Chapter Eighteen
After a cursory pat-down to make certain she wasn’t hiding any more improvised weapons, Ripka was marched out of the sheltering walls of the prison. Though it was only mid-morning, a darkness crept across the sky, thick clouds casting shadows over the island’s cracked and patchwork landscape. Ripka shivered as she was hounded along, one guard and Captain Lankal prodding her down a winding dirt path. A creeping wind wormed its way beneath her jumpsuit.
“How long?” she asked, scanning this new path, trying to fit it in her mental map of the prison’s island. They were on the opposite side of the prison from the yellowhouse, as far as she could tell. Here the ground was scattered with fruit-bearing trees and cracked stone beaches plunging down to the frothing shore.
“First offense is eight marks,” Lankal said. “Gruel will be handed down to you once every six hours. You’ll be given your water for the day when we put you in. Ration it wisely, you won’t get more.”
The path sloped down a hill, angling for the beach, and through the trees she began to see small cottages in various states of disrepair. Not a single stream of smoke curled from their half-crumbled chimneys.
“People lived out here?”
Lankal snorted. “Used to be the guards brought their families out with them. Now we leave ’em back in Petrastad. Where it’s safer.” He eyed her, his grip momentarily tightening on her elbow. “Never could be sure what people like you’d do to ’em.”
Nothing, she thought. Or at least, I wouldn’t. But she bit her tongue to hold back the words. She’d stabbed a man in the elbow, possibly dooming him to a lame arm for life. She doubted Lankal would believe she wouldn’t harm an innocent, even if she had been acting in defense of her own life.
He tugged her arm, turning her down a side path, and she nearly stumbled. Her breath felt too-hot in her throat, her voice scratchy and raw. The chill in the air aggravated each breath. Thick-leaved trees lined the path, and at the top of a knoll, she saw it – the well.
It was about three paces in diameter, its walls crafted of native grey stone and its winch and bucket system well cared for – the rope looked unfrayed, the wood recently oiled. A gabled roof covered the top of the well, no doubt meant to keep leaf and other debris from fouling the water. Nothing about it gave her any reason to believe it was anything more than a simple, if large, well.
Unconsciously, she dug her heels in. The other guard jerked on her arm, forcing her forward. “Come on, no stalling.”
“That’s… That’s a real well.” Her cheeks went hot with embarrassment as Lankal chuckled.
“What’d you expect?” he asked.
“Something purpose built, like a narrow pit.”
“It is a narrow pit, isn’t it?” Lankal directed her to the wall around the well. She peered into the hole, and could see nothing but abyssal blackness.
“Up you go.” He patted the top of the wall. “Stick your arms out so we can get the sling on you.”
At least they weren’t going to try to lower her in the bucket. Ripka sat on the cold edge and swung her legs over the rim, feet dangling into the dark. She forced herself to breathe slowly as the guards took straps from the bucket and fitted them with surprising care around her chest and arms. She tried very hard not to think of what waited for her down there in the dark. Forced images of skittering, crawling insects from her mind.
“Is…” She cleared her already sore throat and tried again. “Is there much water left?”
“No more than a dribble, and that’s just seep. This well dried up a long time ago.” Lankal gave the straps two firm tugs, jerking Ripka forward. She gasped as her center of gravity teetered on the edge of the wall and shot her hands down to grip the hard stone. The other guard snorted. She soothed herself with images of shoving him face-first down the well.
A gust of wind pushed at her, taunting. A heavy, dark cloud slid across the sun, making the well look even deeper.
“If it rains?” she asked, visions of the well filling with fresh water rose unbidden to her mind. She swallowed dry air. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she couldn’t swim.
“Someone will come along and pluck you out if it gets too bad. But you’ll have to make up the time when the weather clears.”
Lankal hesitated, lips pressed together as if he were trying to hold in what he wanted to say. After a moment, he shook his head and puffed out a breath. “Look, Ripka. I know adjustment to the Remnant can be difficult, but you’ve got to put in the effort.” He held up a hand to forestall her response. “I saw why you fought. I watch the yard from the nest. I saw everything. You’ve got a hard sense of justice, and I can respect that. But you’ve got to let it go. I looked up your file after that first night. You’re a thief, not a killer. Yeah, you got some moves. But we’ve got nasty pieces of work on this island you seem determined to piss off. There aren’t many come through these walls I think can be rehabilitated, but you’re one of them. Don’t get yourself murdered before you get the chance.”
Stunned, it took her a moment to find a response. “I’ll do my best. Captain.”
That seemed to please him. He nodded, and held out the rope he’d wrapped tightly around his elbow and hand so that she could see it, and then gestured to the pulley system above. “I got you. Go on now.”
Clenching her jaw against rising panic, she turned around so that she faced out of the well, then began to ease down, fingers gripping the top of the well’s lip so hard that her stubby nails bent back. Stone scratched her chest as she wormed her way over the edge, walking herself down the wall. When she hit a depth as low as her arms would go without dropping and still hadn’t touched ground, she froze, squeezing her eyes shut as if internal darkness was somehow safer than the unknown darkness below. Rope slack piled between her shoulder blades.
“Let go,” Lankal said.
“I don’t–”
The other guard pried her fingers from the wall and she plunged down, the harness snapping tight against her chest. A little cry of shock escaped her as the straps dug into her and she spun, slowly, in the empty air in the well’s center. She cracked her eyes open to glare at the grey sky above. The other guard chuckled. Bastard.
Her dangling feet found purchase on moss-slick ground, and she heaved a sigh of relief as her weight was taken off the straps. Rolling her shoulders, she peered at her new place of confinement as best she could in the dark.
As her eyes had not yet adjusted, she saw only gloomy walls of deep grey, reaching up to the equally dismal sky above. The ground was slick with mud and lichens. She trailed her fingers along the hard stone, feeling the shallow gashes made by those who’d come before her. As she brushed deep gouges, spaced evenly as fingernails, she shivered and jerked her hand away.
Tension let out in the rope, and it slid down her back until it looped back up near her hips. “Hey!” she called. The words echoed back at her, slamming against the well’s walls. “What do I do about the harness?”
Lankal stuck his head over the wall, she recognized him only by the silhouette of his shaggy hair. “Don’t take it off, and if you try to climb out the winch is set to release all the rope. You’ll be stuck down there until we can be bothered to get a new rope out to you.”
“That happened before?”
“More often than you’d think. And sometimes we have to wait for a shipment to come in from Petrastad. Step to the right.”
She did so without thought. His voice carried the air of command she’d grown used to following before she’d risen up to become the watch-captain. Something slammed into the ground alongside her. She knelt, feeling along until she found it. A water bladder, holding maybe a half a bucket’s worth. Not enough to sustain her if she’d spent the day in the field, but enough to keep her hydrated while she waited to return to the world above.