'Yes,' I say. 'And they tell you how to dress, how to conduct your rituals, how you should behave, what weapons you can carry, what words you should use and when, what kind of woman you should take as a partner… When did you people stop thinking for yourselves?'
'You have read the Laws?' he exclaims in surprise.
'A translation,' I lie. I read the whole thing in Gurtan. A litany of conditions governing all aspects of life, written by an ancient Gurta despot and enforced with brutal punishments. Maal's line lasted for twenty-five generations, until natural causes put an end to it. Each descendant ensured the people kept to the Laws. Over time, they became the blueprint for a society too sacred to alter or argue. The traditions are still upheld by the Elders and the Lawkeepers, and the punishments haven't got any less severe as far as I know. Trying to discuss the merits of Maal's Laws with a Gurta is pointless; to them, they're as necessary to life as the beat of their hearts.
He pauses for a time, studying me. I'm used to the pauses by now. I'll talk to him as long as I don't think he's learning anything from me. Maybe I'll learn something from him. Perhaps he really is interested in hearing my point of view, or perhaps he's searching for knowledge that they could use against us. I'm prepared to play for now. Besides, he's made it very clear that failure to cooperate would lead to a withdrawal of his protection. I doubt I'd be allowed to live long if that happened.
'Tell me about Bondsmen.'
'A Bondsman is somebody who has sworn a lifedebt to a particular Clan,' I reply, somewhat formally. 'Often, when a person borrows a sum of money from a Clan or otherwise asks for a favour, their repayment can be secured with service. If they fail to repay the loan or the favour in kind, they enter lifedebt. The severity of the debt determines the length of the debt in generations. My own lifedebt only applied to me. The most severe can last for seven generations.'
'Then your children are slaves? Do you have children?'
'No, and no,' I lie. I'm not telling him about Jai or Rynn. There are some things I don't want to discuss with him. 'Nobody forces you to take on lifedebt. You make the choice.'
'The child does not have that choice.'
I think of Rynn, how he was born into Bond, how angry it made him. 'Every child has to deal with the circumstances of their birth.'
'And how did you incur your lifedebt?'
'It was willingly taken, not incurred. Clan Caracassa did a great service for me when I was ten years old. In return, I swore my lifedebt.' I can't help sounding a little proud of it. I twist in the chair to show him my bare shoulder. 'This skinmark shows the Clan I'm sworn to. The one on my face means I'm a Bondswoman. No other Clan will employ me; not even minor merchants or labourers would risk it. Without Clan Caracassa, I'd probably starve.'
Gendak sits back and regards me with those pale, dead Gurta eyes. Some misguided romantics have called the Gurta elegant, fey, statuesque. I see only an unhealthy pallor, eyes like cataracts. I find their fluttering language not poetic but sinister and repulsive. People talk of trying to understand their enemy. I do understand them, and I hate them all the more for it. Rynn would say something eminently sensible, if he was here: you see only what you want to see. You want to hate them for what they did to you. That was true before he died, and it's doubly so now.
'It seems to me you have a system of indentured servitude, as alien to us as our ways are to you,' Gendak says carefully. 'We, at least, do not enslave our own kind. Perhaps, in the end, there is no right or wrong, only perspective.'
'No,' I reply. 'There's only history. Whoever wins this war gets to be right.' The food hall is a rectangular stone chamber with nine long tables, surrounding a central fire where the prisoners' meals are boiled or grilled or spit-roasted. It's even hotter than the cell. I feel claustrophobic and restless. Aside from my little excursions to Gendak's study now and then, my life is a random sequence of forge-food-quad-cell. We see no other parts of the prison.
This turn we're fed a stew with fat spore dumplings floating in it, surrounded by chunks of gristle and fat. I'm not fussy. It gives me strength. For a long while I only ate because it was easier to do so than to refuse, but now I bolt it down. I talk to Feyn with my mouth full, waving my spoon around as I talk. I don't know what's got into me: suddenly, I have energy, and I want this food. I can actually taste it. Not that that's a good thing in this particular instance.
Feyn seems delighted by my transformation, and the fact that he has someone willing to speak to him. Both of us have habitually eaten alone and in silence until now. We're drawing gazes from the rest of the prisoners.
Encouraged by his interest, I talk about this place. I've picked up a lot from the conversations I've overheard from other prisoners. The guards don't trouble to be secretive, either. They assume their language to be incomprehensible to us.
Feyn has been ostracised since he got here, and he is remarkably ignorant about the prison. I wonder if he's simply not troubled himself to look for answers. He strikes me as strangely passive, given his situation.
So I tell him what I know. We're inside a Gurta fort called Farakza, on the edge of the Borderlands. The prison lies at its heart: the forge, laundry rooms, mills and so on. The academics are quartered nearby, and our cells are in the caves beneath the fort.
What I had learned from Gendak was common knowledge among the prisoners: they keep us alive to study us, to practice chirurgery, to use us as test subjects for their experiments. Gendak's attention seems benevolent in comparison to the horrors rumoured to await the most unfortunate: live dissections, agonising medical trials of new drugs, vile chthonomantic procedures that leave their victims warped and ruined. The Laws forbid Gurta to practice bodily alteration upon their own people, but it makes no provision for the protection of foreigners.
There is talk of an Elder coming to Farakza soon, the Gurta equivalent of our own chthonomancers. But whereas our chthonomancers wield no political power, their Elders are the custodians of the Laws, responsible for their preservation. They are the fists of Maal from beyond the grave, their authority unquestioned. It's through them that the words of one long-dead man still dominate the lives of an entire society today.
The prisoners are worried. Death is only death, but a living death is a terror beyond anything the chirurgeons could inflict. There is talk of pitiful, mewling things still chained in the depths from an Elder's last visit.
'It makes sense of things a little, a least,' I say to Feyn. 'The way they watch us in the quad, the way they keep on altering our schedule so we never settle. The way they wouldn't let us bathe for a long time. They're watching how it affects our moods; they're watching how we interact in our free time.'
'That would seem likely.'
'Studying us like insects,' I mutter. 'Give me a knife and ten minutes alone with one of those chirurgeons and I'll show them what a real dissection is.'
Feyn's eyes flicker away from me, made uneasy by my tone. 'They hurt you in the past,' he says. 'They are more than just enemies to you.' He has an uncanny ability to see right through me. He understands me with only the barest of clues.
'They killed my husband,' I say. And the words are out, over my tongue, past my teeth, before I can stop them. I've said it aloud. My throat closes up, too late to stop it, and my eyes prickle. I look down furiously at the table. Not going to cry.
He's silent for a long time and I don't look at him. Finally, he speaks. 'I see,' he says, and I think he does. 'But they did not kill your son.'
I look up at him. 'You don't know anything about my son.'
'I know you are not dead,' he replies, and he's so infuriatingly certain of himself that I want to jump across the table and throttle him. 'And perhaps you pretend that you are.'