Mouche turned away, hiding his face, and Ornery put an arm around his shoulders.
“She has died,” said Questioner. Her voice and motions were stiff and mechanical as she straightened the limp form where it lay then jerked one of the hangings loose to cover the body. “No doubt many others have died in this place. Look at the ring she wears. See that face upon it and the name engraved around the edge: Morrigan. In the Temple I learned of Morrigan, a deity of pain and destruction. Marool selected her goddess and became her own sacrifice.”
“What shall we do for her?” whispered Ornery.
Questioner murmured, “She has done for herself. It was she who brought this deadly device to this place, perhaps even she who designed it. Certainly it was she who used it upon others. The machine is not new. See the wear patterns around the pinions, the stains on the straps. It has killed before.”
“Why … why would anyone do … do that?” Mouche begged, as he hurried to the door through which they had entered. “I never understood the pictures, the why of any of it … “
Questioner emitted a very mankindlike sigh. “It is a very primitive emotion, and even when we explain it, we do not understand it, Mouche. If we all understood it, there would have been no need for Haraldson and his edicts.”
“Prey, property, or opponent,” gasped Mouche, who was now in the door they had entered through, breathing the cleaner air of the sneakway. “Madame said that’s how gangs think.”
Questioner nodded. “One like this was a gang unto herself. So long as we think of such people as humans and attempt to treat them as humans, we cannot protect the innocent.”
“They really can’t be cured?” asked Ornery.
Questioner waved the idea away. “We haven’t found a way. Haraldson said that if a being has sufficient sense of justice and civility to know it has done wrong, knowing it has done wrong is often sufficient punishment. If the being has no remorse, punishment will only increase its anger.”
She sighed, gesturing at the scene around them. “I don’t think Marool felt any remorse.” She turned toward Mouche and called, “What did she mean, ‘Her sons, that damned Ashes’?”
Mouche was by now sitting head-down in the sneakway, still fighting his nausea and revulsion. He turned reluctantly. “I’ll tell what I know, but if you’re finished, Ma’am … Questioner, can we get out of here?”
Questioner nodded. Her olfactory receptors were still turned down, but the others had no such amelioration. She herded them ahead of her.
When they were inside the wall with the opening shut behind them, Mouche mopped the sweat from his face on the sleeve of his shirt. “When Bane and Dyre first came to House Genevois, they broke all the rules, and Madame sent for someone. I never saw him, though I heard his voice. When Bane and Dyre were sent to him, he did something painful to them, and he told them to mind themselves. Later on, Madam had to summon that person again, to stop their attacking me—”
“Why?” she interrupted. “Why attack you?”
“I’d had a run in with them before, at home.” He gulped, suddenly overcome with a longing for that home. “I stopped them killing a little native creature I’d made a friend of, and they hated me for it. It was Bane did this to my face, later on. Well, the person Madame summoned could have been their father, their real father, for he smelled as they did, and I know Dutter wasn’t their real father. The Dutters were only paid to rear them.”
“Was Marool really their mother?” asked Ornery.
“Does it fit in with what we’ve heard from other sources?” Questioner asked.
Ornery offered, “The gardener said she’d disposed of two or three a year since she’d been back, so she was away, somewhere, perhaps long enough to have had those two.”
“So. If she bore these boys, was she was guilty of mismothering?”
Both Mouche and Ornery nodded, Ornery adding, “Oh, my, yes Ma’am. That’s about as mis a mothering as anybody could do. And then, playing about with them here … Well, that’s as bad a thing as you can do on Newholme.”