“He’s thinking about something besides himself,” Clovache muttered to Batanya, who was standing as close as she could get, because she wanted a look at Clovache’s hands. “That can’t be good.” Tears were running down Clovache’s face. That meant the water immersion hadn’t completely worked.
“Steady,” she said, and Narcissus moved to the corner of his cell to look at the bars on Batanya’s. Batanya followed the direction of his gaze. The bars were beginning to smoke; just a little, easy to miss in the murky atmosphere, but still… Their eyes met. Come on, beautiful, she thought. Give me this. I’ll admire you till the pookas return to their burrows, if you’ll just give me this. She tried to smile winsomely, but it was too much of an effort. She gave him a good, hard stare. She was much better at that.
“What are you doing, bitch?” screamed Sha. Clovache whirled to face him, her fingers scattering drops of water. The skin of her hands was blistered, and Clovache clasped them behind her after a quick downward glance.
“Washing my hands, since the hounds slobbered all over them,” Clovache said. “What did you feed them, razor blades? Why’d they bite each other?” Sha glared at her, suspicion written all over his scaled face, and a third guard, one of the dust-balls, rolled around in an unbelieving manner.
The steam coming off the bars was slowly increasing in density, and any moment the guards would notice. If sheer force of will could have moved them, they would have shot back outside the doors. The hounds, casting malevolent looks at Batanya and Clovache, skulked out into the guardroom. The guards, after a few more threats and a lot more curses, followed. The doors slammed shut just in time, because the smoke was beginning to really pour off the bars that had been touched with hound blood.
“Let me see your hands,” Batanya said, and Clovache held them out. There were bright red blisters covering the palms of Clovache’s hands. They looked so painful that even Narcissus winced in sympathy. (He felt better after he looked down at his own white, unsullied hands.)
Clovache shrugged. “Worth it, if we get out. Will they come back in if we make a lot of noise?” she asked Narcissus.
“No,” said the beautiful youth after a moment’s thought. “Others scream and plead all the time. And they only came in before because the hounds were howling, and the hounds are favorites of Lucifer’s. An ogre beat his heads against the bars for an hour before they came to check, two weeks ago.” He looked at the Britlingens expectantly.
“You were so clever to keep silent when the hounds were in here,” Batanya said hastily. “I was so proud of you. I don’t know how we’d accomplish this without your help.”
Satisfied temporarily, Narcissus gave her a lovely smile and fetched his hairbrush.
The smoke roiled and thickened, and the air got even worse. After perhaps five minutes, the smoke began to dissipate, though the thick atmosphere made it hard to see what damage had been done. Batanya positioned herself carefully and swung the heavy water bucket at what she figured was the weakest point. She got as close as she could to examine the weak spot. She hadn’t caused any visible damage, but the impact of the metal-rimmed bucket against the bars hadn’t felt as violent as she’d expected. Heartened, Batanya swung the bucket again, putting all the strength of her upper body into the movement. The bars bent outward, and a few flakes fell off the fast-corroding metal. She swung again, and the metal bent outward. Clovache had grasped her own bucket in her damaged hands and began the same procedure on the bars of her own cell. That didn’t go as swiftly, because smearing the blood on a wide section had produced better results than a more intense application in a few spots. With a roar of sheer focus, Batanya swung the bucket for a tenth time, and a section of the bars broke off, creating an aperture large enough to allow her to climb out. Amelia cheered, Narcissus gaped, and Clovache sagged against her cot with relief. The next instant, she was back to swinging her bucket. While Batanya ran to hide behind the door, Clovache began to yell in time with her attacks on the bars.
Narcissus had told them the guards were slow to react to prisoner noise, and it took a few minutes before the combination of Clovache’s piercing screams and the banging of the bucket roused them to come check. The first one through the door was the snakeman, Sha, and Batanya was on his back instantly, slicing the side of his neck with her tiny blade. His blood was not red, more of a deep purple, and it didn’t spray, but welled sluggishly from the gash. But he crumpled to the floor, scaled hands clutching at the wound as if to keep his blood inside. Batanya leaped over him to attack the dustball. It didn’t seem to have a mortal spot to wound, at least to human eyes, but Batanya swung her arm as if there were a sword in it instead of an inch-and-a-half blade, and the startled dustball rolled farther into the corridor, bringing it closer to Amelia’s cell. Amelia thrust her arms through the bars and brought them together, as she would as if she had caught an assailant’s neck. Batanya had wondered if Amelia’s arms would cut through the dustball, but the aviatrix seemed to be compressing an area. The dustball reacted in an agitated fashion, so at least it was seriously frightened at being held like that. Compression was the key to defeating the creature.
Clovache, halfway out of her own cell, climbed back in to get her blanket from the cot.
“Stand away,” she yelled to Batanya, who obeyed instantly. Clovache tossed the blanket over the creature, and then she and Batanya threw themselves on it. The dustball began to deflate as they pressed it against the bars of Amelia’s cell, and when the two Britlingens dug their feet in and pushed harder, the escaping air achieved a moaning sound. The smell was even more unpleasant than the other smells in the jail, and Amelia looked really queasy.
After a silent struggle that seemed to go on for hours, the dustball was squashed flat. When the Britlingens cautiously released their pressure, a large lump of hair, trash, and dust fell to the stone floor. Clovache threw the blanket on top of it, in case it could pump itself back up, and she dragged the snakeman’s ghastly body on top of that, while Batanya divested Sha of his dagger.
“What’s happening?” Marl called from the guardroom. The door had swung shut behind Sha and the dustball, so he didn’t have a good view, and he wasn’t at the peephole-too cautious, maybe.
“Help! Help! He’s killing me!” Clovache screamed. Furious that Sha was interfering with a valuable prisoner, Marl threw open the door and rushed into the prison wing, sword drawn. Batanya tripped him and stabbed him through the neck with Sha’s dagger. Within seconds, they’d gotten the keys off his belt and Batanya was unlocking Amelia’s cell. The tall woman didn’t waste any time getting out, and the four former prisoners clustered together for a minute.
“Amelia, Narcissus, I don’t know what you want to do, but Clovache and I have to rescue our client,” Batanya said. “Does either of you have any knowledge of where Lucifer’s chambers are?”
“I do,” Narcissus said. “I spent hours there, entrancing and entertaining him.” He made a ludicrous attempt to look modest.
“Will you take us there?” Batanya asked. There was no time for finesse. They were in the middle of hostile territory.
“We want to keep you with us as long as we can,” Clovache said more diplomatically, “and if you can’t help us, we have to be on our way.”
“Since you ask so nicely,” Narcissus said, casting a cold look in Batanya’s direction, “I will lead you there.”
There was no question that Amelia wanted to go. She was pale with anxiety, and choking on the suffocating miasma of the jail. The four ex-prisoners crept to the open door. The air in the guard chamber outside was remarkably stinky, but it was a big improvement nonetheless.