Chapter 34
Iron clanged. My hair, thoroughly tangled, blinded me as I jerked a bag off my head and hurled it to the floor. I spun around as a key clanked in the lock of a barred iron door, and two nameless jailers strode away.
They took the light with them. I closed my eyes for two breaths, letting my Eventide eyes adjust, and opened them again as I glanced around my prison.
It had a cot in one corner and a grating in the floor of another, where the soft trickle of running water drifted up. There was no window, no source of light whatsoever.
That made the sight of Lewis lying on the cot, flushed and struggling to sit up, all the more terrible.
“Who is it?” he asked, his voice more displeased than threatening. He had been stripped to his shirt and trousers and bore visible bruises. The shot to his leg had been bandaged, but by the fevered look in his eyes, not well.
“Lewis,” I said, running to his side. “Have you been down here all this time? Alone in the dark?”
“Solitude has its merits,” he soothed. He startled me by taking my hand as I crouched beside him. “I wrote you a poem. I know how you loathe my recitations, but if you will permit me…”
He trailed off, closing his eyes as if to remember. The moment stretched long and, concerned, I reached to feel his forehead. It was burning up, as was his thigh when I gently put a hand near his bandage. “Damn.”
“Indeed,” he affirmed, drawing the word out blearily. “I may die soon, Ottilie. You must read my poem. Promise me you will.”
“You have yet to write it down, so I cannot. You will simply have to refrain from dying for now,” I informed him. “Try not to be so dramatic.”
“My darling, we are imprisoned and I have been shot. I have been bandaged by a manic veterinarian with not a droplet of scrubbing alcohol in sight. I believe I have also been poisoned.”
At this, he found a cup on the thin mattress and held it up.
I blinked twice in rapid succession, struggling to track his words past ‘darling.’ I took the cup from him and sniffed. It smelled of damp tin, and nothing more. “Why do you say that?”
He found my hand again, clinging to it and either ignoring or not processing my question. “I am doomed, and of little use to you. I am sorry.”
I patted his hand and set the cup aside. “You are delirious. Please rest and let me think. I will get us out of here.”
I turned away before the sight of his haggard face could sully my courage. I paced the cell, examining it from all angles and stared down the grate, which was far too small for anyone to slip through, even if it had not been secured.
I went to the barred door and peered as far as I could down the passageway in both directions. I saw other cells, but heard no sounds of occupation.
“Where are the other prisoners?” I asked, coming back over to Lewis. “From the way Baffin spoke, this prison should be packed with Separatists.”
“One and two and three and four, coffins laid upon the moor,” he canted in reply. His voice faded at the last word, and I realized he had slipped into unconsciousness.
I gently felt for his pulse and leaned forward, listening to his breath. Both were steady, but that did little to soothe me.
For a time, I paced. Hours may have passed, or perhaps it simply felt like it. I tried to think, tried to soothe myself with the exercise, but both proved useless. I could see no way out of the cell. I could not carry Lewis, and we could not rely on rescue.
Hunger began to gnaw at my stomach and my nerves felt properly fraught. I found no quip, no dry observation to alleviate the gloom.
Once I realized that, my fortitude began to unravel with frightening speed. I stood facing the bars, my back to Lewis, as I battled.
“I am not alone,” I murmured, forcing that to the front of my thoughts. “They do not have the artifact. Pretoria escaped. All is not lost.”
But what all would look like, from here on out, I could not say. I simply would have to survive long enough to find out.
“Ottilie?” Lewis called, sounding vaguely more alert. “Ottilie, are you well?”
I tried to scrub my face with my hands, saw my still-bound wrists, and closed my eyes. Several tears trailed down my cheeks.
“A moment, please. I am thinking.”
A stretch of quiet.
“You are crying,” he observed softly.
“I do not cry.”
The cot creaked. “Come here.”
I glanced back, huffing impatiently, but the sight of him sitting there, wounded leg stretched out before him and compassion in his eyes broke the last of my reserve. Some sense seemed to have returned to him, and he looked more alert, too.
I went to him and sat on the edge of the bed. “We will escape,” I promised, though I knew it was a lie.
Warm arms enveloped me. I stilled, too tense, too distraught, to take any consolation from his embrace—an embrace I had imagined a hundred times, alone in my apartment with only Hieronymus for company.
Hieronymus. I had lost him. I had lost him, Mr. Stoke, and Lewis’s and my hope of a free future. Even if we survived this, what was there for us?
“Lewis,” I whispered. “I lost our money. The police confiscated it.”
He stilled. I wondered if he had not understood, if the fever had over whelmed him again.
“No matter,” he said. “Perhaps we can… ah, reclaim it.”
“Perhaps. But even then… it is still not enough for our escape.”
“No matter,” he said again, though this time there was a quality to his voice, a forced mildness, that made my stomach sink.
“You are just saying that because you think you are dying,” I mumbled.
He drew back a little, squinting down at me. “Pardon me?”
“Earlier, you insisted you are dying.”
“Ah. I am sorry. Why are you not embracing me? Would you like me to let go?” He started to pull away.
“No!” I cinched my arms around him, though I felt color rise in my cheeks. I hedged, “I did not want to hurt you.”
“I am not fragile, Ottilie.”
Slowly, I leaned my head into his shoulder. I relished the solidity of him between my arms, the press of his ribs, the shift of his muscle, the rise and fall of his breaths. Harden flickered through my head, but did not root.
