You wake up not where you expect...

You wake on rough bed that is no longer the hard and sticky banquet table.

The ceiling is ribs of old timber. Someone has put a folded blanket under your head and not under the rest of you, and the air smells like soap and cold ash and bread that has already been cut. The blindfold is gone. The lead from your neck is gone. The beads are gone too. Nipples and clit ache around empty rings, the metal still in, the humming caps cut off with a snip you did not hear. The collar is still buckled. The wax on your stomach has cracked in the shape of a night of debauchery.

A woman in undyed wool is sitting on a stool with a basin, adult, sleeves rolled, and she is wringing a cloth as if she has been doing it long enough to be bored of your face.

"Don’t sit up fast," she says. "You were carried in like laundry and dumped on the step. Palace man said the signing was finished and the king was done with the copy. His word. "Copy" She wrings the cloth again. "I am Sister Brin. This is the abbey off Lowgate, not the palace chapel. If you are going to be sick, the basin is by the side table."

You sit up slower than you want. Sera’s chest, your chest moves in the open air because nobody put the lingerie back on you. Someone threw a sheet over your hips. The hall, the pastry, the envoy’s mouth, the table — it all comes back in the wrong order, and your voice when you find it is still hers and quieter.

"He..." You begin to whisper in a tired breath

"He disposed of you," Brin says, and then she gives you the longer line because the short one sat there like a familiar slap. "Disposed means a man from the palace courts dropped you at our door and told the portress the king had got what he needed from your body and we could keep the rest or put "it" in the street. We kept you because a naked woman with that face causes a riot, and we have already had one letter from the authorities this year about riots."

She washes the cracked wax until the red flakes come off in the water. The skin underneath is pink. She looks weary as she is reminded of the queen. She looks at the collar and leaves it.

"We have a spare shift that has been on a sister’s back, and we have one fold in the press that is new albeit cheap. The worn one will not surprise your body, probably a decent fit. The unused one we do not hand out for comfort, quite the itchy fabric that one. You can lie here until your legs work, but don't put that face of yours near the windows, that queen has already caused enough mayhem."

Outside the slit window a bell that is not the palace bell marks some small hour. You are not on the table. You are not in his room. The ring that ran the beads is not in this building. Charlie is still only behind Sera’s eyes, and the abbey has offered you a floor, a basin, and two kinds of cloth, and nothing that looks a return to the palace.