If Nouli really was down there amongst those monsters, then how he had survived here so long was a mystery she was itching to solve. Nouli was a genius, a renowned polymath, not a murderer or a raconteur. Though he had served the empress by engineering her machines of war, as far as Ripka knew he hadn’t seen a lick of real violence in his life. He wasn’t equipped to survive in a place like this. If he had gone mad, or died, before Ripka had the chance to whisk him to Hond Steading then this whole scheme could be for naught.
Thratia’s forces were preparing to march. She needed Nouli to be here. To be safe, and hale of mind, so that he could lend Hond Steading his insight.
Ripka peeked at New Chum, whose freshly dyed jumpsuit named him Enard Harwit. He’d claimed the first name was his own, but had said nothing about the family moniker. He observed Captain Lankal with the calm assurance she’d come to admire in him, his hands at ease and his face relaxed. His simple, steady presence reassured her. If anyone could help her rescue Nouli Bern, it was Enard.
The captain interrupted her thoughts, “You’ve all been assigned your bunks, your toiletries.”
Her “welcoming kit” weighed down her pocket. A cloth wrapped around a tooth stick, a lumpy brick of soap, a scrap of washcloth and a chit with her cell number painted on it. She’d lucked out and gotten a cell next to Enard. The guards didn’t much care about friends sticking close together. They searched the cells often enough to make sure no one was up to any sort of shenanigans.
“But you’re going to have to wait to freshen up. It’s midday meal time, and I expect every last one of you to file down there, get your plates, and sit your asses down without a word. No fights, no jostling. Play it real nice, and don’t no one try and out-tough one another, understand? That sort of behavior gets you a swift trip to the bottom of the well to think about what you’ve done.”
They walked down a narrow stairway, just wide enough for a single person to manage without bumping their elbows – a good point to bottleneck in case of a riot. The woman behind Ripka, a slender thing with scraggly blonde hair and sunken eyes in a sun-darkened face, was breathing hard by the time they reached the bottom.
“You all right?” she whispered over her shoulder.
“Quiet!” a guard midway down the line barked.
The woman narrowed citrine eyes and spat her displeasure. Wonderful. Ripka suppressed a sigh and an urge to ball up her fists. She needed to keep on being bland, indifferent. She couldn’t let her conscience get in the way.
This wasn’t the watch, and this wasn’t her stationhouse. The prisoners’ health should be none of her concern. She slowed her pace down the steps, pretending to take extra care on the slick, grey stone, so that the woman behind her wouldn’t have to move so fast to keep up.
As they filed out into the rec yard, Ripka surveyed the inmates gathered there, looking for anyone who might be Nouli. Detan had described the engineer as a lean man of middle years, his short, tightly curled hair already gone to grey, and topaz eyes forever hidden behind wide spectacles.
Scanning the crowd, she couldn’t imagine a man like that here. Couldn’t make her mental image of a wizened, learned man shove gruel down his gullet while growling at his neighbors to stay back. Not that any of the prisoners behaved quite so gruffly – though she could have sworn she saw one man snarl at their line.
They were given bowls of beige porridge, pocked with what Ripka hoped was dates, and directed to an empty trestle table. The bench was hard, cold, and the splintered tabletop marked over with a half dozen stains she didn’t even attempt to recognize. Someone had carved a stick figure of a woman bent over a barrel onto the tabletop. Charming.
In the divot of the rec yard, the wind was not so bad. The sun bathed her shoulders, warmed her through the jumpsuit, and the knots in her back muscles relaxed.
Beside her, the slender woman coughed and coughed, each whooping exhalation like a crane’s complaint.
“Would you shutthefuckup!” a woman seated across from them hissed, using an arm to shield her porridge from the ill woman’s coughs.
Ripka tensed. The guards drifted away, giving the prisoners a wide berth. Was this a part of their initiation to the Remnant? To see how they handled emergent problems on their own?
The coughing woman stiffened. Ripka peeked sideways at her jumpsuit, read the name stained in dark dye there – Junie. Ripka glanced around as covertly as she could. Everyone except her and Enard studied their gruel with a strange intensity.
Ripka’s belly soured as Junie leaned back and drew herself up, preparing to launch a forceful cough right at the woman who had told her off.
“Junie, there’s no need to–”
Ripka was cut off by an explosive cough. Spittle dampened the hardwood tabletop with wet freckles. The other woman – Henta, her jumpsuit said – screeched and threw her bowl at Junie’s head, dousing her in pale sludge. Ripka jerked sideways, bumping Enard as she scrambled to get out of the way.
Whoops and jeers exploded all around. The man sitting next to Henta burst out into a fit of laughter.
Junie wasn’t laughing. The slender woman screeched with rage and leapt forward, the bowl that’d bounced off her breastbone raised like a club. Henta, grinning, sprung up to meet her halfway. Before Ripka could finish blinking they tangled together on the tabletop, hollering and kicking and bashing each other with any random piece of cookware that came to hand.
A strange, stunned stillness filled the air – and then chaos broke loose. The shouting of the guards was drowned out by the delighted cries of the inmates. A great brass bell rang somewhere above, signaling a riot. Those seated at the table the two women squabbled on jumped to their feet and cheered on one woman or another.
“Enough!” Ripka barked before she could stop herself, all her training as a watch-captain bubbling to the surface. Her instinct to restore order overrode her desire not to make a spectacle of herself.
Enard blurted something she couldn’t quite hear. Didn’t care to hear. Blood thrummed in her ears as her heart pounded, preparing her muscles for action. She leapt onto the table and stood above the wrestling pair. They whacked one another on the head and back with gruel-smeared bowls, yelling expletives all the while.
She saw an opening in the melee and seized it, grabbing Junie by the back of her jumpsuit. With a grunt she heaved the smaller woman back and the pair broke apart. Junie flailed, overbalanced Ripka, and she staggered – her foot hit empty air over the table’s edge. With a yelp she and Junie crashed backwards, sprawling onto the gruel and dust-spattered floor. Laughter roiled up from the spectators, but Ripka’s focus wasn’t on the bruise spreading on her hip nor her pride – it was on getting this pit-cursed woman under control.
Grunting with the effort, Ripka wrenched Junie around and pinned her chest-down on the dirt, twisting her arms behind her in a classic restraint hold. She heard scuffling all around, the crunch of boots approaching, and looked up, ready to explain herself.
It wasn’t a guard.
Some big bruiser from the general population stomped her way, veins sticking out on the sides of his neck, fists raised in preparation to strike. Cold fear coiled in her belly. The man’s almond-dark skin was covered by the same dreary jumpsuit they all wore, but he’d gone to the trouble of ripping open a shoulder seam to reveal the snake tattoo of the Glasseaters.
Now that she’d gotten Junie pinned to the ground, she saw the same tattoo peeking out from a ragged tear in the woman’s new jumpsuit. Wonderful.