Chapter Twenty-Six – Scribe # 8

After delivering the sedative that would allow Oana to separate her soul from her body, Danka returned to the safe-house, changed into a workers’ outfit, and left Novo Sokukt Tok. She returned to the farmhouse, packed her bucket, and went to sleep. She’d have to wait for Ernockt to return from work before departing. He had promised to help her leave the area, but he had to stay at his desk in the city councilmen’s building until sunset. When Ernockt returned, he handed the stolen trial transcripts to Danka. She could look them over if she wanted, but after reading them she was to throw the papers into the stove. The transcripts were full of mistakes. When Danka pointed that out, her host responded:

“The scribe for the city guards is a total idiot. If you told him that you saw a flock of geese walking along a path, he’d put down it was ducks or chickens. So, after you’re done reading, you can burn this and it won’t trouble your conscience. I just figured you’d want to see it first.”

After a few minutes, Danka opened the door of the stove and pushed in the report. She turned to her host.

“Now what? You said you’d help me leave.”

“Yes, that’s what I said. But I can’t go with you. I have to go back to work tomorrow and we shouldn’t be seen together. I’ve brought a donkey so you don’t have to walk. I’ll give you some letters so you can pursue your Path in Life in Rika Chorna. We need another scribe to follow events there anyway, and we’re going to see if we can find a position for you with the Vice-Duke or the city council.”

“So you expect me to work as a scribe and collect information for you?”

“Yes.”

“That, really, wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Maybe it wasn’t. But we did help you with your revenge against Oana, didn’t we? I risked my own position in this town so you could fulfill your final orders from Defender Dalibora. I hosted you for over a month and spent my own money buying everything you needed. I do expect you to repay me. I don’t want any silver, and I wouldn’t accept it, even if you offered. What I need from you, and expect from you, is your assistance.”

“And you expect me to ride to Rika Chorna, by myself, with letters addressed to strangers, and assume nothing will happen to me along the way.”

“Nothing will happen to you, because you’ll be wearing your nun outfit. A nun outfit is the same in the Vice-Duchy as a collar would be in the western valley. People here don’t bother nuns.”

“A True Believers’ nun? You expect me to travel disguised as a True Believers’ nun?”

“And what’s so surprising about that? You’ve walked all over the western valley wearing nothing but your collar. In the eastern valley, the only way a woman can safely move about alone is to be dressed as a nun. Same goal, different outfit.”

Danka reluctantly put on the nun’s dress. It was unbelievably hot and cumbersome. However, outside it would protect her against the cold more than almost anything else she could wear. Ernockt handed her a prayer book and protocol manual so she could learn to act like a real nun. Among other restrictions, whenever a nun was moving around and not carrying anything, she had to keep her hands together in prayer. Also, she was not allowed to look at the face of any man. She cringed at the ridiculous protocol, but realized the rules would help keep her real identity a secret, assuming she could remember to follow them.

Danka was not looking forward to the trip, because she had never traveled in November. She had spent plenty of time outside in various places over the winter, but never actually journeyed to a new destination. However, her traveling conditions certainly could be worse. She’d have a donkey to ride on and carry her belongings, and the heavy nun habit, consisting of an under-dress, public dress, and winter cape would protect her against the cold.

Danka left the following morning as soon as there was a hint of light in the pre-dawn sky. The temperature had gone below freezing the night before, making the ground solid and covering the landscape with a layer of frost. She traveled along the main road, which, combined with the fact she was riding, sped up her trip considerably. She had to remember not to look back at any men who were looking at her. Occasionally a pair or group of thuggish-looking men approached her, but as soon as they saw she was wearing a nun’s dress, they moved on. The rules for overnight stays were similar for a nun in the Vice-Duchy as they were for a penitent in the western valley. The nun approached a church of her choosing, knelt until a Clergy member approached her, and was given a meal and a place to sleep. The only disadvantage of the arrangement was having to sing and pray with any other women who happened to be in the church at that time. Danka was hard-pressed to learn enough True Believers’ hymns to avoid raising suspicions.

She spent a week traveling towards Novo Sumy Ris. When the town came into sight, she was tempted to go in and return to the church, but decided against taking that risk. She took a road bypassing the town and headed east towards her destination, the city of Rika Chorna.

Danka arrived just in time. As she entered Rika Chorna, snow began falling. It was the beginning of the winter’s first real snowstorm, and it would be particularly severe, dropping knee-deep snow onto the central part of the Vice Duchy. She knew from experience that towns closer to the foothills, such as Novo Sumy Ris and Novo Sokukt Tok, along with the hilly roads that connected them, would receive even deeper snow. So, that was it for the year as far as traveling or trading were concerned. The roads were blocked and only the most determined or fool-hardy would venture out from wherever they happened to be when the first snow came down.

Rika Chorna, given its name for the same reason the province carried that name, was the second-largest city in the Duchy with more than 40,000 people living there. It also was the seat of the region’s ruler, Vice-Duke Petroickt. Like Novo Sumy Ris, the regional capitol boasted a large church that was an exact replica of the cathedral in the original Sumy Ris. Danka recognized replicas of other old buildings from the former capitol, plus copies of less fortunate ancient buildings that had since been torn down by the Ottomans over the past two centuries. She shook her head, still wondering why, after 250 years, people were so obsessed with the old southern capitol. The Grand Duke had nearly suffered a disastrous defeat because of his desire for Sumy Ris. For the exact same reason, the Defenders did suffer a disastrous defeat. Out of three cities in the Vice-Duchy she had visited so far, Danka had seen replicas of the Sumy Ris cathedral in two of them. The replicas of the structures in the lost southern capitol surrounded the church, but the rest of the city had standard European architecture and reminded Danka of her hometown Rika Heckt-nemat. There was no city wall around Rika Chorna, nor around any other town in the Vice-Duchy.

Next to the church was the governor’s palace, which was by far the most significant building in the city. It was larger and more ostentatious than the Grand Duke’s castle. Unlike the castle, which was built first as a defensive structure, the palace did not have high walls and clearly was not meant to serve any military purpose. It was built solely as a seat of government and a luxury residence. Gardens surrounded it and there was a large courtyard containing a stone bathing area for summer swimming.

Danka examined her letters and found a name and house description for her contact. She led the donkey to a two-story residence that was behind the governor’s palace. A woman in a merchants’ guild dress answered the door and asked the “nun” where she had come from.

“From a farmhouse, right outside Novo Sokukt Tok”

“Very well, sister. You may enter.”

