The pages bring her outside and herd her into a routine she knows far too well from childhood. First the cardio, an hour of sprints, squats, and jumps to condition the flesh and humble the mind. Then the showers, freezing sonic jets to cool the blood and cleanse the body. Finally the sermon and devotion, one more hour spent kneeling in antiseptic light pretending to be grateful while her belly aches with discontent.

Several key differences: the exercise barely feels like anything in station gravity. The sweat that collects is distinctly unsatisfying. The sonic showers are significantly colder. Then there’s her fellow penitents, the deacons and scribes who make up the unsung administrative backbone of the Church. Except that this isn’t Rootsdown and here, in the halls of power, every last one of them is a saint. Back home Misery found the barest tack of comfort in shared suffering: if she was hungry, so was everyone else. The pews here, otoh, are stacked with row after row of shiny saintshair, a spectrum of dazzling iridescence, and none of these motherfuckers need food. They can survive on starlight. To them this morning prayer session is no punishment at all. Misery starves alone.

On top of that, they’re gawking. Misery feels their sideway glances and naked curiosity as a real weight on her skin, which crawls in response. Everyone’s wondering about the unknown in their midst. A strange moonrat, stocky and dark-haired, long scar kissing her brow and lips. She can only imagine what they’re thinking, but knowing Church types she’ll bet real credit it’s shit that’ll spike her blood pressure. The sermon goes on for far too long, and the irritation accrues in Misery’s nerves until she’s itching with frustration. What she wants to do is march down each pew and kick the bowed, murmuring saints in the head, one by one, like rotten cubes lined on a fence. But she doesn’t. She feels like she should be rewarded for her restraint. Her virtue.

Ruin watches over her the entire time, silent and peripheral. What’s the delusion so quiet for? Taken a three-year vow of silence, has zie? If only.