by Megan Hart
"Shh. I'm going to get you out of here."
I untied her as swiftly as I could, then gathered her into my arms. She seemed so small. Shudders wracked her. Her skin was as cold as the blizzard outside. I took off my cloak and wrapped her in it. We sat on the floor of Rosten's workroom. When her body finally stopped its trembling, she looked up at me. Her lips met mine.
I thought of women carrying their infants across snow-bound mountains with little more than rags to cover them. "And we'll get out of here."
She nodded, then stood with a wince. She held onto me for support. "I'm lucky. I think he was planning to really start beating me tomorrow." She looked at me with wet eyes but managed a smile. "He doesn't realize the man of my house beat me regularly. What the Book Monster did was like love taps, compared."
Who'd have imagined we could laugh there, in Rosten's workroom? But we did, until the giggles made us breathless and we had to gasp for breath. She clapped a hand over my mouth to silence me and looked to the door the soldiers stood behind.
"How do we get out of here?"
She looked down the corridor Rosten had left through. "There are cells down that corridor. There are women in there. And there's a door that leads outside. The death door. That's how they...that's where they take out the bodies."
That sobered us. I moved to the doorway and peered down it. Cells lined it all the way to the place where it went out of sight to match the building's curve. I heard the soft sound of a baby's cry, quickly hushed by its mother.
"He has children in there?"
"Only the girls." Galya limped behind me and looked around. "He took the boys away already."
My heart broke a little more for the mothers whose babes had been taken from them. "Will they be ready to go, if we help them?"
She nodded. "I think so."
We entered the cell corridor. "We'd better hurry. There's no telling how long before Rosten comes back."
Galya had paused to pull a tattered kedalya from a pile on the floor. She tore off the headpiece and let it fall, then put on the rest of the garment. "Do you think they've escaped safely? The others, I mean."
"Daelyn and his men were going after them. If there's a way, they will have found it."
I didn't want to think about what would happen if they hadn't. If Daelyn were discovered...and Lir...
"Come on, then." Galya took my hand. "We can only try. I'd rather die trying than with that bastard's kiss on my skin."
The women had all been placed in the same cell. Seven of them, identical even now in the kedalyas they hadn't removed. Small children slept in their laps, or at their sides. There were sixteen people, all together.
"How are we going to get them out?" Galya asked.
I looked around for a key, but of course found none. I looked for a tool that might help break open the lock, and remembered seeing some that might work in Rosten's workroom. I brought back a heavy pair of pincers and a large-headed hammer.
The lock was nothing fancy. I imagined Rosten had felt little need for heavy-duty hardware, since so few women would have even tried to escape from his prison.
These women, by the very fact they'd agreed to follow Galya to Elitan, were different. They stirred as I banged open the lock. They gathered their children about them. They stood. They waited for me to open the door, and then they began to file through.
"Wait!" I said. "We have to figure out –"
"It's all right," Galya murmured. "Sisters, are you all ready?"
They nodded. One stepped forward. "I am ready, Galya."
"Aeris, this is Zia. She is my nearsib."
Zia peeled back her headpiece to reveal a face so like Galya's I had to smile. "Do you have a plan for us?"
"Where is the door outside?" I asked Galya.
"At the end of the corridor. But it's guarded on the outside, I'm certain of it."
"I'll be right back. All of you, back into the cell until I return, in case the soldiers decide to check."
Galya followed me down the corridor to the door. I put my ear to it but could hear nothing. We were far below the ground, and it seemed probable there were steps or another hall before we could actually reach the night air.
I took a step back. Myself, and even with Galya, I might have taken the risk. We both could fight, even with the crude weapons from Rosten's workshop. But with untrained women, and children, I dared not take a chance.
I looked around the corridor for some idea of what to do next. It had gotten narrower the further down we went, and darker. And colder, despite the tapestries hung along its walls. No scenes of the hunt or revels on these woven masterpieces. Instead, pictures of degradation and torture decorated them.
Yet something about their design plucked at my mind. I touched one, thinking. I lifted one to peer behind it. Nothing but a stone wall.
"Aeris?"
I lifted another, then a third. "Galya, I think I might have found a way out."
The sixth tapestry I lifted, the one in the narrowest and darkest part of the corridor, revealed a set of stones slightly lighter than their neighbors. If I hadn't been looking for the difference, I'd never have spotted it. Another secret passage.
"Now I know how Daelyn did it." I pushed on the stones and they slid back enough for me to get my fingers hooked behind. I nudged the false wall over enough to put my face to the hole it left behind. The sharp tang of the sea came to me. "We'll go this way."
It took little time to gather the women and children again, but little time was all we had. I took a lantern from a hook and gave it to Zia, and we herded them all into the hidden passage.