The residence was a safe-house belonging to Ernockt’s intelligence-gathering network. It had a basement with a secret passageway leading to another safe-house on the same block, so it was easy for anyone entering one residence to exit the other and evade surveillance. Inside the house there were two other “nuns” and a couple of older men dressed in traders’ outfits. Outside the residence, the “nuns” couldn’t talk to the men, but inside the protocol was more typical of the western valley. The men were in charge, but the women could speak freely to them and offer their opinions and advice. One of the men went out through the other house to deal with the donkey. He brought in Danka’s bucket and then took the animal to a stable outside town. Meanwhile, one of the women, who introduced herself as Sister Zanktia, told Danka to bathe and issued her a clean nun’s outfit. Danka drew a frustrated breath when she saw the dress. Apparently she would remain a “nun”. So, the disguise was not just for traveling.

While eating dinner, the two “merchants” and the two “nuns” questioned Danka about her general knowledge of the world and the Duchy. They were impressed by what she knew and all the places she had visited. They asked her to provide writing samples and practice taking dictation, then show them what she knew about mathematics and using the abacus. They told her to sing and pray to see what her voice sounded like. Like everyone else, her hosts were bewildered by the contrast between Danka’s lower-class accent and her expansive knowledge of academic and intellectual subjects. In spite of a decade of wandering and everything that had happened to her, Danka was never able to change her intonation and the way she pronounced her words. One of the men commented:

“It’s fortunate nuns don’t talk much. Listening to your voice is not at all pleasant.”

Danka came very close to tearing off her nun outfit and storming out. Dressing up as a True Believers’ nun was absolutely the last disguise she wanted to wear, and now, on top of everything else, that idiot had the nerve to insult her speech. However, she had long since learned to never let her temper get the best of her. It was heavily snowing outside, her hosts had taken back their donkey, she was in a strange city with no money, and she did need to return the favor Ernockt had done for her. So, she had to hold her tongue, at least for the moment.

Danka’s hosts gave her the chance to sleep and did not force her to go back out in the snowstorm. She slept alone in a bed with heavy curtains surrounding it and didn’t wake up until it was already light outside. The room was bitterly cold, so she was torn between wanting to stay under the blankets and being forced to get up and use the chamber pot, thus alerting the others she was awake. She was able to resist her bladder for a few minutes, giving herself time to think about her situation and how best to deal with it. She began to wonder if Ernockt really was the one who wanted her to go to Rika Chorna. Was it possible he sent her because he was acting under orders from the Prophets in the Great Temple? As for his group of conspirators, she didn’t know anything apart from what he had told her. They could be very powerful or not powerful at all. For the moment it would be better to assume the former and that she had no hope of leaving Rika Chorna without their permission.

As soon as Danka finished a late breakfast, Zanktia took her to the main church to show her around and introduce her as a new nun to the Clergy. She had to endure constant whispered reminders of how she should behave as a nun and the complicated prayer protocol she needed to use inside a True Believers’ place of worship. She would have to spend the rest of the month learning hymns and Latin phrases, when to cross herself (which seemed to be continuously), and the rituals surrounding faction’s weird obsession with the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. The True Believers seemed to really be worked up about that execution.

The True Believers in the Vice-Duchy were even more removed from Danubian traditions than their counterparts in the western valley. One example was the difference between the universal acceptance of collars for Public Penance by both the Old Believers and the True Believers in the west, and the rejection of collared penance in the east. Another example was celibacy. In the western valley the True Believers “encouraged” their clergy members to be celibate, but the rule could not really be enforced. In the east, the priests had to be celibate. Another example was the priests’ focus on the deities themselves. In the west doctrine focused on the Lord-Creator and his enemy Beelzebub the Destroyer. In the east there was much more emphasis on praying to the Virgin Mother and the executed son.

Celibate nuns did not exist at all in the west. In the east there was the convent in Novo Sokukt Tok and multiple schools located in various cities. During her stay in Novo Sokukt Tok, Danka had learned that for any girl whose parents were not willing to pay for a private tutor, the only way to become literate was to seek education through the True Believers. The True Believer nuns ran several schools for girls in the Vice-Duchy, but they “strongly encouraged” any girl entering their schools to become a nun. That “encouragement” became a formal requirement if the girl wanted to learn anything more apart from basic literacy. In the western valley, most guilds included teaching their members’ daughters how to read and write as part of their services. The Old Believers ran schools for non-guild children and taught boys and girls alike, although the classes were separated by sex. So, in the western valley most women had some knowledge of reading and writing, while in the Vice-Duchy most women were completely illiterate.

Having to learn the protocol for a nun made Danka think about her upbringing in Rika Heckt-nemat. The parish in her hometown was controlled by the True Believers, or at least it was in 1750, the year she left. Thus, she already was vaguely familiar the main points of the True Believers’ doctrine. Her family didn’t pay much attention to the Lord-Creator or the executed son, but they frequently prayed to the Virgin Mother for favors such as making their chickens lay eggs or making their vegetable garden grow. The town’s finer residents dismissed the Siluckts and their neighbors as worthless illiterates, so they didn’t bother taking the time to make the laborers understand the more complicated doctrine coming out of the Christian Bible.

As Danka looked at all the Virgin Mother statues displayed around the church in Rika Chorna, her thoughts drifted to Lilith. In her mind the two deities, the Virgin Mother and Lilith, were both foreign goddesses. The goddess who actually had character and did things and fought back when the Lord-Creator mistreated her was a subject of her admiration. The goddess who did nothing apart from having a kid, without even bothering to have sex like a normal human being, was a subject of her derision. As for the Son of Man and execution that was the focus of the entire True Believers’ religion, Danka thought: so what? People are executed all the time. Why was being crucified in Jerusalem any worse than hanging on an impalement hook in the Kingdom of the Moon? Why was one man’s execution more important than another’s? Of course, she knew the answers to most of those questions, having read the Christian Bible. But those answers made no sense to someone who was not, and never would be, a Christian. She considered herself a Follower of the Ancients, and if she was the last Follower in the entire Realm of the Living, then so be it. Zanktia told her they understood her distaste for the True Believer’s doctrines and practices. Her hosts reminded her that their mission was to undermine the True Believers by collecting information and providing it to the Grand Duke and the Prophets in Danubikt Moskt.

Danka responded that she’d do whatever she could to undermine the True Believers, because her hatred of their doctrine and beliefs was visceral.

———-

Danka moved out of the safe-house at the beginning of December. Her handlers felt she was ready to begin the next phase of training for her clandestine life by living among the city’s real nuns. Zanktia took her to a house adjacent to the church to live with 17 other women, all nuns who had gone through the True Believers’ school system and ordained at the convent in Novo Sokukt Tok. Danka stood out among her companions because she was an outsider and much more attractive than any of the others. She was 23, but she looked considerably younger because she had been administering herself doses of Babackt Yaga’s mushroom tea over the past seven years. The others looked her over with suspicion and jealousy. On the first night at her new home, Danka had to endure a sermon by the leading nun talking about the danger of physical beauty and how it led to carnal sin.

