hepsa said quickly. “I want a nurse to do it.”
The Watchful Sister nodded, taking note of her decision by prodding the dragon brain.
Despite Hepsa’s outburst, the Sister continued the questioning calmly, almost emotionlessly. All that remained were questions about her life, upbringing, and general knowledge of the Star Scripture. Finally, Pimala used a measuring stick and quickly noted Hepsa’s height, waist width, and bust before recording them on a separate parchment. An order form for a set of school clothes.
When it came time for her father to sign for her enrollment, and verify that he could cover the cost of books and materials, the brain that had been recording the Sister’s every needle stroke was attached by a wire to a printing apparatus beneath the desk. A few dozen moving types could be heard as the brain controlled it, stamping out a copy of Hepsa’s enrollment forms.
“That was a little different,” her father said when they were back out on the street again. Families had dispersed from the temple now, joining their friends for a heavy brunch in each other’s homes. “Did it go well?”
“Worse than expected,” Hepsa said honestly, though she hesitated to tell him why. “She asked some questions I didn’t expect.”
“Well, dressed as you are, one can understand why a Watchful Sister might be apprehensive.” He put his arm around her. “I know it seems like a prison, going back again. But give it one year, you’ll know enough to be more than just a sailor.”
“We’re not on a remote planet anymore,” Hepsa said. “The Church is everywhere in the city, which means Inquestors aren’t too far either.”
“The Church has thousands to look after,” he said, rubbing her shoulder to assure her. “Just go to class, listen to the Sisters, and get through it without drawing attention. Do all that, and no one will ever find you.”
#
“Ah-ha! Found you!”
Hepsa pulled the book Pimala requested from its shelf. Gnosic Draconis, or simply “Dragon Knowledge.” Yet another chore.
Since the day Hepsa joined her class—oldest of the students by two years, three if she counted her real age—the Watchful Sister had proved especially watchful of her. Constantly stopping and restarting her schooling had put her back longer than just the months she had missed. She was out of practice, and found it difficult to focus on the lectoress for more than a few minutes at a time. For a girl her age, that was simply inexcusable to Pimala, and for every lesson given in class, Hepsa received two more from the Watchful Sister herself.
She had next to no time to visit the docks. In the month that had passed, only once did she have a day to take odd jobs from sailors. Pimala made no effort to hide her plan, either. The Watchful Sister insisted that more theological study would shield her from the “temptations of a sailor’s life.”
Outside, she heard the scream of a girl losing in a game of dragon catch. She watched the game through the library’s window, a variation of tag or hide-and-seek that usually included local rules set by the children. The ones hiding or running were star dragons, while the hunters were—well, that part was self-explanatory. The goal was to bring all the dragons into a chalk circle drawn on the ground. The ship.
The boy who had caught the girl noticed Hepsa and waved her over to play with them. But she turned away. For one thing, she was only a few months shy of seventeen. For another, playing would only remind her more of the Odessa.
“Bring it here,” Pimala said the moment Hepsa entered her office. “Yes, this is the one.” The Sister tapped her dragon brain on its jar, her copper pin striking small jolts through the preserving fluid. “Do you know where the Censortorium is?”
Hepsa nodded her head. “In the back of the temple.”
“Good. You’ll need to take this one there once I’m done.”
The book suddenly gripped Hepsa’s attention. The Censortorium was a special library, built to store books and writings that had been deemed “irreconcilable” for the populace. More often than not, it meant the text contracted the Star Scripture in some way.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does. Knowledge of the star dragons is the foundation of civilization across the Cluster. Without it, ships could never sail the stars. Books like this one are integral for sailors and dragon hunters.”
Pimala narrowed her eyes.“It was written by apostate scholars,” she answered calmly. “We kept it in use because they merely recorded their observations of star dragons, observations which have become outdated in light of a new work.”
Pimala pointed her needle to her personal bookshelf where Hepsa noticed a row of newly printed books.
“The Dissections of Celestial Bodies,” she said, “has written a better harmony between the corporeal observations and Scripture, providing a better understanding of both.”
“Why keep the old text at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to shred it?”
“Many copies have been,” she answered and tapped the leather cover of the book, “but not this one. The Inquest must keep copies of apostate works to better understand and identify their kind. So be careful walking to the temple, it’s an honour for our school to donate one of the remaining copies.”
Pimala connected the brain to the movable type and produced a card for Hepsa with the subject, authors, and library shelf number.
She took it, as well as the banned book. “Should I come back when I’m finished?”
“No, this will be all,” the Sister said.
Hepsa nodded and took her leave for the Censortorium.