And now, he was a prisoner, in a prison cell, held captive by someone who wanted him to confess to who knew what? And there could be no appeal to a higher authority, because there was none. No black-suited solicitor would sweep in, demand his release with threats and promises, and drive him back to his parents.
It was up to him.
And he had nothing to bring to a situation like this. Nothing he’d ever done had prepared him remotely for action. All his learning, all his good manners, all his religious devotion: could it really have left him so grossly unprepared?
Yes. No. Perhaps.
He could shout and scream and kick at the door until his toes broke. Or he could work out why he was there, what the geomancer thought he knew, and how to escape. No doubt that kicking the door and making himself hoarse would feel better, but enough bits of him were broken already.
There was the door, there was his foot. He took a deep breath.
What he really wanted was his hands free. The walls were old and the stone coated with powdery grit. There were no protrusions or sharp edges to grind the bindings against, but there was the recess made by the door frame. In lieu of anything better to do, he pressed his back against the angle and started rubbing his wrists against the stone work.
It was long, boring, and repetitive. Like simultaneous equations, but with added muscle ache. He had to stop every once in a while, just to rest and let his arms hang in a more natural position. But when he’d rested, he went right back to it.
There were noises from outside, so far, twice. He heard Stanislav’s resonant voice echo down the walls, then fade away into the distance. He was questioning the guard, but getting no answers. Sometime later, a woman’s sobbing came and went. He couldn’t tell who it was from the sound, and the door had no grating. The shadows under the door flickered as they passed, then it was quiet again.
He kept on rubbing. He couldn’t see if it was doing any good, neither could he feel any extra give. Eventually, if he kept it up long enough, one of the cords around his wrists would wear thin, and then he could break it. Once broken, he should be able to work out the loose end and the whole knot should unravel.
This, he knew. He’d learnt this: a little bit of his schooling was useful after all. This was how materials behaved.
His legs started to cramp with the tiny up-down movements he was making. As he stretched his calves, his shoulders flexed, and something snapped.
A third person was led past. Voluble, outraged Romanian infiltrated his cell, and like before, faded away. It ended with a sharp bang◦– a door being closed, but nearby. If he pressed his ear against the wood, he could still hear the complaints.
He wriggled his wrists, easing them apart, slowly unravelling the cords, pulling and relaxing, twisting and turning. Then his hands were free.
They hurt, not just from their prolonged captivity, but from shielding himself from the kicking he’d received. He had a lump on the back of one hand that hurt exquisitely when he pressed it with his thumb, and now that normal circulation had been restored, it started to throb with every beat of his heart.
All his fingers seemed to work, however. That was something. He squeezed his wrists and felt the deeply indented grooves in his skin made by his bindings.
He looked around his cell again. He had a bag, and a long twisted leather thong, still tied at the loose ends but broken in the middle. He gathered up the thong and put it in the bag, which was rough hessian, like a potato sack.
Without his turban, his comb, his sword, his bracelet, he felt naked. Four of the five symbols of his faith had been stripped from him. Part of him, the zealous part that felt the affront most, wanted to get them back, as soon as possible and at whatever cost. Only then would he be ready and fit to deal with whatever came next.
But the other, more wary part, the whisper from a deeper teaching, was telling him that he should be patient, that he wasn’t going to offend the gurus or go against their teachings if he waited and watched and yes, learned from his captors.
Another prisoner passed in front of his cell door. He listened carefully to see if he could tell who it was, but she was silent. She and her guard scuffed down the corridor outside. As they moved further away, there was banging and shouting◦– Romanian and English◦– but it was all in vain. A distant door opened, closed, and something heavy banged into place.
That made five. Because Mary had escaped◦– or at least, because Mary was still on the run, and there was a huge difference between the two◦– that was it. They’d be left to stew.
There was no bucket in with him, not even a hole in the floor that he could find. Given that he’d been casually beaten up, arbitrarily bound and blindfolded, force marched and imprisoned, he supposed that this was just the start. There was no reason why, above the simple expediency of keeping him alive long enough to answer questions, he wasn’t going to end up living night and day with his own excrement, slowly starving to death and driven mad by his incarceration.
He wondered what would have happened, what would be happening now, if he’d literally and metaphorically thrown Mary to the wolves, and swum the river himself. He decided that he’d have found that choice impossible to live with, and that he was, if not exactly glad, content with the way things had gone. He was supposed to protect others, even at a cost to himself. That he’d never had to do it before might have made it easier: he had none of the messy practical experience to dilute his pure motive.
But being locked up to rot wasn’t what he wanted, either. As the guard’s footsteps tracked back down the corridor, he knocked crisply on the door and said: ‘I want to see the geomancer.’
It wasn’t quite a demand, and was far from grovelling for mercy. That might come later, of course, but he didn’t know what that might look like and he really didn’t want to.
The footsteps had stopped. Under the door, he could see the slowly shifting shadows cast by a lit candle.
‘You saw her already.’
‘I want to see her again.’
‘Why’s that?’
Dalip judged his words carefully. ‘Because she wants to ask me some questions.’
Nothing about giving her the answers she might want, but yes, she did want to ask him questions. He’d misplayed the situation before. Perhaps he was doing so again, but it was perfectly clear that regular beatings eventually followed by death would be the result of his opening gambit.
‘Wait there,’ said the guard, then laughed at his own joke. He went away, his hiccoughing chuckles receding with the light he carried.
Dalip invested the time in trying to climb up to the window-slit. The wall wasn’t smooth, and the rough stonework was pocked with gritty holes. That made it easy to get a little way up, and just as easy to slip down again. Because the wall was deep in shadow, he used his hands more than his eyes, reaching and feeling over his head. He was young and fit, and reasonably supple. Climbing the corner of the cell made it possible to brace himself, rather than rely on the strength in his fingers. His melted boots weren’t helping, so he took them off. He had his thick socks on underneath, and they were growing increasingly crisp with wear.
The outer wall was broad, as deep as his arm was long. The gap was far too narrow for him to pass through, even his head, let alone his shoulders, but if he could see outside and look down at the ground, he might have some idea of what lay beyond.
He was almost there, raised up off the floor, feet stuck in adjacent walls, and about to traverse towards the window, when there were three bangs at his cell door.