The nuns in Rika Chorna divided themselves into two groups: scribes and instructors. The younger women spent their days transcribing endless hymn sheets and copying or preparing church correspondence such as letters and directives. The clergy from the main church kept meticulous records of all happenings, which the Bishop wanted transcribed in clear, attractive handwriting on fine parchment. Danka frequently transformed a hastily-written note into a finely-written letter with improved vocabulary, converting it into a document that could be sent off and make the author look good to his reader. Meanwhile, the older and more trusted members of the group spent their days in a less grueling manner, giving literacy classes to local girls in a house adjacent to the one where they lived.

Danka took notes on anything she felt was important and compiled them into a sheet of parchment written with the smallest handwriting possible to conserve space and paper. She kept the reports hidden in a special pocket inside the lining of her dress. She read and memorized as much as she could of her companions’ writings, making notes and passing them to her contact. She spent her sparse spare time reading every book in the house, although unfortunately most of the material was about theology and True Believers’ doctrine. She received plenty of insight about the workings of the diocese and its relationship with the Roman Church, but not much else. Every few days Zanktia passed by with a delivery of washed linens and Danka slipped her the notes she had collected over the past few days. Usually there was a small paper handed to her in return, containing comments on what information was useful and what information was not, along with requests for additional notes on specific topics or persons.

Danka’s handlers seemed especially interested in learning about movements within the clergy, knowing who was traveling to different locations and why. During the winter there was not much movement, but Zanktia wanted Danka to practice providing information on any traveling to prepare her to make comprehensive reports when the True Believers moved about in the summer. Danka sighed. Next summer. She couldn’t imagine spending an entire summer in her horrible outfit sitting at a desk in a room full of insufferable, hostile, ugly, companions. She’d have to figure out how to extricate herself.

———-

Danka spent four months transcribing documents. Throughout the entire winter she never left the residence, except to go to the church for daily prayers and hymn practice. Danka’s fellow scribes did not talk much to each other and talked even less to her. They sang and prayed as a group, but spent their meals and their duties in silence. She slept in a room with five other women, but never conversed with them.

The room was cold and usually Danka was so tired that she fell asleep immediately. However, about once a week she had insomnia and would spend hours lying awake, thinking about Ilmatarkt. She didn’t have much time to think about him or truly grieve over his death during the past year, but lying alone in that cold bed, tormented by loneliness and sexual frustration, she realized how much she missed her late husband. She could have enjoyed a happy life with him, had the Destroyer not taken him away. He satisfied her sexually, treated her with respect, and challenged her intellect. Also, in his own manner, detached and intellectual as it was, he did love her. She could not share the pain of being a widow with anyone, so she had to grieve for him in silence, by staring into the darkness and allowing tears to run down her cheeks.

———-

When the weather started to warm up towards the end of March, Danka wrote note to Zanktia informing her handlers that they would have to find her another assignment. There was no way she would tolerate staying with the nuns over the summer. She expected the answer to be no; that she’d have to stay in the house indefinitely. However, on the final day of March, an official from the Vice-Duke’s palace showed up with Sister Zanktia. He ordered the scribes from the residence to line up and for each to hold a sample of her writing in front of her. Danka’s handwriting was not the best from the group, but her face caught the official’s attention. He looked her over and asked her some questions about her background. She responded with a fictional biography given to her by her handlers, that she was daughter of a devout guildsman from Novo Sokukt Tok.

The official violated protocol by pulling off her hat to have a better look at her head and braided hair. The other nuns quietly gasped and flinched at the act of disrespect.

“It’s a pity you’d waste your beauty like this.”

Danka pretended to be extremely nervous, but inwardly she was concealing hope that her intolerable life was about to change. The fact that Zanktia was with the official raised her anticipation of a transfer or change of assignment. The official quietly spoke to the leader of the residence. She cast a suspicious look at her young subordinate, but nodded and put her hands together in prayer. The official motioned Danka to follow him.

Danka left the residence without going back inside or even saying goodbye to anyone. She kept no belongings in her room and the few items she did have with her, such a small supply of blue powder, the ingredients for making birth-control paste, her comb, and the thread for cleaning her teeth were safely stored in special pockets she had sewn into the lining of her dress. She had not seen her bucket since November: she could only hope it was still at the safe-house.

———-

The official and the two “nuns” walked the short distance between the scribes’ residence and the entrance to the Vice-Duke’s palace. Parts of the palace exterior had been within Danka’s range of view throughout the entire winter, but she never had set foot inside. The day was grim, rainy, and overcast, but Danka could feel a hint, just a hint, of spring in the air.

Danka’s escorts led her through the outer door of the palace into the most luxurious room she had ever seen. The decor was Baroque and modeled after a palace in France. Expensive-looking vases imported from China sat on equally-fancy tables. The corridors were filled with paintings and statues, including multiple busts of the Vice-Duke.

Beyond the main entrance and reception area a large set of glass doors opened up into a finely-trimmed garden. The grounds were meticulously maintained, much more so than in the Grand Duke’s castle. Actually, the Grand Duke’s residence, as luxurious as it was to a person with Danka’s upbringing, was Spartan compared to the abode of the Vice-Duke. As she looked around at all the statues and imported decor, she wondered how much money the Vice-Duke was spending on his residence. After seeing the interior of the palace, it wasn’t hard to understand why taxes were such a problem for the Vice-Duchy’s farmers and guildsmen.

The main section of the palace boasted a large round ballroom covered by a dome painted with angels flying around in puffy clouds. The area under the dome was surrounded by marble pillars and stain-glass windows. Portraits of the Vice-Duke and his family members covered the walls and statues stood in front of each pillar. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Danka was no connoisseur concerning decor, but compared with the somewhat simpler furnishings of the Grand Duke, she felt the palace in Rika Chorna was decorated in poor taste.

The exaggerated decor did not draw Danka’s attention nearly as much as how the palace women were dressed. To a Danubian, especially a lower-class woman like Danka, the palace clothes were truly shocking and scandalous. The wives of the Vice-Duke and his advisors boasted impossibly heavy and complicated silk dresses imported from France. Like all Danubian women, the palace residents wore their hair in braids, but those braids were covered by over-sized wigs. Seven years before, Danka had seen some fashionable European clothing when she traveled north of the Danubian border with the Followers, but to see such exaggerated get-ups in the Duchy itself was a shock. Danka later found out the elite women did not dare go out on the street in their foreign outfits, but the palace had unique protocol and any respectable woman had to wear French clothes while inside to distinguish herself from the “uncouth” commoners outside.