"Follow it to the sea," I told her. "I don't know what you'll find there –"
"We'll manage," Zia interrupted, very much like her sister. She squeezed my arm. "We'll find a way. Thank you."
It wasn't enough to send them on their way to uncertainty and danger, yet I had no choice. I'd acted from the heart. There was no time for anything else.
"Aren't you coming?" Galya asked as she slipped behind the fake wall.
"My place is here, for awhile longer anyway." I needed to face Daelyn and Lir. "I did what I came to do."
"But –"
She had no more time to speak, for we heard shouting.
"Go!" I cried, and thrust her into the passage. I pulled the stone wall shut and rehung the tapestry.
The shouts grew closer. They were coming from Rosten's workroom. I ran for the door to the outside and flung it open to find a set of steep stairs. I climbed with the noise of the soldiers close behind me. I burst into another dark corridor and ran, blind, praying to the Invisible Mother I would not find a wall or door with my head.
The air around me expanded and I could no longer feel the sides of the hall close by my shoulders. Without warning, I slid in something cold and wet. Snow. I looked upward and felt it covering my face. I was outside.
I took the guards by surprise. I'm sure they hadn't expected someone to come running pell-mell past them. I made it all the way to the street before they came after me.
Bright and welcome light assaulted me from the streetlamps. I was three or four blocks away from the House of the Book. The snow hadn't kept away the men in the poetry houses. With curfew drawing close, they'd stumbled into the street to make their drunken ways back to their beds. I came out of the alley into a crowd of them and slid in the icy street.
More shouting, this time from in front of me. Several soldiers burst out the door of the poetry house, along with a large number of patrons.
"Find him!"
"Find the bloke who put up this nasty business!"
The one on the left waved a familiar poster around. The snow turned it into a sodden mess, but not before I caught a glimpse of the picture. Another mother and child. The running ink gave her tears.
More men burst out of the door behind the soldiers. Drunk, most of them, though some spilled out from the poetry house in a cloud of herb smoke so thick it made me cough from where I stood. All of t
hem were shouting and posturing. Some of them also carried posters, or pieces of posters, which they tore into smaller bits and threw to the street.
"Find the bastard and string him up!"
This was serious. With the crowd all around me, I had no place to go. The soldiers who'd been guarding the death door now reached the street. They were upon me in minutes. A huge hand grabbed my waist and another the back of my neck. A giant man grabbed my hair and pulled until tears stung my eyes.
I was swung around to face the roaring patrons, who sounded thirsty for my blood. I kicked, but couldn't connect. I was caught.
The hand in my hair began to shake me so hard I thought it might rip from my skull.
"Where's the rest of your nasty propaganda?"
"What were you doing in Lord Rosten's workroom?"
The two sets of soldiers were accusing me of two separate crimes, yet both were certain I was guilty of something. I was given no chance to reply. More shaking and a punch to the guts had me gasping for air instead of words. I hung limp in the giant's arms, but that wasn't enough.
"Thought you'd sneak in just before curfew, eh? Thought you'd get away with it again, eh? Spreading your filthy, perverted –"
"That's quite enough, Percy. He's of no use to us if he's killed."
The giant stopped shaking me, though for a moment the world continued to spin so fast I feared I might vomit from the dizziness. My feet scuffed the icy street, but Percy's grasp kept me upright. He turned me to face the owner of the voice, though I already knew to whom it belonged.
Lord Rosten.
"I know you." Rosten looked me up and down with a sneer that told me he wasn't impressed by the sight. He turned to the crowd. "This is all under control! The curfew chime is about to ring! All of you, get home to your warm beds, and thank the fates we've caught this offender with his fingers still black with ink from drawing his filth!"
Rosten yanked up my hands until my arms strained in their sockets. My fingers were black, though not from ink. As the grumbling crowd began to disperse, he turned to me.
Rosten's lip curled. "Where are they?"
I met his gaze levelly, but didn't answer. If a brave face made a brave heart, I had the fearlessness of a lion that night.
Rosten didn't seem disappointed when I didn't answer. He snapped at the soldiers. "Take him away!"
Each one took me beneath the arm and lifted me. My feet dangled. My arms felt wrenched from their sockets. I bit my tongue and refused to give Rosten's goons the satisfaction of hearing me cry out. As they carried me away, a hooded figure, lurking further in the shadows, caught my eye.
It was Lir.
Chapter Forty-Three
"Tell us the truth and things will go much easier for you." Rosten's smile revealed graying teeth in rotting gums. His breath smelled like a flyblown carcass. I gagged, and he stepped neatly away like a man used to steering clear of vomit.
"I didn't put up those posters. I wasn't in the Dancing Dove."
