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When the attack happened, Mikaila hadn't had time to breathe. She'd smelled the smoke before she saw it, and by then it was too late. The Crescian soldiers fell upon her escort like dogs.
Barking in Continental, they tore the driver from his seat and threw him down, and turned over the cart with a massive thrust of Momentum. She'd spilled out onto the dirt along with the cargo. Papa always said her reaction time was very good, and her mind quick in a crisis. That she was a good soldier.
She wasn't so quick then. The spell-blast left her reeling, the crates and their contents spilling into the dust beyond the bounds of her mental math. Bootsteps thundered around her. Men and hounds alike howled, and she cast about the wreck for something, anything, to use.
Mikaila reached for the first good thing she saw, diving under the upturned carriage in her haste to have it. Her fingers closed around one end of the quarterstaff that had seen many a lark in the Temple training yard. Against a handful of armed and trained swordsmen and spellwrights, it felt silly and unthreatening. She didn't care. There was no time to care.
A shiny, metal-shod boot stomped down on the other end of the wood. Someone else's hands grabbed her from behind. The staff was wrenched from her grasping fingers, and she herself was hauled clean off the dirt. She thrashed and kicked savagely as the man lifted her and pinned her arms to her sides, and in so doing denied her the use of much pymary. Mikaila opened her mouth to scream and choked on dust instead.
What now? She thrashed uselessly and couldn't think, couldn't cast, couldn't breathe.
A cacophony of foreign shouts rang in her ears. Animal terror gripped her. She knew at a glance her driver was already dead, and so were his hounds, so she had no hope of escape. Not unless she killed them all. And with what? Mikaila coughed and squirmed in her captor's grip, heart pumping hot, useless adrenaline through her veins.
"Stop! Let go of me!" she cried thinly. Even if she knew the Continental words, she wouldn't have recalled them in her panic.
The man swore as she struggled, but kept a firm grip on her. All she understood was the shock in his voice when he turned and shouted, "Captain! What do we do with a girl?"
A red-clad woman on a sleek, spotted hound of her own strode up to him as the others picked through the mess like vultures. She looked on Mikaila's tear-streaked face with blank surprise, and some of her subordinates swiveled and stared, as though waiting to hear her decree. "Huh," she remarked astutely. "That's new."
That quickly — was it over that quickly? Mikaila's eyes darted everywhere, but she could see nothing and no one of use. What could she cast in these conditions to take out three or four moving targets? She couldn't cast if she couldn't move.
"Put her with the other prisoners," the woman declared.
"But — I didn't think Alds trained girls?"
"They don't. Look at her, she's got no gear or anything."
"So, what's she doing here?"
"Fuck if I know. Stick to protocol for now. Lemme decide later, we've got work to do."
Mikaila couldn't understand a word of it. When she saw the woman dismount and reach for her pack, which was not so far from her sword, she drove her heels harmlessly into her captor's leathers and wailed in genuine terror, "Stop! Please!"
Her panicky demands for freedom, for explanations, went ignored. A rope was lashed between her teeth, and another around her wrists. The woman held her shoulders and spoke nonsense, low and firm. The smoke was billowing higher now, and Mikaila could see the tower of it blotting the horizon behind her attackers. She couldn't scream for help now. There was no vliegeng to signal, and nothing to cast with besides.
A blindfold was thrust over her head from behind. The woman shouted, "Talo! Take my hound," and within seconds Mikaila was roughly bundled onto a saddle and hauled off. Her heart drummed painfully the whole way. The wind whipped her loosed hair into a tangle, and the dog's huge paws lashed the earth in a steady rhythm for long minutes. She still smelled the smoke.
When the air was thinner, the hound slowed to a stop. Voices clamored. Mikaila blinked against her blindfold and fidgeted against the tight ropes. She could have cut them with a thought, but she didn't dare try. It would do her no good. She was roughly let down from the saddle, and she stumbled on the uneven ground, nearly pitching sideways till unfriendly hands steadied her. Two men conversed, one in front of her and one behind her.
"Tirna's tits, that girl's an Ald."
"Yep."
"We taking her in for processing?"
"Mm. Captain's orders."
A wet nose snuffled at her cheek, followed by the swipe of a long, warm tongue, and she flinched. Someone led the hound off, reins jangling. Then she was whisked away farther still, into a door and through long, quiet halls. She couldn't tell the Material of the floor through her boots beyond that it was some kind of stone, which didn't help, and she stumbled as she was shoved around more corners than she could count. At the end of it all, a door creaked noisily open.
When the blindfold came off and she was shoved inside, Mikaila braced herself for the sight of a torture rack. Instead she faced a tiny, bare cell. There was a small bed, table, chair, and chamber pot, and one uselessly narrow window by the ceiling, all cold and neat. The door slammed shut behind her with a faint echo.