The group approached the area where the Vice-Duke had his conference rooms and living quarters. They entered a luxurious reception area that was smaller than the outer reception area, but still large and ostentatious. The area was comfortably warm, heated by the cave-charcoal stoves Danka had introduced to the Grand Duke a few years before. There were several guards in the room, along with a group of noblewomen and a couple of advisors holding rolled-up documents. Danka had never seen a picture of Vice-Duchy’s ruler and thus not sure what he looked like. However, in a palace full over over-dressed people he stood out, wearing an outlandish silk outfit covered with lace and jewels, topped with a cape made of imported white fur. His head was properly shaved, but Danka had no way of knowing that because the ruler wore an enormous white wig. On top of the wig he wore a crown so full of jewels that one could barely see the gold or silk underneath. With him were three effeminate-looking teenaged boys wearing equally effeminate clothing. One of the boys was carrying a falcon with its head covered by a tiny hood. Danka correctly assumed the teenagers were the Vice-Duke’s sons.

As she approached the Vice-Duke and the boys (if that’s what one chose to call them), she tried to make sense of the bizarre spectacle in front of her. It was very fortunate that she already had seen pictures of late eighteenth-century western European royalty, so she understood the Vice-Duke and the members of his entourage were attempting to model themselves after elite fashion in places like Paris. Obviously the eastern nobility viewed traditional Danubian culture as primitive and uncouth. Perhaps they had to live in that inferior culture, but that didn’t mean they had to sink to the simplistic and uncivilized behavior of their subjects. The entire set-up would have been more pathetic than offensive, had it not been for the crushing taxes the farmers and guildsmen had to pay to maintain it.

The official saluted the Vice Duke and his sons while the two “nuns” knelt and clasped their hands together in prayer. The boys were leering at Danka. As soon as the official explained that a new scribe had been brought from the local nuns’ house, the ruler told the two women to stand up. He examined younger nun.

“Her face is very pretty. Let me see the rest of her.”

The official turned to Zanktia: “Strip her. Remove that habit and whatever she’s wearing underneath.”

Danka’s companion froze, unsure that she had heard the command correctly. Her eyes went wide and she glanced around the room, noting there were a dozen other people present. When she opened her mouth to object, the official slapped her hard across the face. The blow was so hard and so unexpected she fell to the ground. The official kicked her to get up.

“What’s wrong with you, nun? Are you stupid or just rebellious? I told you to strip that girl! Now do it!”

Danka could tell Zanktia was as shocked as she was, that she had not expected to have to strip her. Reluctantly, with trembling hands, the other woman unfastened the hooks holding Danka’s collar in place and lifted her outer dress over her shoulders and head. She untied the stays of her inner dress and let it fall to the floor. Danka was terrified, but not in the way a normal nun would have been. She was not bothered being naked in front of others, but obviously in the Vice-Duchy being publicly stripped, especially for a nun, was meant to be a major humiliation. Had she been in the western valley she simply would have stood straight, with her eyes facing forward and her hands at her sides. However, in Rika Chorna she knew that she needed to behave like a real True Believers nun would act under the circumstances. She cowered and tried to cover herself, and even forced tears to come to her eyes. The official yelled at her and slapped her several times before she “managed” to stand straight and uncover herself. Keeping up the façade of unbearable shame, she closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and pressed her legs together. She felt a hand fondling her breasts and heard the Vice-Duke’s voice.

“Very nice. Very nice indeed. Yes, she’ll do. She’s very young and her bosom is firm. You did well, Sister, to bring her to me.”

“To hear is to obey, your Excellency.”

The Vice Duke further humiliated Danka by ordering her to assume the “prisoner’s stance”, standing with her feet spread and her hands clasped behind her head. He ordered Zanktia to kneel while she neatly folded Danka’s dress and under-dress so she could take them out of the palace. For the time that she served in the Vice Duke’s residence, Danka would be kept completely naked. The boys continued leering at her as the other women approached. The over-dressed noblewomen surrounded the naked newcomer and the kneeling nun, quietly whispering comments meant to be overheard and meant to embarrass the two churchwomen. Danka wondered how on earth the Vice-Duke could get away with so badly mistreating nuns, but she later learned he was free to take liberties with the women because he supported the True Believers’ policies and was generous to the Bishop with his tax revenues.

The Vice-Duke dismissed Zanktia and ordered Danka to follow him through another set of doors into the inner palace. She passed a library where two naked scribes were copying letters, and another room where an advisor was dictating a speech to another naked scribe. He clapped his hands and a naked woman rushed out and knelt at his feet. Danka noticed she had a large number “1” written in ink on her right shoulder.

“A newcomer. Clean her up and put her to work.”

“To hear is to obey, your Excellency.”

The Vice-Duke was ready to dismiss Danka, but one of his sons wanted to fondle her. He granted permission and Danka was ordered to bend over and grab her ankles. The teenager spent several minutes caressing the newest scribe’s bottom and thighs. He then started spanking her. He spent a long time slapping her backside, slowly turning it pink. The punishment was humiliating, but the boy was not hitting her hard at all. She said nothing, wondering if he was just playing with her or if he really was not very strong. When the teenager finished, the kneeling woman whispered to Danka to kneel next to her. Then she whispered:

“You need to thank the prince for correcting your arrogance. Thank him, kiss his shoes, and thank him again.”

Danka did as she was told. She put her hands together in prayer, stated: “Thank you, my Prince, for correcting my arrogance”, knelt forward to kiss his shoes, and repeated the phrase. Satisfied they had sufficiently humiliated their newest servant, the Vice-Duke, his sons, and their escort left the two women and returned to the ballroom.

As soon as the door closed, the woman stood up and ordered Danka to follow her to washroom. She introduced herself as Scribe # 1 and told Danka that she would be known as Scribe # 8. “That is now your name. Scribe # 8. No one here is interested in whatever name you were using when you came in. You’re Scribe # 8.”

As the newcomer sat in a bathtub, Scribe # 1 unbraided and washed Scribe # 8’s hair. While they waited for her hair to dry so it could be re-braided, Scribe # 1 explained what was going on. Like Danka, she had come to the palace as a nun. There were 10 scribes at any time, and all except one had been a nun prior to their internment in the palace. The Vice-Duke preferred having nuns as palace scribes because they were clean, obedient, had the best penmanship, and most of all, were fun to embarrass by forcing them to be naked. The forced nudity totally humiliated them as women and made them understand how inferior they were to anyone else in the inner palace. There was a more practical purpose as well, to make sure the scribes couldn’t try to escape or conceal anything they were carrying.

After the newcomer was cleaned up, Scribe #1 picked up a quill and inkwell and carefully drew a large number “8” on Danka’s shoulder. The two scribes then reported to a room full of books, detailed maps of various localities in the eastern valley, and ledgers that Danka quickly learned were tax records. Two unpleasant-looking men were in the room. Like everyone else in the palace, they wore foreign instead of Danubian clothing, but at least their outfits were not nearly as outlandish as those worn by the nobility.

