The few job offers available were positions such as waitressing or making clothing. Guilds seemed to bar many female members, and she could hardly pursue a ‘career’ as housewife. If she really wanted she could have joined the military, who accepted women, but a life enduring extreme conditions at the fringes of the Empire wasn’t quite what she had in mind. Still, she had time on her hands, which meant she possessed something greater than most women in the city: the luxury of choice.
During her routine search for employment a bizarre sense of paranoia followed her. Whether it was acclimatizing to her new body, or something sinister, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t help feel that she was being actively monitored. Were the cultists observing her in some perverse reality experiment? Cayce did suggest he might try to locate her at some point to check on her adaptation to the magic — no, technology, that was what he called it, and he corrected her every time she used the ‘m’ word.
Maybe they were watching her. Maybe they were keeping her safe.
*
One morning, with sleet in the air and a distant tang of frying food, Lan was browsing stalls, searching for spices to cook her evening meal. The iren was packed with soldiers, their swords unsheathed and exposed to the crowds.
Lan wondered why such an innocent location required so many soldiers from a Regiment of Foot, in their intimidating mud-brown uniforms and cheap armour. The iren was busy nonetheless, with row upon intricate row of commercial activity. Fish traders had all sorts of specimens lined up under coloured awnings, whilst smiths were out hawking their wares — new blades or shields crafted from stronger metal. Cheap gemstones were being promenaded in handcarts that clattered across the cobbles, whilst trails of young women fawned over them. Everywhere were shouts of orders and prices as vendors grilled spiced seafood over hot coals.
‘Lan!’
Was that someone calling her name?
‘Lan!’
No one in the city could have known her, especially not as she was now. Foolishly, she turned around to see who it was Slam. Screams rippled across the plaza.
One of the last images she remembered was of a group of soldiers rushing forward — then retreating under newer orders.
Two punches to her stomach and a strike around her head and she blacked out.
*
Later, when her groggy head cleared, figures garbed in long grey coats with scarves around their mouths came into her cell and bombarded her with questions. Lan was hunched sideways on a mattress, rope around her chest, handcuffs binding her wrists, digging into her skin. Beneath her restraints, she was wearing a thick grey tunic over black breeches, but inexplicably she felt it somehow wasn’t enough.
Lan could soon see that the cell was actually more like a bedroom, which was not what she imagined a prison unit to be, and it suggested that she wasn’t in immediate trouble. People came into the room. The figures jutted lanterns towards her face with severe motions. Relentlessly they asked her questions, demanding her to confirm details they seemed to already know.
She was forced to confirm she had been taken to Ysla to visit the cultists.
She felt their interrogation to be deeply abusive. Soon she wanted to cry but she wouldn’t let herself, not in front of them. It was carefully explained to her that her body had already proven extremely adaptive to ancient technologies. If they knew that, why did they ask questions?
What was it Cayce had said? Not everyone is as pliable as you. And the words were repeated back to her at least twice.
At first she told them little — paranoid and deeply afraid that she would lose a sense of her new self, as much as anything else.
Thankfully, after a few hours they untied the rope around her abdomen, and left the room to contemplate her answers. Lan immediately began busying herself by investigating the cuffs around her wrists. Escape artistry wasn’t foreign to her: she understood the quirks, the tricks, the insider knowledge. She knew that most handcuffs could be mastered with a pick or even applied pressure, though it would have helped if she had seen the mechanisms beforehand. By touch she guessed these were nothing unusual, and that she could open them with a blow on the right spot. Looking around, she noted a metal ridge on the bed frame. It was an awkward manoeuvre but she managed to twist herself around and, with her hands held behind her, she repeatedly hammered the handcuffs down, close to the hinge. It took eight blows until they sprung open, then she enjoyed letting the pain in her arms subside.
Seems they do not use expensive restraints in Villjamur, she thought, rubbing her wrists.
Her kidnappers returned and didn’t quite know what to make of the open cuffs she’d cast down the foot of the mattress, but to her surprise they didn’t beat her — instead, they gave her water and good food, flatbreads and spiced curries. Such luxuries confirmed to her that they weren’t going to immediately kill her. It was, perhaps, some consolation.
*
A clank of iron woke her. Those grey-coated figures returned, hovering in the doorway. But someone else stepped inside her celclass="underline" a tall brown-skin rumel sporting the crimson colours of the Inquisition.
His words came with an unusual tenderness.
‘Hello, Lan, I’m Investigator Fulcrom. Are you feeling all right? Please, come with us. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all of this. They were… wrong to be so harsh.’ Tense glances were exchanged between the investigator and the grey coats. ‘We’ll explain what we require in a moment.’
Lan pushed herself up from the mattress, spun her legs over the side and brushed back her hair. The rumel took her hand and lifted her to her feet.
‘There you are,’ he said.
Lan rubbed her eyes and shuffled after them.
Soon they passed through a more civilized location — smooth walls and floors, cressets giving light and warmth, brass trimmings and skylights. It was daytime at least, but she could see only pale grey clouds. In this rare moment of normal vision, she glanced at the faces of those escorting her, but they were hidden still by the scarves across their faces. With rimmed hats or hoods, only their eyes were exposed — they were all human, all pale, all weirdly androgynous-looking. Aside from the rumel, of course, who now and then turned back to give her reassuring glances.
It took two of them to open the massive oak doors, and she was led through them. The next room was certainly imposing — the movement of air and the echo of boots against stone indicated it was vast. In the dim light she could make out very little, save for the glittering metallic instruments at the far end of the room, like bookshelves, but with wires and vials of fluids. A light shone on them — from them — and they seemed to spark alive.
In the centre of the room were three leather chairs, two were already occupied. Whilst the figures in grey fanned out in a circle around them, she was propelled into the final chair. She peered at the other two present: one was a broad and stocky man who must have been in his fifties. With a square, stubbled jaw, an arm as wide as her thigh, he appeared to be every bit a thug, but there was something immensely sad about his posture: he was slumping — had spent years slumping — and his gaze was directed mainly at the ground. When he did look at her, his vision passed over so casually she might as well have been an item of furniture. He wore black breeches, and a dark red sweater that was too tight for him — he was once heavily muscled, probably still was under a few years of bad living.