She jumped and whirled. A key turned in the lock, a man walked away whistling, and she caught only a brief glimpse of his retreating back. When he had gone, she turned and mapped the limited Materials at her disposal, which took less than a minute — linen, wood, iron, and granite chief among them. None of them could do her much good.
For the next few hours, she sat alone, sick with thoughts of her immediate future; of Papa and Mason. Mason was annoying at times, but she found she missed his intolerable face with a sudden keenness. Was he all right? Did Papa still think her safely homebound? Were they fighting? Captured? Dead? Her thoughts spiraled uncontrollably, snagging from one hideous conviction to the next.
Footsteps came and went outside her cell. She sat in the cold and shook, fighting to grasp her reeling thoughts and marshal them to order. She needed a plan. She needed to survive. If they had wanted to kill her, surely they would have done so on the battlefield.
When the footsteps came back, there was a conversation outside her cell, and then someone knocked on the door and let herself in. Mikaila recognized the woman from the field, still clad in red. The stone-faced stranger loosed her binds, took something from whomever stood outside, and moved the desk between them. She set down a soup bowl. "Eat it while it's hot, yeah?"
Mikaila took the tray and hoped she hadn't been asked something that demanded a response. It was better than the gruel she expected, if watery and a little flavorless (what would Mama say if she knew her little girl would one day taste Crescian prison food?).
The woman sat on the tiny chair opposite her bunk and watched her eat. Mikaila didn't squirm under the scrutiny. She refused to.
"Can you tell me what you were doing this far south with a vliegeng unit?" the woman asked.
Mikaila, whose Continental vocabulary consisted mainly of yes and no and please and thank you, was silent while she ate. She flinched at the woman's rough tone, but she didn't look up.
"Nobody's gonna hurt you. I just want to talk."
Mikaila finished the soup, pushed back the tray, and let herself lapse into an unrehearsed listlessness. After a few minutes, the guard took the tray and went away.
All her injuries shrieked complaint now that the adrenaline had left her, and she investigated them gingerly. Mostly bruises and scrapes. She sat on her bunk and wrapped her arms around herself. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She did neither.
She tensed and held her breath every time someone passed her by, certain each approach spelled doom, but no one stopped at her cell for what felt like hours. It almost startled her when a man outside asked, "Captain, what about the blond bastard down the hall?"
"What about him?" replied the woman. "He giving you shit?"
"Duh. He's an Ald. He bit me and can't anyone understand a fuckin' word outta the brute."
"What a pig," snorted the Captain. "Let the lads soften him up. I'll deal with him later. The girl say anything to you?"
"Nah. Betcha she only speaks friggin' Aldish too."
"Probably. And what kinda piss-drunk macho wannabe godslayers bring a little girl with their vanguard?" said the woman. "It's bizarre. I don't like it."
"Maybe they're getting desperate," said the man. "Papers say the plague's still hitting 'em hard, not to mention the war. Not enough boys to go on the chopping block anymore, you think?"
Mikaila let the patter of Continental slide to the back of her mind. She let them argue for a minute longer, unable to understand the words. Her father's pymary textbooks had been beloved to her, and his dictionaries less so.
"May I please have some water?" she asked hoarsely.
Their conversation stopped. She expected to be yelled at, but heard instead the riffling of paper. Someone said — "Is that a dictionary?" — "Shut up," and then, in slow, poorly pronounced Tainish, "Say that again?"
She repeated the essential part of her request and received a paper cup of water for her trouble, which she downed at once. "Thank you," she replied in thickly accented Continental.
"Yeah, whatever."
It seemed forever till the guards left her alone, and Mikaila waited until their footsteps had retreated into silence to cry as quietly as she could. It gave her a headache. When she finished, she undid her braid, crammed the tie in a pocket, and lay shivering on her bunk. She stared up at the dark ceiling, grimly resolved to do whatever she must to escape. She just didn't yet know what, or how.
Plan. What was her plan? What did she have to work with? She was alive. And there was always the khert, but even if she wanted to blast apart the walls and run, she'd get nowhere fast. She needed to save any pymary for absolute emergencies. She'd have to bide her time and be clever. But would it be enough? The thoughts chased each other in circles in her head, like a hound after its own tail.
The next morning, she opened her eyes to a thin, offensively bright shaft of sunlight slanting through her window, no less cold than the gray granite of the walls. She was uncomfortable in her riding gear, the boys' pants and men's shirt and jacket already ill-fitting, and sleeping in it had impressed a hundred little red creases into her. She sat up, stretched, and tugged at the biggest wrinkles.