The two women knelt as the leading scribe introduced Scribe # 8. The men ordered the two women to copy a series of letters and records describing the trial and execution of two farmers for tax evasion and the eviction of a couple of neighbors suspected of helping them. Throughout the rest of the day the two scribes would be copying similar correspondence, and in doing so Danka would quickly learn about the inner workings of the Vice-Duchy’s government. It seemed the Vice-Duchy’s operations centered upon collecting as many taxes as possible; that almost all of the guards’ activities in some way were focused on seizing revenue. The Vice-Duke re-distributed funds to his favorites and more importantly, the True Believers’ Church hierarchy. Most of the remaining wealth went into maintaining the palace and purchasing imported luxuries. Danka already had noticed the eastern part of the Duchy seemed much poorer than the western part, and now she knew why. The Vice-Duke was not spending any of his wealth on the public’s education or infrastructure improvements.

———-

At the end of her first day, the ten scribes ate a silent dinner together. After the women cleaned their teeth, Scribe # 1 escorted the newcomer to the washroom. The scribes bathed in pairs in a special washroom that contained not only a small tub and a stove for heating water, but also a row of comfortable-looking chairs. The tub was too small to sit in and had a bar hanging over it. After she and Scribe # 1 relieved themselves in the privy, Danka found out why the washroom was set up in such a manner. Several men and boys dressed in fancy imported clothing came in and sat in the chairs. It turned out that the scribes had to take turns washing each other in front of an audience. She had to hold onto the bar and face her audience while her partner soaped and massaged her body. That soaping included her vulva. In front of a group of males, the scribes were required to clean and massage each other’s bottoms and vaginas. It was a gross violation of protocol meant to express domination over the women, in the same way the Grand Duke forced his concubines to keep their hair unbraided.

Danka was used to enduring a lot of different indignities, but the bathing performance was something new. Scribe # 1 not only had to run her hands all over Scribe # 8’s bottom and pubic hair, but she also was required to push a soap-covered finger deep into her companion’s vagina and sphincter, “to make sure she was absolutely clean”. The women switched places and Danka had to bathe Scribe # 1. When Danka soaped her companion’s vulva and pushed her finger inside, she noticed tears running down her face. After having been in the palace for nearly a year, Scribe # 1 still could not suffer such humiliating treatment in public without crying. After finishing their bath and drying off, the two scribes had to present themselves to their audience. They had to turn around and bend over to allow the men to fondle and caress their bottoms and legs. When the treatment was finally over and the audience left, Scribes # 1 and # 8 cleaned up the bathroom and brought in several buckets of fresh water. The next show would be in an hour, featuring Scribes # 4 and # 6. Scribe # 1’s eyes were still full of tears. She commented:

“We were lucky today. Sometimes they make us do unspeakable things in there.”

As they walked down the hallway, Danka thought about asking her companion for more detail, but figured she’d find out soon enough about the “unspeakable things”. Instead, another question came into her mind.

“Does His Excellency ever, take liberties with us?”

“No. He has a couple of finely dressed mistresses running about. Those two (and the Vice-Duchess) keep him busy. We’re not nobility, so we’re not worth his trouble. I guess that’s fortunate. Besides, we’re churchwomen and we’re supposed to be chaste.”

“Chaste? After what we did in the washroom?”

“The men in the palace can’t use us as women. That’s the agreement His Excellency has with the Bishop. So, our ‘chastity’ is safeguarded. But, in every other way possible, they enjoy dishonoring us and mocking us.”

The scribes entered their sleeping quarters. The room was not heated, but it had five very comfortable beds surrounded by curtains. The scribes slept in pairs. Danka’s suspicions about the arrangement were confirmed when she heard faint moans from behind the curtains of one of the beds. Scribe # 1 opened the curtains to an empty bed and motioned the newcomer to pull down the covers and get in. Danka reluctantly obeyed. Scribe # 1 followed her in and closed the curtains.

“When I told you we have to do ‘unspeakable things’ to each other, did you understand what I meant by that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lucky, because I didn’t. Anyhow, it’s best that you practice and accustom yourself to doing what they want. They’ll whip you and put you on the pillory, the one in the city’s main plaza, if you don’t. That’s how I spent my second day here, on the pillory. It was cold outside and I nearly froze to death. The only reason I didn’t was that a guard took pity on me and set up a brazier of cave charcoal underneath me, to keep me warm enough to stay alive.”

Danka said nothing, but she had a flashback of the horrid hours she spent on the pillory almost a decade before. The experience was one that a person never forgot. And hers was during the summer. She didn’t want to imagine what spending a day on the pillory would be like if the weather wasn’t warm. Scribe # 1 changed the subject:

“I have seniority over you. I expect you to obey me and do anything I ask of you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good. Then I need you to rub my body. That includes the area between my legs. I’ll tell you when I want anything more.”

Danka knew how to give a sensual massage to another woman because of the time she spent with Antonia. She also knew how to give a massage that relaxed a partner and was likely to put her to sleep. She applied that experience while massaging Scribe # 1 and had her unconscious within a few minutes. She exhaled a huge sigh of relief when her companion’s breathing changed to that of a sleeping person. At least that night she’d be spared from having to do “unspeakable things” with her.

———-

No one from Ernockt’s group had yet contacted Danka about her situation, but starting on the second day she decided to begin taking notes and making summaries of tax collectors’ correspondence, reports from the guards, and any other papers she could look at and understand. No one in the palace seemed to notice or care about what she was doing. The other scribes were too mortified at their own nudity to pay attention to anything other than their own duties, while the members of the palace entourage were too self-absorbed with fashion and personal intrigues to suspect a nun recruited as a female scribe might be part of a conspiracy against them. So, Danka spent all of her spare time working on her notes and by the end of the first week had assembled ten pages of information written on scrap pages of parchment. As always, she wrote in the tiniest script her quill would allow and thought about how she might invent a system of code or shorthand to further conserve space. As for hiding the papers, there was no need to worry about that at all. Scribe # 1 had issued a portfolio to hold her unmarked parchment, drafts, and practice writings, so she simply carried the collected information with her other notes. If anyone examined them and asked her what they were, she’d simply say she was teaching herself to write in small script and the pages were for practice.

Danka was exposed to a lot of information about the workings of the Vice-Duchy during her first week at the palace. She sat taking notes in meeting after meeting for 12 hours each day. When she wasn’t taking dictation, she was transcribing correspondence, including some letters between the Vice-Duke and foreign leaders. She discovered the Vice-Duke was worried about the Grand Duke’s consolidation of power over the western half of the Duchy. The Vice-Duke also expressed in correspondence that he was jealous of the Grand Duke’s popularity, given that he was little more than an uncouth military leader and understood nothing about acting like a nobleman and enjoying cultured activities.