For a time we held one another, there in the lonely dark.
As my melancholy began to lift, I loosened my grasp but did not sit up, my forehead in his neck, my breath mingling with his.
I began to grow overly conscious of those breaths—a little too fast, perhaps.
My blood ran faster too, his proximity taking on a new level of meaning.
If he felt it, he did not comment. We simply remained as we were, each to their own thoughts, until he spoke again.
“Do you have any idea how we might escape?”
I sat up, loath though I was to leave his embrace. I knew, accepted, that such intimacy would not leave this cell. “No. But if you happen to have a spoon, I will start digging.”
“There you are,” he said, fondness in his voice. “The intrepid Ottilie returns.”
I found myself beaming absurdly into the darkness and pulled myself together. “Well. Did you see anything useful on the way in?”
“Actually, yes,” he said, pushing himself a little more upright. “We are in the east dungeons, the pre-imperial section. When there was light, I could see the arches. Can you see them now?”
I looked at the front of the cell, where my Eventide sight cast our prison in sepia tones. “The doorway?”
“Yes. Overtop of it, there was an older, larger entry.” He patted the back wall. “This was added, too. The original stone is red granite, imported from the north. You can see the newer stone is grey Harren.”
“That helps us?”
“It may,” he hedged. “I studied the Revolution a great deal, as part of my military training. There were sections of the dungeons—catacombs—blocked off during the same rebuild. That includes the old siege reservoir. It was fed by the river and connected to the canals of Old Harrow. If we can get in, perhaps we can swim out.”
“That is an excellent plan,” I decided. “You know the layout?”
“I do.”
“Your training was extensive,” I observed, grudgingly impressed.
“That I learned on my own,” he corrected. “I have an interest in architecture.”
“I did not know that.”
He shrugged. “I have many interests.”
“What else?” I asked, lured off topic by the pleasure of simply talking to him.
He glanced at me—or rather in my direction, since he still could not see.
For a moment I thought he would not respond, then he said, “Architecture. Music—orchestral, in particular. The Kessan masters are my preference, though the Basinine are a close second. But anything after Ciollo is popular nonsense.”
“Naturally,” I said, trying not to smile. “And your poetry, of course.”
“Yes. Poetry of any form save pre-imperial Arrentian—how fitting.”
“Why?”
“It is boorish and crude and contains far too many references to grovelling.”
“To deities?” I asked, sifting through my own knowledge of pre-imperial Harren culture.
“Mm. Yes. And worshipping rulers. And beautiful women… The latter, I will admit, has some merit.”
I felt my cheeks warm again. Whether or not I fell into his classification of beautiful women was a question that remained unasked and unanswered, however.
A door clanged off in the dark.
Our eyes locked.
“We must take them by surprise,” I whispered. “We do not act until the right moment, when they are inside the cell with us. Then we overpower them.”
Though we were both aware of the futility of that hope, he did not question it.
“You must try to look more pathetic,” he suggested as footsteps approached. “The more helpless they believe you to be, the better.”
I gave him a flat look, which I realized, belatedly, he could not see. “I look exceptionally pathetic, I assure you.”
“You do not sound like it. I know you are as indomitable as the tides, but they must not.”
“Please stop complimenting me,” I requested. I was blushing yet again, and growing weary of it.
The footsteps reached us, and we braced.
There was a clatter. A nondescript guard shoved a tray under the door, tested the lock with a firm jerk, and walked away again.
“Perhaps we should have expected that,” I surmised, glad for the shift in focus. I went and retrieved the tray, which proved to have two bowls of bread stew and two cups of water.
“What if it is drugged?” I asked. “You were convinced so, earlier.”
We both stared at the tray for a long, long time. My stomach audibly growled, and Lewis rubbed at his chin.
“I will test it,” he said. “If all is well in an hour, you eat, too.”
“Nonsense,” I returned. “It will be even harder for me to carry you out of here if you are senseless.”
“Then neither of us should eat.”
I stared at the stew and water and swallowed a rush of self-pity. “All right. Agreed.”
I set the tray aside and came to sit on the floor beside the cot.
“I am so hungry,” I said bitterly. “Tell me about your time in The Sarre. I need a distraction.”
“You know a great deal already,” he reminded me, rolling onto his side and looking in my direction with a companionability, a lack of poise that I had rarely seen before. “Tell me of your life, here in Harrow.”
I hesitated, but the quiet was too loud. “What do you want to know?”
“Something I do not know,” he decided. “Your architecture.”
I thought for a time, struggling to find something to say that he would not find mundane. Finally, however, the silence grew too thick, and I began to speak.
“One of my neighbors is a cellist,” I said, settling back against the stone.
It was cold and gritty and unpleasant, but I hid in the memory of my courtyard.
“She plays every day, at the same time. Just before dawn, when my threads twine. I lie in my bed and listen. I leave the balcony door open for Ronny, of course, no matter the weather. And it is peaceful, the cool breeze, the chirping of the birds in the wisteria, and the cello.”
Lewis made a noise, low and appreciative and prompting me to go on.
I did. I described not the novelties of my days in Harrow, but the mundanities, the common experiences that had been the foundation of my life. The small moments I savored between the work and the plotting and the obligations.
Finally, with the sound of his breathing steady in the dark, my words trailed off. And, head leaning on the cot next to his, I fell asleep.