Breakfast was soon served, or maybe lunch: a sad sandwich with dry bread, scant hen's meat, and a pathetically thin slice each of tomato and lettuce. Mikaila ate perfunctorily. She had no way of knowing what stronghold she was held in, and few among her comrades would bother to rescue her when all their losses made the prospect a suicide mission.
Her escort had been northbound, and if a small Crescian patrol reached that far, had the Aldish forces been repelled? Maybe she was alone in enemy territory. Maybe she would have to save herself.
Mikaila knew it would destroy Mama if she never came home. Papa too, if he still lived. She couldn't let that happen. But even if she had the freedom to walk out of her cell right now, to walk north with every Crescian waving her a cheerful good-bye along the way, she wouldn't make it. She wasn't stupid. She needed supplies, a map, information — something.
She got something sooner than she expected. The officer in red returned that afternoon with a Tainish interpreter, a sharp-featured and mild-mannered Crescian woman dressed in light colors, very nearly as prim as an Aldish housewife in her bearing. Her badge and accent somewhat ruined the effect.
Mikaila was offered the chance to clean up and change her clothes. She insisted on keeping her coat and reluctantly surrendered it to be searched, listened anxiously to the women talk while they did, and took it back with surprising relief. It was strange how such an old, ratty thing could so quickly become sentimental to her. It hadn't smelled like Papa in a long time — mostly now it smelled like smoke and not the kind from his hodo pipe — but it was all she had of home.
Then the woman in red demanded she accompany them to a cramped little office not much bigger than her cell. Mikaila acquiesced at once. The trip was nerve-wrackingly oppressive in its silence, the Crescian soldier's gloved hand on her shoulder too firm and tight, but she didn't complain.
The cells they passed along the way tested her composure. Many were larger than hers, each with four or five Aldishmen stripped and shackled to the walls or else strapped onto tables. In one, a bored-looking Crescian infantryman picked through a drawer of glinting metal and glass while a young Bronze lad blubbered on the table and bled. In another, a lone Jet languished, his lips moving over a prayer she could not hear.
Were she the lass everyone was so desperate to believe her to be, the sight might have shocked her, but Mikaila wasn't that lass. She was no wilting flower. She kept walking, footsteps measured and echoing, and she heard the sounds of muffled conversation spilling from a cafeteria and caught a whiff of something savory cooking. It made her stomach grumble, and she ignored it.
The next hallway was all storage closets labeled things she couldn't read except the one that housed pymarics, as well as a number of offices. Mikaila was sat down in one of the latter. The room was sunny and small, wood-paneled and warm, but cramped. It was bereft of furniture save a desk crammed against the wall with some cabinets, which had clearly been pushed aside for the table where she was directed to sit, and the chairs didn't match. The woman in red cuffed her to one, and sat across from her.
"Really, Lara?" sighed the woman in yellow.
"Just a precaution, sis."
The woman in yellow shook her head and shot Mikaila an apologetic look. She poured something into a mug and slid it across the table, fragrant steam curling from the top. "Here, love," she said in good, if accented, Tainish. "Have some hot cocoa. I'm Officer Koye Neev. I'm here to translate for you, and these two are Captain Neev and Lieutenant Talo. Please, can you tell us your name?"
Mikaila fidgeted with the hem of her shirt while she studied the three Crescians across from her. The man was tall, lanky, and even more bored-looking than the torturer she'd glimpsed earlier. The women were opposites, one soft-faced but scowling, and the other with sharp features and kind eyes.
She turned down her eyes and said a little tremulously, "Mikaila." She cleared her throat. "My name is Mikaila."
"Mikaila," Koye repeated, the syllables soft and wrong in her strange accent. "That's a lovely name."
"Thank you," she murmured, though she doubted the compliment's sincerity. She knew little about Crescians, but more than they probably knew about the Aldish, and any name longer than four letters was ugly to them. Everything about her was surely ugly to them. Almost everything about them was certainly ugly to her.
Lara spoke next, and Koye translated: "I'll tell you the same thing I tell all our prisoners: behave yourself. We just want to talk. All right?" She held before her a small notebook, pen poised in her other hand.
"Talk?" Mikaila repeated. She lifted her eyes from her untouched mug of cocoa, wide and darting between her jailers' faces, voice incredulous — "'Talk'?"
Those faces varied between discomfort, apathy, and horror as her implication sunk in. The man muttered to his superior, "Toldja not to cut through that block."
Koye interjected, aghast, "No, no! Nobody here will hurt you, honey! We just — we just want to understand what's happening. We know you're not a soldier. Finding you on that Aldish supply line was just a shock, is all."
The three of them conferred briefly with one another. Mikaila watched them and felt a fleeting irritation at how much information she was missing out on, but kept her back straight and her hands clasped on her lap while she looked anxiously between them. The man sipped his cocoa nonchalantly.