By the end of her first week in the palace, Scribe # 8 already understood much about the Vice-Duchy and how its ruler contrasted with the Grand Duke. It was obvious the Vice-Duke was completely absorbed in his own world of western royal culture. It also was obvious the Vice-Duke had none of the Grand Duke’s virtues as a ruler. He surrounded himself with expensive art and a ridiculous palace and was totally cut-off from the realities of life in the Vice-Duchy. He wanted to live a sumptuous lifestyle worthy of western kings, without understanding that luxury and a fancy palace did not equate legitimate rule.

In contrast, the Grand Duke moved among his subjects and through interacting with normal people was very aware of conditions around the western valley and Horkustk Ris province. Apart from keeping up his castle, he did not spend much of the Duchy’s treasury on the Royal Family. His one extravagant expenditure, maintaining a harem of concubines, had a specific purpose, to eventually augment his control over the outer regions of the Duchy.

Danka had always feared and hated the Grand Duke because of what he did to her. However, seeing how odious and incompetent the Vice-Duke was, she was able to view the Grand Duke in a more objective manner. Whatever his flaws as a man, the Grand Duke was a competent ruler who surrounded himself with competent advisors and was genuinely concerned about the safety and physical well-being of his subjects. He took personal responsibility for his actions and decisions. Whenever he could, the Sovereign led his army into battle and had placed himself at great physical risk on several occasions. In doing so, he had earned the admiration of his men and the loyalty of the western half of the country. Meanwhile, the Vice-Duke assumed he deserved the loyalty of his subjects because of his birthright, without having to do anything to improve their lives or earn their respect.

———-

On the eighth day of her internment in the palace, a guard she had never seen before approached Scribe # 8 with a letter his commander needed transcribed. Following protocol, she knelt while receiving the assignment. To identify himself, the guard handed her a package containing the items she had kept inside the lining of her nun’s dress. They exchanged nods to acknowledge each other’s membership in the conspiracy.

“My commander will be very eager to receive the transcription of his letter. My other commander, the one to whom you owe a debt, is anticipating the correspondence you have prepared for him. You have prepared such correspondence, haven’t you, Scribe?”

“Yes, My Protector, I have.”

Danka reached into her portfolio and handed the guard the 10 sheets of finely-printed notes. The guard quickly glanced at the papers and hid them under his vest.

“You have done well, Scribe. I will return for the letter this afternoon.”

“Yes, My Protector.”

Danka stood up, enormously relieved to have finally received communication from her co-conspirators and verification she was where she needed to be. She spent the rest of the day transcribing notes about the Bishop’s efforts to identify people likely to be sympathetic to the Old Believers, and working on the letter in her spare time. Thinking the Church information might be important, she made an extra set of notes to hand over to her contact when she saw him in the afternoon. The letter for the commander was legitimate, so there would be no concern about the guard and the scribe being seen together. The guard returned to pick up his commander’s letter just as Scribe # 8 was leaving the conference room for dinner. She knelt as the guard took the letter and looked it over.

“This document will be satisfactory. Next time please leave more space along the right margin. The other commander is quite pleased with your efforts and wishes to thank you for your dedication. You have done well, and your information about the Bishop and His Excellency’s troubles with tax evaders is most useful for the future harmony of our fair land. Also, as we all know, women are the source of much evil, especially women with fine clothing and idle hands, which the scripture has warned us about. Gossip and intrigues can be most harmful to a royal house. Is that not so, Scribe?”

“Yes, My Protector.”

“Very well, Scribe. When my commander needs another letter, I will ask you to perform the favor of transcribing it.”

“Do you know when that might be, My Protector?”

“No, Scribe, I do not. Tomorrow it might rain, or the sun might shine. The right to make that decision belongs to the Lord-Creator, not to me.”

“Yes, My Protector.”

So, as she ate with her silent companions, Danka was satisfied that at least she had an idea what kind of information she needed to collect. She had been correct to gather everything she could about the Bishop and his activities. Information about tax collection efforts turned out to be more important than she had previously thought. She had a new tasking, to attempt to overhear gossip among the women and report on any feuds or intrigues among the Vice-Duchy’s favored families.

So, for the next month Danka’s life mostly centered on long hours spent with a quill in her hand in the Vice-Duke’s study or the officials’ conference rooms. She transcribed several meetings between the Vice-Duke and various Church officials as they negotiated how much tax money the ruler had to pay in exchange for full support from the True Believers. There was talk of identifying and executing sympathizers of the Old Believers and renegade Followers of the Ancients. Whenever possible, Scribe # 8 noted the names of targeted people, hoping her contacts would collect the information in time to warn the suspects or take other actions to prevent their arrests.

———-

The palace entourage continued their sexual humiliation of the former nuns throughout the time Danka was known to Rika Chorna as “Scribe # 8”. The women bathed every 48 hours, and every single time they entered the washroom they had to endure soaping and fingering each other in front of an audience of men and boys. Then, of course, they had to bend over and submit to “inspections” and more fondling.

Danka managed to put off doing “unimaginable things” with Scribe # 1 for a week by massaging her to sleep every night. However, two nights after she sent off her first intelligence report, Danka’s bed partner was less tired than normal and refused to accept a relaxing massage. Instead, she ordered Scribe # 8 to massage her between her legs and run her fingers through her pubic hair. She rolled over and ordered the newcomer to kiss her bottom and lick the area around her sphincter. It was very fortunate she had just bathed before forcing Danka to stimulate her there, or else Danka would have become sick. Scribe # 1 then flipped on her back and ordered Danka to put her face between her thighs.

“You’ll have to learn how to do this, and do it properly if you don’t want the whip and the pillory. The next time we bathe, His Excellency will want to watch us perform… to do the unspeakable for him. So, you’ll need to do it to me. I am not doing it to you. I’ve dishonored myself enough and now it’s someone else’s turn. Now, start kissing and licking me. Put your tongue inside. You’ll need to figure out how to satisfy me so you can do it again when we bathe tomorrow.”

It was fortunate Danka had so much experience with sex, because even though she had never touched any other woman apart from Antonia, she knew what sensations aroused a typical female. Ignoring the fact she was doing the most dishonorable thing imaginable for a woman, she pushed aside her disgust and misgivings and concentrated on the task of making Scribe # 1 climax as quickly as possible. She avoided sticking her tongue into Scribe # 1’s vagina. She used her fingers instead and concentrated her tongue on her partner’s clitoris. Within less than two minutes Scribe # 1 climaxed, moaning as the scent of her arousal filled the inside of the bed’s canopy. Danka then massaged her to make her go to sleep. She opened the curtains to let out the stench while she went to the wash basin to rinse off her face and clean the taste from her mouth.

No, she would not be crying or show herself as mortified the following evening. She’d simply do as she was told, make Scribe # 1 climax in front of their audience, and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. It was nothing more to her than a disagreeable tasking, just like everything else she had to do in that awful palace.