"Don't make me out for a fool. I know it wasn't you. That trash is the least of my concern." Rosten crossed one arm over his stomach and rested his other elbow upon it so he could tap one finger against his mouth. Contemplating. "I want to know how you got into my workroom. How you got past my guards. How you moved the prisoners out and where they went!"
It was difficult to speak with a bleeding mouth, but I managed. "They were gone when I got there."
"Liar! I can smell the lies on you!" He seemed to make a conscious effort to calm himself. "Since you've deprived me of my prime witness, you'll have to take her place."
I blinked but said nothing. Thus far, he hadn't beaten me any more severely than I'd ever been beaten before. The split lip had happened when his agents dropped me onto the stone floor of his workroom. I kept my gaze on his face and didn't look at the contraptions and gadgets he'd gathered for his "work."
"Silence does speak louder." Rosten spat on the floor at my feet. "Let's see if we can coax some noise out of you."
He backhanded me across the face with a leather glove. It stung, but I doubted it would leave much of a bruise. I rocked with the blow and strained against the ropes binding me to my chair. Rosten smacked me again.
I'm proud to say I didn't even whimper. What were a few slaps after all I'd been through? My skin was tougher than that, and my will certainly stronger.
"I don't have anything to tell you."
"Get him up."
Two brutes unlashed my hands and feet and jerked me upright. My feet had grown numb, and I stumbled, but they kept me standing. A person can only be afraid for so long before the fear turns also to numbness, like a limb too long tied. One thing kept me from utter terror. I'd seen Lir watching me be taken away. He would tell Daelyn, and Daelyn would...would....what would Daelyn do?
"Turn him around! Get him up on the post."
They tied my hands in front of me to a wooden post taller than I and thicker around. My feet were also secured, spread wide. My cheek pressed the splintered wood and the sting of a sliver entered my skin.
Please, Invisible Mother, I prayed. Don't let them take off my shirt to whip me. Rosten might beat me for not speaking, but if they discovered I was not male, he would surely kill me.
The Invisible Mother must have been watching over me that night, because when one of the guards asked Rosten if he wanted me stripped to skin, the Book Master said no.
"It takes longer to break the skin this way." He sounded gleeful.
I tensed to meet the blow he laid across my back. I thought at first he'd killed me outright...and after three more lashes I began to wish he had.
I'm sure I pissed myself; I know I puked from the pain. Rosten's flogger came down upon my back ten times total before he paused to catch his breath. By then, I could no longer scream. My voice broke before my skin.
He came close and I smelled his rotting breath again. His lips pressed to my ear. "Tell me where they went and who is behind this, and I won't give you five more."
I couldn't have answered had I wanted to. Rosten gave a snort of disgust. "Revive him."
Frigid water splashed me all over and brought me back from the darkness I'd been welcoming. Every movement was agony. I would've sold my soul had Rosten offered me release in exchange for it...but I would not betray my friends.
"Strip him down," he said at last. "Let us see if that won't break him."
They tore my shirt from me as I hung unyielding against the pole.
"What by the Void?"
Rosten came close to me and fingered the binding cloth. His touch on my bruised back made me cry out in pain. He tore away the cloth, then yanked me as far as the ropes would let me be turned.
"Mother's Milk!" His face had gone crimson with rage. His eyes met mine, the fury in them like a palpable force between us. "How long has your master known of this?"
"He doesn't know," I managed to gasp. "I did not tell him. I knew...he would...have me killed...."
Rosten had begun to shake, so great was his fury. "You filth, you stink of blood! You waste, you perversion! And all this time –"
"All this time you thought me a man." My whisper was hoarse. I don't know where I found the strength to laugh, but I did. "Right under your nose."
He backhanded me across the face. My head hit the pole hard enough to make me see stars. Ringing filled my ears, but it didn't prevent me from hearing his next words.
"Have your way with it," Rosten told the guards, and left me to their lack of mercy.
The act of love between two men of Alyria is usually made with more finesse, but there was naught of love in what they did to me. They whipped me more and used me, first one and then the other, and while Rosten had been most careful not to make me bleed, the guards had no such care.
If I passed out, they revived me with buckets of cold water, or a slap to the back. They were insatiable creatures, or perhaps there were more than two of them. I couldn't keep track.
When they had finished, they dumped
me in a pile of filthy straw with a pail of dirty water and an equally dirty cloth. I could not even clean myself of the puke and the blood and their seed. I lay in my own waste and waited to die.
Chapter Forty-Four
"Get up, folly."
I was woken from a dreamless sleep by rough hands that yanked me to my feet. For one blessed moment, I couldn't remember where I was, or why I was there. Only one moment. In the next, the whole awful night came back to me as my torn back and bruised muscles screamed in protest. I opened my eyes.