"Listen, Mikaila," Koye said gently, after some apparent agreement had been reached. "I know how you must be feeling. You're imprisoned very far from home, and I can't imagine how frightening that must be. We just want to know — "
Mikaila confessed in a rush, "Please, don't hurt me. I don't know what you want to know. I — I wasn't supposed to be with those men. I didn't know they'd attack here, or whatever it was they were doing. I didn't know! I didn't want to come here, I swear, but they made me, and they wouldn't tell me anything."
When this was relayed, the Crescians spoke again amongst themselves — "D'you think they wanted us to find her?"
"Dunno. What good would that do them? She's just dead weight, isn't she?"
"I hate tryin' to think like a fuckin' Ald," the Captain, Lara, sighed. Then she turned her attention to Mikaila. "Why were you in Grenzlan? You don't have any gear. You didn't look trained."
"I'm not," Mikaila answered honestly, miserably. "I didn't have a choice. Those soldiers made me come. They said I wouldn't get hurt if I didn't fight. That they'd look after me and I was going to be their good luck charm for a little while. I think they thought you wouldn't kill a girl."
Koye looked horrified again. "What, like you were some kind of meat shield?"
"Twins," Lara declared when this was relayed. "And these sick fucks call us child-murderers?" She braced her hands against the woodgrain as though preparing to stand, but folded under the questioning glances of her subordinates and sat again. She sighed sharply, collected herself, and said, "Those men you were with. And that cart driver. Did you know them? Were they friends of yours?"
"No."
"Then why were you with that supply convoy?"
"I was trying to run. I couldn't fight, but I knew the empty carts were going back north, and I thought if I snuck onto one and stayed quiet, I'd get away from those vliegeng riders and somewhere back home. I didn't know what else to do."
"Did you know they planned to take our khert-hub?"
"They planned to take a khert-hub?"
"What about the shrine? The river? You know anything about any Aldish activity here?"
"No! What shrine?"
Talo patted his pockets and withdrew a cigar. "Let her be," he said, offering it to Lara, who cast a light for him with a scant few spell-words. "The kid's harmless, Lara. Go easy on her."
"I told you there's nothing to worry about," agreed Koye.
"You're both outflanking me here," grumbled Lara. "I still don't like this."
"I don't think she does, either," said Koye in a tone that sounded pointed.
Lara gave her a steely look that sliced from her to Mikaila, who curled her fingers around her mug and returned it with the stillness of a spooked doe. Lara put down her notebook, steepled her fingers over the pages and said, "Well, Alds hate us and we hate Alds, and most of them are wannabe godslayers to boot. So's she, I'd bet. Where does that leave us?"
"Lara…" Koye began.
"I'm serious! Sure, maybe the kid is harmless, but we can't just unleash her on the system all willy-nilly. You know Alds don't know anything about anything, and sorry to say it, but their girls know even less. Plus she speaks, what, three words of Continental? Think about the long-term. What kind of life is she going to live here? How is she going to adjust? Who's going to put up with her? She'll be miserable and she'll make every Crescian around her miserable."
"Godslayer or not, some gutter trash snatched her from her home and dumped her here," said Koye quietly. "I know that isn't right, and I think you know it too. Just because our enemies are so barbaric doesn't mean we have to be."
Talo continued to smoke in peace till the Captain's eyes cut to him. "Don't look at me," he said, shrugging one shoulder. "I hear your concerns, Captain, but what's the worst she can do?"
"She can cause me a damned headache, that's what," Lara muttered. "Think about the paperwork, Talo. And the scandal? Aldish refugees are a minefield for a reason."
He said, "Come off it, Captain. We all know how the Aldish treat their girls. They're freaks, but she probably thinks we're freaks. I'm with Koye on this one. Treating her barely better than those snake-fuckers did doesn't sit right with me. Are we better than them or are we just gonna preen like we are? 'Cause preening is some Ald shit."
Lara leaned back in her chair so hard that Mikaila was momentarily convinced it would topple. She sighed loudly, and its feet hit the floor with a loud clap. "I know that. But Cresce is in a bad enough way as it is. We don't need this. Sonorie doesn't need this. Believe me, I got some sympathy, but I don't see a real happy ending here, for her or us. That's all I'm saying."
Mikaila's cuff jangled as she raised her mug. The drink was hot and sweet when she forced herself to take a sip, but she could scarcely taste it. Looking back up at them, she said, "In Alderode, there's no future for girls like me." She caught Koye's eye and waited for a small nod to continue. "I can't go to school, I can't work, I can't even leave my own home without permission. I hate it there. I hated the way those men treated me.