———-

The guard who served as Scribe # 8’s contact visited her one more time during the month of April and three times during May. She passed between 20 and 30 sheets of detailed information during each visit. As requested, she concentrated on collecting data about the Bishop, other church officials, and the Vice-Duchy’s finances. She also paid special attention to copying any correspondence between the Vice-Duke or his advisors and people outside the Duchy. She wasn’t able to comply with the request to overhear gossip from the palace women because her duties mostly kept her with the Vice-Duke’s male advisors. However, she was able to provide information about someone far more important than a bunch of gossipy over-dressed noblewomen. She had direct and continuous access to one of the Vice-Duke’s sons.

During her first weeks in the palace, Scribe # 8 had to endure another indignity apart from the washroom shows and constant groping. Her worst tormentor was the obnoxious young prince who had spanked her the day she entered the palace. Whenever he was in the inner portion of the palace, he looked for her. If he could find her, the teenager called her out and made her bend over and grab her ankles. He then subjected her to fondling and a light spanking, regardless of the duty he had pulled her away from or whoever happened to be milling around at the moment. He called her a “very bad girl” for tempting him and made her grovel at his feet begging forgiveness.

Danka was infuriated, but she was little more than a slave and couldn’t do anything, at least for the moment. However, it was obvious the teenager was attracted to her. In the back of her mind she wondered about turning that attraction to her advantage, perhaps by seducing him and then seeing about blackmailing him. The prince’s name was Hristockt. She was surprised to find out he was 19, considering his effeminate appearance and lacy clothing. She had thought he was younger, perhaps 14 or 15. Of course, Scribe # 8 also looked much younger than her real age, thanks to the blue powder. She would turn 24 sometime during 1759, although she wasn’t sure what date because her parents never bothered to tell her. However, anyone looking at her would not have guessed she was any older than 18.

So, with her young appearance and submissive behavior, she coldly studied Prince Hristockt and learned his daily routine. He seemed to be a total idiot besides being an effeminate dandy. It was for sure that he had no experience dealing with the real world. He would be no match for someone like Danka. Her only challenge would be to get him alone without raising any suspicions. Assuming she could figure out how to isolate him, he’d be completely helpless against her wiles.

Scribe # 8 figured the best way to seduce the prince would be to encourage him to take her into his room. She couldn’t be overt about it, but if he “caught” her near his chamber, he’d be likely to take her inside. She started administering birth-control paste to herself and timed her route so she’d be passing close to his door at the same moment he was returning from music practice. Two days later, she bumped into him only a few fathoms from his door. He took the bait and ordered her to go into the room with him.

As always, he made her grab her ankles and caressed her bottom. He started spanking her, with light smacks as always. He spent a very long time “punishing” her, to the point she was uncomfortable, not so much from the smacks, but from her muscles cramping from having to remain bent over and immobilized for such a long time. The prince did something he would not have done outside his room: he put his free hand down his pants and started masturbating while he was spanking the servant. Danka became bored and tired of holding the same position. She took a slight risk and spoke up.

“My lovely Prince. It would be such an honor to have a fine man like yourself use your humble serving girl as you please for your manly pleasure.”

The prince became hard at the suggestion, but it was clear he had no clue what to do. The scribe kissed him and put her hand over the crotch of his pants. She took charge and pushed him onto his bed. She undid rows of buttons and pulled down the three layers of clothing covering his hips. She massaged and kissed him and flattered him with words about his handsomeness and manliness as she pulled the pants completely off. She had a frustrating time with his small, skinny organ. It kept going limp before she had a chance to straddle him. Finally she managed to keep him hard enough to get him inside her. She felt she had achieved a major accomplishment when she finally felt the faint pulsing of a weak orgasm inside. She had to pretend she was enjoying herself instead of wondering how a man could possibly be so contemptible.

Well, that was quite pathetic. However, the servant had accomplished what she wanted. She managed to convince Prince Hristockt that he was an excellent lover and any woman would be ecstatic to have such a virile man at her service. She knew he’d have only one thing one his mind the next day: her.

———-

That afternoon was the first out of many Prince Hristockt spent with Scribe # 8. Love-making was always the same. The sessions always started with the prince ordering her to bend over and fondling her before administering a spanking. The spankings were always the same as well, delivered with his hand and long, but never very hard because he didn’t have much strength. Then she had to go to her knees and beg him to forgive her for being so misbehaved. After all that was taken care of, the Scribe took over. She had to work her way through layers of fancy clothing so she could strip him from the waist down. Occasionally she managed to strip him completely, but undoing all those buttons and removing all those shirts truly tested her patience. She spent a long time massaging his thighs and then his penis. Finally, when he was hard enough, she’d straddle him and try to get him inside her and get him to climax before he went limp. Then she’d massage him and snuggle up to him while he talked.

More than any other time in her life, Danka felt like Lilith every time she spent an afternoon with Hristockt. She was completely in control of him, even when she was bent over taking a spanking or kneeling at his feet. Her submissiveness fed into his ego and made him see himself as superior, both in intellect and in morality. He completely discounted the notion Scribe # 8 could have any ulterior motives for interacting with him; in fact, that idea never even occurred to him. So, around her he chatted, not really for her benefit, but for an opportunity to think out loud. The teenager talked incessantly, as though he had no one else to talk to and had a lot to get off his chest. Yes, he finally could talk. After all, what harm could a naked dishonored former nun possibly do to him?

He bragged about his father’s activities and plots, detailed the intrigues of palace advisors against each other, and plans to favor one advisor at the expense of another. He talked at length about various members of the Vice-Duke’s family, how much he hated his brothers, and how much he held his uncles and cousins in contempt. He talked about his father’s purchases and bragged about how much they cost. He bragged about his father’s foreign contacts and how he managed to use clandestine couriers to move his communications through the western valley. Apparently he had a contact among the guards in the border post in Sebernekt Ris who helped him smuggle his imported items past the Duchy’s main northern entrance. During the first few days with Hristockt, Danka picked up so much information she had a hard time prioritizing what was most important and writing it all down. She used up all the scrap pieces of parchment in the palace and had to steal several clean sheets. She realized the next time she saw her contact; she’d have to tell him to supply her with paper.

After a few days of letting the prince ramble about whatever he wanted to talk about, she started directing the conversations towards the Vice-Duke’s relations with the various city councils, landlords, and Church officials. She was interested in knowing who was favored by the Vice-Duke, who was out of favor or under suspicion, and why. The teenager blathered whatever he knew. Danka suspected some of his information was not accurate, but he blissfully told her the truth as he saw it. On the rare occasions he was reluctant to answer a question, a few strokes of her hand and some cuddling and kisses were enough to make him resume talking.

