Dissatisfaction amongst the ranks. Interesting.
“Very well.” Pelkaia flicked her hand to indicate her impatience. “Take me to his office, then, but I will wait no more than a mark before I take this disastrous place under my arm if your warden decides not to pay me a visit.”
“Find him,” the guard snapped to his fellows, and gestured Pelkaia forward. “This way please, commodore.”
Pelkaia held up a fist and circled it, indicating that all those not already required to come with her were to stay behind and look after the Larkspur. And be prepared to take off at the slimmest notice, no doubt. Detan would have much rather been among their number, but the lure of rescuing Ripka and New Chum urged him on.
Not much could be discerned from the drab interior of the Remnant. They were led down a narrow corridor, stone walls hemming them in all around. No decoration adorned the walls, though hints of graffiti of times past could be seen in half-chiseled gashes and the mangled remains of staining inks. Not even a rug cushioned the ground. Detan was beginning to loathe all municipal construction. A flair for comfort amongst his civic betters wouldn’t have gone amiss.
After this was over, he resolved to lay around on silken pillows for at least a week. Or until Tibs kicked him off, at any rate.
He lost track of the twisting and turning of the hallways, each door with its odd number or jumble of letters a new mystery to him. He’d spent more than his fair amount of time behind bars installed by imperial hands, and yet he’d never seen anything like the stone bowels of the Remnant. He had no idea what those numbered doors meant – or where they’d lead to. Chances were quite good, he surmised, that he’d never, ever want the answers to that particular curiosity.
What went on behind the locked doors of a prison’s inner sanctum wasn’t anything he wanted to be acquainted with. He’d spent time enough in the whitecoats’ company to satisfy any morbid curiosity a younger, stupider version of himself might have held toward the particularities of torture.
Not that his captors had ever set out to torture him. No, he’d just been a specimen. A thing to take apart and figure out how to put back together again. He never had found much comfort in that knowledge.
The guard knocked on a door with a bit more shine to its wood than the rest. Figured the king rat would squirrel away in the middle of his nest. Probably had stuck himself on the end of a twisted route in case a riot got loose in the building. Wouldn’t want the inmates to have too easy a job finding their crummy warden.
The warden’s office was a master class in disappointment in the Valathean system. Haphazard stacks of paper littered the floor, the desk. A bookshelf caked with dust leaned crazily against one wall, threatening to topple over at the slightest bump. Though the single window was thrown open to let in the ocean breeze, the sour tang of old wine and unwashed breath hung in the air. A hint of smoke, too, though Detan couldn’t place the source. Certainly wasn’t the cold hearth opposite the tottering bookshelf. He figured he’d rather spend his time in a cell than this rat hole. At least cells were sloshed down with water once a week. Musta been killing Ripka to stay in this disastrous place.
The warden himself sat hunched behind his desk, beady eyes screwed up tight and a tighter scowl on his lips.
“Commodore,” he said, “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
Well shit. Pelkaia scoffed, buying herself time to figure out a proper response, and Detan prayed to the clear skies that her acting skills hadn’t grown rusty. He caught Tibs’s eye and raised a brow, wondering if they should try to cause a distraction. The warden answered his question for him.
“I have had no progress in rooting out our imperial underminers, if that’s what you’re here about.” The warden’s voice was raw with defensiveness, and he shot an annoyed glance at the guard who’d led them to him. “Or didn’t you notice I currently have my hands quite full? The inmates have been anxious, despite our efforts to keep them subdued. Mudleaf isn’t enough to calm a nervous heart in these circumstances, despite your insistence. A mouse knows when it’s caged next to a lion.”
Detan’s mind reeled. That was all very interesting – if completely without context to him. Thratia had a deal with the warden. Made sense. Thratia wanted the inmates calmed because… lions? Gods below the dunes, but he wished he could find Ripka and New Chum and ask them what in the pits was going on around here. Pitsdamn Thratia, that woman had longer fingers than a willow tree stretched on a torturer’s rack.
“It’s not your progress I’m here about,” Pelkaia said, keeping her voice tight and clipped. A good move, that. Detan would give her a big ole round of applause if he wasn’t playing the part of a docile prisoner. Though he was dying to find out what the agreement was between those two spiders, she didn’t know enough to step out onto that particular stretch of quicksand, and they’d be in it up to their necks in no time if she tried.
“I see.” The warden’s pursed lips got even thinner. Detan caught himself wondering how a man wound up that tight could ever take a shit, then chased the thought away with a revolted shiver. Curiosity wasn’t always a winning state of mind. “Have you brought two to add to your menagerie then?”
Silence all around. Detan stared straight ahead at the wall, not daring to catch anyone’s eye lest he give away the fear racing through his veins like cold iron. Menagerie.
All that sel, in all that empty space. The guards’ rumors… Didn’t take a whole lot of thinking to draw some real stark conclusions from the facts at hand.
Pelkaia had to clear her throat to smooth a rasp from it. “Yes. Of course.”
“Very well.” The warden waved them off with a flick of his wrist. “Though I warn you again that this is madness. You won’t find what you’re looking for in my population, and the more freaks you drag out here the more wound up my cattle gets, even if they don’t quite know what’s making their skin itch.” He glared out the window, lips hitching up in a curl of disgust. “Makes my skin itch.”
He eyed Detan and Tibs then, as if seeing them for the first time. At least Detan no longer had to fake shock and horror at his current predicament. “Bringing them out here yourself, I bet these two are more dangerous than most.”
“You could say that,” Pelkaia said a little too quickly.
“Well, go on then. You know the way, and as you can see I’ve a lot on my hands at the moment.”
“I require your man here to lead the way.” Pelkaia tipped her chin toward the one who’d brought them this far. “With a riot happening, I’d like to keep someone to hand who knows all the pathways.”
He snorted. “Forgot the path you picked already? Typical. Go, then. I’ll send word when I’ve rooted out our little problem for good.” The warden glanced at a strange, silvery curl of bark on his desk and his disgust returned anew. Did the man have a botany problem? Odd thing to be concerned about, with half your prison breaking anything they could get their hands on – heads not excluded.
As the guard led them out into the hall Pelkaia dropped back, hissing low against his ear. “Now what?”
“We’ve got to see it through. We’ve got to get them out.”
“Might be more ‘them’ than we intended,” Tibs murmured low enough for them to hear.
Detan shivered. What in the black skies was Thratia up to on this forsaken hunk of rock?