as he could to minimize her opportunities of finding some more painful target. “Please... I mean you no harm,” he whispered urgently into the side of her neck. “I only wish to remain undetected.” He tried to say more as she began to pummel his back with her fist. “I am with the rebellion,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “If those outside are guards, they will kill me. I will not die alone, and have no desire to take an innocent girl to her god.”
The attack upon him showed some hesitation; then stopped at almost at the same time whoever it was walked past. The steps faded away down the passage and were gone.
There was a muffled protest, and a couple of ineffective blows on his kidneys to remind him that he still held her tight.
Cautiously releasing her body, but not mouth Nicholas stepped back. “Please listen,” he said quickly. “I am sorry to have frightened you. Truly I mean no harm, though you now present me with some small problem.”
The girl stared at him but said nothing for a few moments. “I am no stranger to problems and trouble with you around, for it is not the first time you have caused me to be in it Nikki Day.”
He was dumbfounded, how did she know him. He stared into her face; then it came to him. “Maryanne? It is you, by all the stars that shine; it is you.” He grabbed her again but this time in friendly embrace, till she pushed him away.
“You stink as much as a Cess pit,” she said distastefully.
It took a few minutes for each to relate the barest minimum of events that had passed since their last meeting, or rather parting, for it was she who had been sent from the district in disgrace after taking the blame for Nicholas’s access to the Alderman’s library.
Her mood changed as she related what she had seen from a window of the apartments. “They never stood any chance,” she said. “We had seen the preparations and knew that, but none knew what the Marshal intended out there in the courtyard, or what he planned.” She paused as if a bad taste were on her tongue. The Marshal has let it be known they will all be taken to the battlements and one by one hung over the wall. Their leader’s will have they eyelids cut off and be made to watch their friends kicking until they are forced to take their turn
Nicholas felt sick. “Then the Marshal has won.” His mind vaguely thought of his friends. “The leaders were taken alive?”
“I don’t know; some of those that were captured were given in reward to the guards to use as entertainment. So they will barely be so in the morn.”
It seemed that each barbaric act he heard of was eclipsed by another: and suddenly one man’s mischief was totally inadequate. That the Marshal had won he accepted; it was in the codes of war to use intelligence and out maneuver your opponent, but this wasn’t winning; this was inexcusable. His father had been a soldier in the old days, and as a boy Nicholas had listened to many tales of long ago battles and heroism. Always the victor and the vanquished were bound by rules of engagement. It was beyond question that how he won or lost, determined the quality of a man. But this was not how civilized people waged war, even if the rebellion could be claimed to be one. Disagreement was faced man to man, not murder by stealth, massacre and mistreatment of the innocent. He knew finally that Simeon was right, and that it was his fight as much as anyone’s; and fight he would. “Do you know where the survivors have been taken?”
“They will be in the cells.” She said slowly, sensing a change in his tone.
As he had felt in the forest, and when he had faced Sans Mons, his mind was suddenly crystal clear, and he knew what he had to do. “Tell me how to get there.”
“I can tell you?” Maryanne said reluctantly. “But it will be of no use. You will never leave alive; no one has. Nicholas his jailers are not the scum of his soldiers. To be a warden is a prize, sought and shared by his most brutal, and cruelest. The Marshal cares only that he has information; if that is what he seeks. To get it his guards can let their perverted minds run free.” She saw not the slightest flinch to indicate her words meant anything to him. “Nicholas they kill for pleasure.”
“I know.” He said softly, knowing deep inside that he could not possibly understand such men’s mentality. “Tell me where they are Maryanne; then go, lest you are seen with me, I will do all I can to free them; or join them in their fate. Just tell me how to get there.”
“No Nikki,” she said anxiously. “There will be at the very minimum four of the guard; there always is. If you must go then you need every edge you can.” She bit her bottom lip lightly in unwillingness, less she said what she felt, but say it she did. “I know the way, and know that there are too many turns and traps where you will fail.” She drew her resolve from depths of courage she had forgotten she had. “I will show you the way, and if we can, we will free them together.”
He went to speak but she stayed him with her words.
“Do not try to persuade me against. I was at the window and saw all that happened; I have witnessed and been present to things, which have troubled me too often; and those times I closed my eyes, I will not do that this time.”
He had no time to argue and knew what she said made sense. “So be it then,” he agreed. “Come; show me the way for time has almost run out.”
More Quone-Loc-Sie, and other novels and stories by John Stevenson can be found by visiting
www.caelin-day.com
www.Australianstoryteller.com
www.Australianstorywriter.com
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