"This," she went on, tilting the mug in her hands, "is already more than they would give me. They were horrible. Alderode is horrible. You can't even imagine it, and I'm grateful to be away from them. But I'm scared to be here, too. I know Cresce and Alderode hate each other, and it's easy for us to hate each other too. So, Miss Captain, I have a question for you, if I may ask a question?"
"Go on," said the Captain.
"It was Aldish people like me who attacked that town. I'm not stupid. Everyone will be looking for someone to blame — that's how it always is in war, my papa told me so. So what's really going to happen to me?"
Lara sighed and was silent for a minute. "Nothing," she finally said. "At least nothing like you're probably thinking. I don't think you're a bad kid, but these are bad times, and you're safest right here. Cresce has systems for people who need a place, even if they're Aldish, but you've got to work for it. Prove to me you're serious about making the best of things, and I'll do what I can for you. All right?"
Mikaila cupped the mug in her hands. "So I could live here in Cresce? Even if I'm Aldish?"
"Play nice and answer my questions," said Lara, "and it's not out of the question."
The other questions were not so harrowing. Mikaila drained the rest of her hot cocoa (even here, Gram's sermons on wasting food haunted her) and professed honest ignorance to most. Lara soon gave up on any effort to pry intel out of her.
Her lack of knowledge wasn't really a lie. She wasn't even a real soldier. She wasn't privy to real intel, and it was easiest to play to her captors' perceptions the way she might to preserve a glamour.
When it was over, Koye said, "Don't you worry. I'll pen some paperwork, see if we can't get you moved somewhere nicer. Prison is no place for an innocent girl, Crescian or Aldish."
"Oh, thank you! You won't hear any trouble from me. I promise," Mikaila said.
She returned to her cell without complaint. She spent every one of the next several days on her best and most compliant behavior, and prayed to God every night like she'd promised Papa, even if she didn't know what she was praying for. God's own blessing she might possess, but it seemed the greatest greed to wish for a second, and even God had his limits. She just needed an opportunity was all.
Officer Koye warmed to her quickly and Lieutenant Talo was not far behind. Soon enough she was transferred to another cell, far superior in comfort and aesthetics if not Aspects. Koye even lent her a dictionary so that she could start learning Continental. Mikaila used it often, but most of the time, she studied the guards while she pretended to study the pages.
She memorized the words she most wanted to listen for. She memorized their shifts. She learned who was receptive to her friendly but difficult small-talk and who was not, and when they were likely to be posted outside of her cell. She asked careful, innocent questions, and most of all paid close attention whenever she was let out of her cell. When the time came, she'd need to know where her exits were.
When she got home, would Mama finally see the girl who'd been brave and clever enough to escape Cresce itself?
And escaping Cresce would be no small task. Mikaila knew it before she even knew she had other, bigger problems, and she knew it because of the way everyone gossiped about her. She didn't need to speak Continental to know that she'd become something of a curiosity. The more attention she drew, the more she ingratiated herself here, the more careful she would have to be — but she might be able to use it to her advantage, too.
Officer Koye Neev was eager to practice her Tainish and spoke with her often. What about, it didn't seem to matter. With only the rare, innocent question about the facilities and their layout, Mikaila let her go on about how lucky she was that her sister's post in the Peaceguard had elevated her to a similar station. She even listened to her gush adoringly about the Crescian Queen and all her latest and greatest ideas for the people, which was a torture that Mikaila deserved a medal for smiling and nodding through.
Before long, she was allowed to help with menial chores and errands under supervision, and took as much advantage of the privilege as she could. Mostly this meant visits to the laundry room to help wash and fold uniforms and bedding. Such facilities were not unlike those of the Temple back home, and in Alderode, the prospect would have insulted her. Here, it became a sort of espionage.
"Have I done something to offend your Captain?" she asked on one such occasion, both to distract herself from the tedium of the task at hand and lessen her feelings of hopeless homicidality.
"Who, Lara?" said Koye, throwing another bedsheet onto the table between them. "I don't think so. Don't fret. She's got a military mind, you know. Can't rest when she's got a puzzle to sort out, and I think she thinks you're quite the puzzle."
Lara herself sat at the next table with a clipboard and a stack of papers. "I hear you talking about me," she said.
"Only good things, I promise," replied Koye.
"I guess not very many Aldishwomen leave the country," mused Mikaila while they pinched and folded corners. "Let alone end up in Cresce. Or prison. Or prison in Cresce."
Koye's smile was a little uncomfortable. Transferring the finished stack of sheets to a wicker chest on the bench next to them, she chirped, "What is it really like in Alderode, Mikaila?"
"Cold," Mikaila said, scrunching her nose. "Noisy in the big cities. I know I haven't really seen Cresce, but it's already so different. Can I ask why so much of your food is bread?"
"Is it?"