Scribe # 8 couldn’t imagine how she could possibly improve her access to the Vice-Duke’s secrets. She was wrong about that, because she had underestimated the prince’s stupidity. By the beginning of June, she was spending more time with him as his personal servant. She dutifully followed him around, carrying his documents, books, and whatever else he needed at the moment. On several occasions he led her into his father’s private chambers, allowing her to see where he kept his papers, maps, and official seals. She also saw a True Believers’ coding device and several coded messages laid out on a study table. Her heart jumped into her throat when she saw the coder. If only she could get her hands on it…

Adjacent to the private sleeping chamber was the entrance to a small wine cellar. Danka found out the palace had two wine cellars; the general underground chamber for the main kitchen and dining hall, and a smaller one for the Vice-Duke’s personal stash of more expensive wine and cognac. Hristockt grabbed a bottle of wine and handed it to the scribe to uncork it. She didn’t do it fast enough, so he spanked her. He told her to pick up a wine glass and follow him outside to the garden. The prince ordered two house-servants to bring out a fancy chair from the reception area and set it under a tree. For the rest of the afternoon he sat drinking and eating Turkish delight while Scribe # 8 knelt next to him, holding the bottle and refilling his glass. He did not offer her any of the wine or candy. She was a servant and undeserving of such delicacies. The scribe was not worried about tasting wine or the dismissive treatment. Her mind was on that coding device and how to take a better look at it.

Two days later Scribe # 8 returned to the Vice-Duke’s sleeping chamber, alone. Prince Hristockt had given her copies of the keys she needed to access both the room and the wine cellar. She was to bring out a bottle of wine, a box of Turkish delight, and a small snuff box filled containing white powder. She recognized it as a medical ingredient the Followers called Andean salt, which they imported from the Spanish colonies and used in some of their surgeries.

She did not have to worry about anyone questioning why she was in the Vice-Duke’s chambers or why she had a key to the room, because the prince had written on her back with a quill that she was carrying the key under his orders and was accessing the room because he told her to. The writing on her bare back was supposed to be an additional humiliation, but for a person whose job it was to spy on the household, it was a pass to access the palace’s most important secrets. As she entered the room, sure enough, there it was, the coding device. It was a brass cylinder no bigger than Danka’s hand, made from a stack of 20 disks containing rows of letters in different orders. If she could copy all those letters and deliver coding sheets, Ernockt’s group would be able re-create the device and decipher the True Believers’ messages and secret orders. There was a quill and inkwell on the desk and a basket of discarded paper underneath. Danka decided to take a sheet of discarded paper, copy two rows of letters each time she visited the room, and hide the paper underneath the basket. When she finished copying all the disks, she’d sneak the paper from the room and turn it over to her contact.

She figured she’d have to visit the room a total of ten times to accurately copy all those letters from the cylinder. To copy all those letters in a single sitting would take too long and Prince Hristockt would start wondering why she was delayed bringing out his wine and white snuff. She’d have to be patient and not tell her contact what she was doing until she had duplicated the complete configuration of letters.

After copying two rows and hiding the paper, Danka reported back to the prince. She patiently knelt while Hristockt drank about half the wine and took a sniff of Andean salt. He started acting very strange, both happy and agitated. He paced around the chair and shook his hands. He took another sniff of powder and emptied the entire bottle in a single swallow, a bottle of wine that cost the Vice-Duke a piece of gold. He sent the servant back to the Vice-Duke’s secret cellar for a second bottle.

Danka decided to copy three more disks of letters before returning to the prince with the bottle. He continued to pace around, happy and agitated. He did not notice she had come back. When she tried to draw his attention, he ignored her. He doesn’t know I’m here. He doesn’t know what’s happening at all. I can leave, and he wouldn’t even notice, thought Danka to herself. So, she returned to the Vice-Duke’s chamber. With her heart pounding, she copied the remaining rows of letters from the cylinder. Twenty rows altogether, making sure she had not missed or duplicated any letters or made any other mistakes. There were several copies of coding sheets lying on the desk. Having taken such a crazy risk so far, she checked to make sure they were all the same and stole one. Now she had, in her possession, the configuration of a True Believers’ encryption cylinder and a coding sheet needed to decipher messages. If she could hide the papers and deliver them to the guard, her handlers would have access to the True Believers’ entire system of encrypted messaging.

She hid the papers behind a Virgin Mother statue and ran back to the garden with her bottle. Undoubtedly the prince would punish her for being so late with the wine, but it would be worth it if she could deliver the encryption codes. It turned out Hristockt was in no condition to punish anyone. He was surrounded by guards, his father, and his brothers and was completely incoherent, yelling obscenities at the top of his voice. Scribe # 8 knelt, holding out the second bottle of wine. The Vice-Duke took it from her and slapped her hard across the face. He struck her again and ordered her to return to the inner palace and report to Scribe # 1. He did not notice she still had, in her hand, the prince’s keys to his private chamber.

———-

The palace entourage was preoccupied with the latest scandal: Prince Hristockt had pilfered his father’s snuff-box of Andean salt and had sniffed so much that it made him mad. A foreign surgeon using the latest western-European medicine bled the unfortunate youth, weakening him even more and prolonging his delirious behavior.

With the palace guards and nobles so distracted, the conspirators’ guard decided to approach Scribe # 8, even though he did not have any letters to give her as justification for meeting her. He was speechless when she handed him fifty pages of notes, keys to the Vice-Duke’s chamber, and the encryption information. He promised to return later in the day with the keys (after the conspirators made copies) and the extra parchment the scribe would need to avoid running out of paper in the future.

Danka spent the rest of the afternoon taking dictation from a group of women writing poetry. They occasionally paused to giggle and whisper comments about Prince Hristockt and his unfortunate encounter with Andean salt.

After dinner, Scribe # 8 had to bathe and “do unspeakable things” to Scribe # 1. The worst part of the tasking was the audience. Instead of men, the spectators were a group of women. The women insisted that Scribe # 8 tie her companion’s wrists to the bar above the washtub and for the senior scribe to look directly at them while she was forced to have an orgasm. Her eyes filled with tears as Scribe # 8 concentrated on pleasuring her with her fingers and tongue. When she finally managed to climax, the women in the audience whistled approvingly. Finally, Scribe # 8 untied her companion’s hands, but the spectators insisted she kneel in front of the newer scribe and to thank her for making her a happy woman.

Danka tried to remain detached from everything going on around her. These people are nothing but dishonored degenerates and there is nothing I can do about that.

When Scribe # 8 finally returned to her room and examined the contents of her scribe’s supply folder, she saw it was full of clean paper. Hidden among the papers were copies of the keys to the Vice-Duke’s chamber. They were not the originals, so Danka could only hope the guard had somehow managed to return them to either Prince Hristockt or to the Vice-Duke to avoid suspicion.