Chapter 16 Lukas
16
Lukas
He was a sad shadow of his old self, hardly able to hold a cup steady in his hand. Stasya was somewhere out there, in this grand house full of strangers, and he couldn’t do a thing to help her. Twice a day his keepers would get him out of bed and let him shuffle down the hallway and back. Not on his own; the journey to court, on top of what had happened at Heartwood, meant his legs could barely hold him, and he needed to lean on one of the men to walk even that small distance. There’d been talk of a physician earlier on, but no such person had appeared, and Lukas had not asked. He had a pallet, he had a roof over his head, he got two meals a day. Mostly those meals were a kind of gruel, which compared poorly with the fare back home on the farm, but at least it was keeping him alive.
He didn’t ask to see Stasya. If she’d been allowed to visit him, she’d have done so; that was the way things were with the two of them. He missed her. He missed the stories that gave him heart in sad times and made him laugh at the end of a difficult day and helped make sense of things. He worried about her. She would hate being shut up in this place with no sight of the open sky. But the men who took turns tending to him were lowly members of the Ruler’s household, servants who cleaned out privies and scrubbed floors and scoured cooking pans; they would know nothing of where she was or what had become of her. Perhaps she’d been housed somewhere better, in a place where she could go outside when she chose. Perhaps Irina was coming out of her shell now and the two of them were making friends within the household. A man could hope.
He’d become used to the pattern of days here, the visits of his keepers, the changing of dressings, the grey meals, the awkward exercise. The long, lonely nights and the troubling dreams, in which his family still suffered under the Commander’s cruel control. Then, one night, everything changed. He was woken abruptly by someone ripping off his blanket and hauling him out of bed, someone with an iron grip and a harsh voice.
‘Move, fellow!’
There were two of them, guards, men he did not recognise. ‘What—’
‘Shut your mouth and walk.’
‘But where—’ It was cold. He was in a borrowed nightshirt, a garment almost falling apart with age, and his feet were bare. His head was fuzzy with sleep. A dream. A bad dream.
‘Ruler’s orders.’ They were more or less dragging him along the hallway now, one on either side. This was real. Lamps burned here and there; he could hear faint sounds of the household stirring. It must be nearly morning. ‘You’re being moved.’
Lukas did not ask where. He needed all the strength he could find to keep walking, not to sag between the guards like a sack of flour. Stasya would say, Hold on to hope. She would tell a story about … about someone who seemed powerless and ended up being a hero. He gritted his teeth, thought of warriors, quests and dragons, and forced himself on. Perhaps they would let him see her now. Perhaps this was the first step toward going home, standing up to the Commander, saving his family. Perhaps …
It felt like a long way. There were stone steps. His knees ached and his breath was short. For a bit they were outside. He judged it to be close to daybreak, but the sky was heavy with cloud. Briefly, he breathed fresh air; the cold hurt his chest. Then inside again, a different building with more guards, and sounds of … of … Sounds he did not want to identify, for they reminded him of the bad time in Heartwood, and the wretched place where the Commander had kept his prisoners.
His guards came to a halt. Lukas made himself stand upright, despite the pain. I was strong before. I will be strong again. In stories, sometimes the weak became heroes. Another guard opened a door for them. ‘Down the end,’ he said. As they went through, the disturbing noises grew and grew and became the voices of men. Men taunting him. Men rattling things against iron bars and shouting mad nonsense. Men weeping, screaming, shouting to be let out, please, please, their wives and children needed them. Worst, as he looked into the cage-like spaces on either side of the walkway, were the men hunched down in corners, their arms wrapped around themselves, saying nothing at all.
Down the end was an empty cell, barely big enough to contain one man. His captors pushed him in, threw his blanket after him, clanged the door shut and bolted it.
‘Sweet dreams, fellow,’ said one, and they were gone.
‘Welcome to hell,’ a voice called from the cell opposite. ‘What did you do?’