"It is. I don't know how you can stand it. I'd love a nice potato breakfast," she said wistfully. "With butter and ham and pepper. When I was little and Papa was feeling fancy, he'd dress them up with the good spices. What's your favorite breakfast?"
"Oh, that's a tough one. I'd have to say eggs on toast?"
Mikaila shuddered, a little theatrically. "Blugh. More bread? No, thank you."
Koye laughed, relaxing a little, and her laugh might have been pretty if the circumstances weren't everything that they were. She said, "What about you, Lara? Favorite breakfast?"
"Turtle bacon, obviously."
When the laundry was finished, Mikaila found her next problem. He was also her greatest boon, a gift and challenge both from God. She saw him on the way back to her new cell. In a long back hall, one with water pipes running from the laundry and kitchens, one that Koye called depressing and Lara called a shortcut, she got a glimpse through a grubby window that sealed both their fates. The shock of Soud-blond hair over closed eyes was all she needed.
The scar on his face.
Lemuel was here, and Mikaila nearly slammed to a stop right then and there. Suddenly her mission was twofold. Suddenly she had the answer she'd begged God for every night. But how? How could she save them both? She'd planned to lie and cheat and steal her way back north, and alone she might manage, but she couldn't now slip out of a wall and run off freely into the night. She couldn't. Not without him.
There were other Alds in that cell too. Silvers and Bronzes she didn't recognize or care about, shackled up in the dimness, their bodies stretched on tables or else sagging against the walls. She only cared for one.
"You two go on," said Lara. "I'll stay here. I've been meaning to visit the newest punching bag."
She turned into the room without another word, the door snapping open and closed around her. Mikaila watched her approach that center table, and felt a dry panic start to well up in her chest. Her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth. She only just stopped herself from lifting a hand to drift fingertips over the dirty brick wall, heart kicking wildly in her chest as indecision froze her to the spot. If she casted now, it would damn them both.
She couldn't watch. She couldn't look away. She was a wright; she was a good soldier; she was powerless to do a Goddamned thing.
"Mikaila?" Koye murmured, tearing her attention away.
Mikaila briefly closed her eyes. She willed her nerves to settle, schooled her expression, turned back to her escort, and asked unthinkingly, "Are they all like that? The other Alds?"
"Like how?"
"Trussed up like turkeys on tables, I guess."
"Probably."
"Good," Mikaila said as calmly as she could manage, and walked on. She didn't feel calm. All her worst fears competed for her attention again.
She hadn't seen all of him, only his head and bare chest slumped back onto a tilted wooden table. Upright chains bound his bloody arms. She'd watched just long enough to see the rise and fall of his breath, long enough to see the glossy pymaric canisters that tortured just as well as any blade.
How long could he wait for her? She squeezed her hands into fists until her nails bit her palms, reminding her that she was without her gloves. The borrowed skirts she wore were stiffer and shorter than what she was used to. She told herself she only needed them a little while longer.
She held onto that scant glimpse of his face for days. Mikaila made every effort to learn as much Continental as she could, and as much about her surroundings as she could. She wanted to at least stand a chance of reading signs and road-posts. The guards' chatter was often too fast and slurry for her to pick apart, but she tried.
There was so much more she needed to know now, and she had so much less time to learn. But she at least knew where the uniforms were kept, and if she were careful, she might be able to glamour a good disguise. Then it might not be so bad.
Before long, she had gained a fleeting familiarity with most of the faces of her jailers, and it had become routine to squelch her disgust as she smiled at everyone she saw and politely greeted them each by name and paid them harmless attentions — "I like your new boots!" "That necklace is pretty." "Thank you for being so patient with me."
One morning, she was woken by the sound of the breakfast tray sliding into her cell. The impossible smell compelled her to sit up more quickly than usual. Rather than the dry sandwiches and sad porridges to which she had become accustomed, the tray held a single, steaming potato, perfect and buttery, generously topped with ham and pepper. She savored every bite.
Mikaila continued her daily informal language lessons with Officer Koye and played cards with Lieutenant Talo when he was off duty. Even distant, professional Captain Lara Neev had thawed a little, and sometimes treated her to more hot cocoa when she asked oh-so-nicely. In between visits to the laundry and kitchen, she slowly, sneakily amassed what supplies she needed and hid them under her bed. She didn't dare to look for Lemuel again.
She was the paragon of Aldish innocence, because she had to be.
She asked if she could be let outside to walk the grounds a little, because she needed to.
She made some chaperoned loops around the central building, admired the birds and trees, and counted the steps between her and her freedom. She prayed to God she was not too late.
Mikaila's hands didn't shake when she returned to her cell that last day. She was glad to have Koye's regular lesson to distract herself with, even if she was distracted from the distraction and tried her damnedest not to be. She stumbled over her words again and again, and apologized with a little laugh.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why this is so hard for me all of a sudden."
