Only the innocent found themselves in the Iron Abbey.

At least, that was how the old saying went. Here in the far north, far from civilized climes and the armies of the Assembly, the Church of the Holy Star held sway, every fishing village and cold-water port within sight of one of their grim fortress-cathedrals cleaving to the code of their faith rather than the Assembly’s common law. And that code was a harsh one. Indeed, it would be easier to list what was not considered heresy in the eyes of the Church, particularly where women were involved, and everywhere their inquisitors travelled, they left families broken and daughterless in their wake. Those they captured could no expect mercy, for accusation and condemnation went hand-in-hand, while generations of scripture had long established that it was far better to see a thousand innocents suffer than permit a single unbeliever to go free. The best any young woman who fell into the Church’s clutches could expect was to find herself on display in the stocks of the nearest town for its citizens to jeer and pelt with rotten fruit.

For the rest, well, there were prisons like the Iron Abbey. It had been built inside the side of a mountain, its cells and passageways hewn from solid rock over the course of generations. It was a pit for hope, a dungeon packed to the brim with women imprisoned for the rest of their live, for none had ever escaped. Even if they could somehow overcome the guards and make their way through the gate that served as the prison’s sole entrance, they were high on the lifeless, jagged and snow-covered slopes of one of the mightiest mountains in the land. If the treacherous falls didn’t get them, then the blizzards would, or they’d starve to death after getting lost in the near-constant whiteout conditions.

That didn’t stop Alyssa from trying, of course. In the dank cold of her cell, the struggles of the beautiful poetess echoed off the stone walls, the creak of wood and rope loud enough to be heard down the corridor, while gagged cries found their way through the grill of the iron-bound door. “MMMPPPGGGHHH!” she screamed, buckling like a rampaging stallion against her bondage, short dark hair waving about her in her struggles. She’d been bound spread-eagle, her wrists and ankles secured to the four posts of the bedframe, while more ropes were belted about her waist and beneath her breasts before being wrapped beneath the mattress, ensuring she’d never be able to rise from the narrow bed. The guards at the Iron Abbey had long since grown inured to the protestations of innocence from the captives in their charge, and like the rest of her fellow prisoners, a leather mask gag served to stifle Alyssa’s, reducing even the most heartfelt and eloquent objection of her treatment to muffled grunts. Her sole article of clothing, the thin white cotton shift worn by all the prisoners, had hiked up in her struggles, and her shivers deepened as she imagined the lustful eyes of her jailers fixing on her bare, pale thighs like rats sighting fresh carrion, their meaty hands following soon after… “Mmmmppggghhh!”

Why did this have to happen to me? Alyssa begged inwardly, blue eyes starting to fill up with tears. By any reasonable standard, she was an innocent woman. She’d offered no criticism of the Church and its ways, nor was she a part of the growing rebellion against them she’d heard in every tavern and roadside market she’d passed on her travels. She’d never kissed another woman, or shown insolence towards a man, or any of the other multitudinous offenses the Church punished. Indeed, she’d only come this far north to write a poem about the whalers who plied their trade upon the frigid waters, hardly anything political. That had not protected her from the inquisitors, her arrest taking place in heartbeats and her trial conducted on the spot, so that she soon found herself bound, gagged and placed onto the back of a cart for transport to the Abbey. In this place of horrors, no one who heard her cries would do anything about it. Yet her screams continued, filling the tiny cell with garbled noise in the vain hope that the truth would somehow set her free.

I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m innocent! Please believe me, I’m innocent!