"That's all right!" said her unlikely tutor with an encouraging smile. "You've been doing great, but I know you must have a lot on your mind. Things still haven't calmed, but the Twins and the Queen will see us through."
"I hope so," she said. And she hoped the Queen would pay dearly. Wasn't it her choice, after all, to hide a military target in a sacred shrine? So much for protecting twins, Mikaila thought, when they would just be butchered in the end; so much for Crescian wisdom and leadership, doomed to fail like every other Gefendur figurehead. After what she'd seen, it all felt so hollow.
When the lesson was over and dinner was served, Mikaila ate the entire portion of stew in spite of her nerves, even the bread. Then, she sat with the dictionary in hand and whiled away the last few minutes, which felt like hours, staring at words she could not bring herself to read.
When the guard shift changed that evening, she carefully arranged her room as she wished. Then, heart thumping in her ears, she dragged the pillowcase-sack out from underneath the bed, which she had taken on the pretense of wishing to keep the fabric for sewing. It was actually full of all her ill-gotten goods, and she added her shoes to the top of the pile. She tip-toed in her socks to the front wall, laid her palm flat against the smooth granite, and thought the words that would set her free.
Heed me, great Khert.
She calculated the coordinate bounds of a neat square section with ease, recited the Material and Aspect by heart, and directed the latter into her port. The wall gave beneath her fingers, all but dissolving into her hand, and she stepped through the stripped Solidity with her sack of supplies in tow.
She stepped straight into Lieutenant Talo.
He stumbled aside, registering the sudden movement in his peripheral without yet turning to recognize her, and Mikaila had that one split second to scream internally. God, why? This was not routine!
"Mikaila?" he blurted, baffled, eyes flicking uncomprehendingly between her and the closed, locked cell door. She'd just stepped out of the wall into him, and she'd not spoken a word to cast the spell.
Mikaila said nothing. She was jumpy with adrenaline and he was grasping for an explanation and would maybe draw his weapon in one more second and she needed to move, move, move. The State Aspect in her port yet remained. A moment more was all she needed.
And she still had a port left. Releasing her things, Mikaila turned and stepped away, flung out her arm, and sent him flying sideways with a vicious thrust of Momentum. His skull hit the top of the hollow space in the wall with a loud crunch. She'd heard similar before. It wasn't the sort of sound he'd come back from.
Juggling her borrowed Aspects, glancing both ways down the hall, she shoved the body into the cell, replaced the wall, Leeched the blood from it, and held her pillowcase tightly as she fled around the nearest corner. Her pulse roared in her ears as she padded quickly away. It was good that she knew the route to the laundry room well.
When she passed it, she didn't realize she was nowhere near Lemuel until she spelled her way into an office rather than a prison cell. No, not an office; a stockroom? Had she gone too far? She nearly turned on her heel and ran out, but in the moonlight, her attention was arrested by the glint of steel between a desk and a cabinet.
A sword pommel. No, two sword pommels in twin scabbards — Lemuel's. To recognize them was like a gift from God. She could have squealed for joy as she lunged for them. She snatched them by the adjoining leather strap, which she looped over her neck and shoulders and pulled taut. Even then it slumped loose against her chest, but it would have to do. She quickly skimmed the nearby cabinet shelves. Their doors were locked, but the glass obliged her its Solidity for a moment.
She took the clawed gauntlets from the lowest shelf. One she crammed into her bag and the other onto her opposite hand because it wouldn't fit with the rest. She slipped outside, and followed the sound of water running in the pipes. She'd only taken a wrong turn. She had to be close... yes, there were the cells!
Mikaila moved as fast as she dared. Slinking through shadows and hurrying through pools of light from the various doors and windows, no matter how dim, she ducked beneath all possible lines of sight as she went. No one pursued her. No alarms were raised, and most of the cells were empty besides. She waited ages in the quiet dark.
In that silence, she heard a voice — Lara's — carry into the hall from the next cell. When she paused, no one answered. Then she began again, her words growing clearer as Mikaila approached, but no less intelligible.
Mikaila pressed herself to the wall, a pebbly limestone-and-ash concrete, and strained to hear. The door between them was closed and possibly locked, but this meant very little to a wright. Mikaila risked a longer spell and briefly altered the bulk of the wood, rendering it permeable to Light in the vector opposite that of her port and allowing her a one-way window into the room.
The sound was still muffled, but she did not need it. Lara stood over the same table she had seen days ago. She was alone. She paced, then stopped, facing the far side of the room, and stayed like that.
Oaken Solidity next dissolved soundlessly into Mikaila's hand, and she stepped through the door, releasing the pillowcase to free her casting hand once more. The wheeze of a pained breath met her ears. She saw Lara lean on a knee into Lemuel's darkly bruised ribs.
"Guess that's always the trouble with you snake-fuckers, isn't it," Lara sighed. "All that manly Aldish superiority. It's pathetic."
This was punctuated by awful, teeth-clenched sounds of pain. Silent as the grave, Mikaila slipped forward and composed another spell.
"Can't believe my sister loves listening to you pigs yap," Lara muttered. "Served her two years and I think it poisoned her. She thinks if we can understand you, you can understand us. Never heard such stupid hogshit. But hey — I guess your days are numbered, right? No one's coming back for you, padopa." In mocking, crude Tainish, she leaned in and hissed, "'God doesn't interfere'? That right?"
Mikaila waited the precious few seconds it took for a khert line to settle into just the right angle. Lemuel's lips parted as if to reply, but he didn't. He didn't say anything. His eyes snagged on the movement of her hand in his peripheral, and went wide with the barest turn of his head.
"God doesn't interfere," Mikaila said as Lara turned, "but I will." She threw out her arm and thought her trigger word, releasing a door's worth of Solidity along her chosen khert line. It collided with the Crescian officer, and she flew across the room to crumple against the far wall with the dull, crunchy thud of mail and brick. Mikaila began to compose another spell.
"You — you bitch," Lara wheezed from the floor, slowly levering herself to stand as she coughed and held her side. "I knew I shouldn't trust you."
Mikaila stepped forward to plant herself between the Crescian spellwright and her father, palms sweat-slick and prickling. This time would be different. It had to be.
With low, quick spellwords, Lara began to cast too. She spoke a spellburn Mikaila did not recognize, one that was over almost as quickly as it had begun, its components and execution defined in seemingly the same syllables.
Mikaila could at least intuit which khert line between them it would follow. She raised her gauntleted hand and snapped it through the air, its First Materials slicing the line and disrupting whatever Aspect had been barreling toward her. It glimmered and died in the air between them.
Then she silently finished the spell that stopped the woman's breath, however briefly. She fixed the Rigidity of the Crescian's upper body, vocal cords and all, so that she could neither move nor scream when the ensuing Core Leech vanished her into nothing. Mikaila watched until there was nothing left of her and cast away the remaining Aspects.
Adrenaline had so narrowed her focus that she nearly jumped at the sound of a pained breath behind her. Like the other Aldish prisoners, Lemuel had not been afforded even a fraction of the dignity Mikaila had been given, and she averted her eyes as much as possible while she disinfected and spelled away what she could of the mess on him.
"There's a guard's uniform in the pillowcase for you," she said to him as she Leeched his binds. "Put it on. I'll glamour us and we'll go."
She took the Captain's empty armor and clothes and stuffed them quietly into the depths of the adjoining storage closet while he dressed. She heard nothing but the shuffle of linen and the jangle of a belt buckle. No footsteps in the halls. No doors opening. She hoped they were at last alone.
Should she douse the lamps? Would it draw attention or not? How much time had she spent outside her cell? Surely, they were safe from prying eyes if they stayed on the path she'd planned.
Arms ensnared her from behind as she stepped back, lifting her up and squeezing tight. Mikaila winced as the sword scabbards pressed briefly but painfully into her back, and then she was on her feet again.
"Da denaobüd aliaol," Lemuel said and kissed her hair. "What are you doing here? Did they hurt you? Are you — "
"I'm fine, Papa. They treated me like a princess," Mikaila said, and politely did not mention how much he reeked. She let him take the swords and gauntlet from her and scavenged a large burlap sack from the supply closet, and thankfully only had to explain it made for a more effective glamour if such things were hidden for now. He dropped them inside, and she shouldered the lot.
She was barely ashamed to realize who she had forgotten until she turned to the door — "Where's Mason?"
"Gone."
"Oh."
Mikaila would never have felt much for the loss of the Plat — they barely knew one another, and he was on his next life already. She had yet to worry about this one. About the here and now.
There was much more she could have said to Lemuel then, and all of it competed for attention in her thoughts without a single word coming to her tongue, but she didn't need to. Lemuel had always understood her. Even now he didn't fuss, didn't argue her own assurance that she was safe and whole. He merely gave her a look that promised some words were later forthcoming, and it was enough.
She led him by the hand through the halls and the yards, spelling an easy path to the road beyond. She counted it among her few blessings that this, at least, was not so difficult. They left the compound behind, walking until the last lanterns were pinpricks in the distance, and only the dark road stretched out before them.
Only then did she venture to ask, "Now will you come home with me?"
"Aye," he relented. "If you'll promise never to do something so brave and foolish as that again."
She tugged him onto the path and said only, "No. I would never leave you behind."