When he was done, his throat felt dry and he sank down onto one of the benches.
Blackeye turned last to Mican. “You set her up.”
Mican hesitated, then he gave a sharp shrug, his mouth twisted sarcastically. “I just wanted to give her a lesson in what real life is like,” he said. “Let your prin-cess buy her way out.”
Blackeye shook her head. “You’re thinking with your grudges, not your head,” she said flatly, and jerked a thumb in Joe’s direction. “Those two are the only chance we have to get rid of Todan. I don’t care if they’re the heirs to the evil emperor of Sveran Djur—they’re here to help us.”
She glanced up at Warron, who made a brief gesture with his hand. Blackeye nodded, turned to Mican, and said, “You come back with Nan—or you don’t come back.”
No one spoke or moved; Shor gave a choking gasp. Joe stared as she flung her hands over her face, then the meaning of the words penetrated: Mican was out of the gang.
Somehow this was just as terrible as Nan’s being captured, which still did not seem quite real. But the way Mican’s thin face blanched, the way he stared, his eyes pleading—and Shor’s crying—those seemed very real.
Mican turned very slowly, and walked out. Shor watched, and Blackeye said, “If you think you can help him get her out and get back to us the faster, Shor, go.”
Mican’s sister looked up blindly, tears bouncing off her bodice, then she ran out of the room.
Blackeye got to her feet and followed more slowly. “Now about that rope,” she said to Tarsen, as if nothing at all had happened.
Joe trailed behind, feeling stranger than ever. He didn’t like Nan, but he could not forget seeing her grabbed and marched off. Mican had been even harder to like—but Joe did not want to remember the look on his face when Blackeye gave that last order.
At first he thought Blackeye had forgotten it all—that she was as stone-hearted as Warron seemed. As the evening wore on Blackeye seldom spoke, and never smiled, even when Tarsen tried cracking jokes, and Sarilda sang some silly songs. They sat in a booth in the common room, and though they ordered a mouth-watering array of food, Blackeye mostly picked at her share.
Still, no one brought up Mican’s name until Blackeye set down her glass and said, “Mican’s grudges will get him killed if he doesn’t learn to douse ’em.”
“He’s at his worst around nobles,” Tarsen said with a grimace. “He just hates the idea of anyone born to wealth and power. Doesn’t earn it.”
Joe grinned. “That’s called a Communist where I live.”
Everybody turned his way. He was going to make a joke about Commies, but hesitated when he saw how serious everyone looked, even Tarsen. “Are these Communists, then, the ones who deposed Nan?”
“Did what?”
“Her mother must have courted them, despite being a queen.” Kevriac drew a finger in some spilled cider.
He never looks directly at me, Joe thought. He shook his head. “Her mother what? Who are you talking about?”
“Nan!” at least three voices exclaimed.
“A queen?” Joe burst out laughing. “What—” He stopped, frowning. “Wait a minute. What did she tell you?”
“She said she is a princess. Chose exile to save her little sister,” Blackeye said.
Joe whistled. “I knew she was weird, but I didn’t think...” He frowned. “Well, come to think of it, I don’t know anything at all about her background. I suppose it’s possible, but it sure is unlikely.”
“Why do you say that?” Sarilda spoke up, her blue eyes intense.
“Well, because there aren’t any kings or queens in the country where we live. No nobles, either—not like you have here. We have lots of rich folks, but they don’t have any titles other than the same ‘Mister’ that guys like me get. Anyway, there are some royalty left in a few countries, but I can’t believe she’s one—they put their kids in fancy private schools, with a lot of guards, or they get private tutors, and she was in a regular public school just like me. Also she has an American accent. Uh, same accent I use. So I don’t think she’s from a foreign country.”
He looked around, amazed at the grim faces he saw. Feeling a little remorseful for bagging on a girl who’d just gotten dragged off to a dungeon, he said, “Hey, lighten up! So she ran a little scam. I’m sure she didn’t think it’d hurt anyone.”
“Just as Mican thought,” Tarsen put in.
Sarilda pinched her nose and made a face. “Oh, how I hate irony. Mican—Nan—this is terrible.”
“It is worse than you think,” Blackeye said suddenly. “For I entrusted to her the plan for freeing the prince.”
Eleven
Nan sat in the corner of her cell with her knees drawn to her chin and her arms tucked close. After a while her heart stopped slamming against her ribs, and her eyes slowly got accustomed to the darkness.
It was impossible to know how long she sat like that, for there was no way to judge the passage of time. The only light was dim and flickering—the reflection of a torch from somewhere outside the cell through a small grill in the door. It stayed steady, never changing.
From time to time she heard the terrifying klunk of the soldiers’ boots outside the cell, and her heart would start its panic-race again. She clasped her knees tightly, waiting for the worst, but the feet always passed by again.
Then the pattern changed. The klunking boots would walk, pause, and move on. Nan heard them come closer, always with that pause. Her insides were knotted with fear when the heavy boots scraped the stone flooring outside her cell. But then she heard a light scraping near the door—and the boots passed on.
Something on the ground? She waited until the noisy boots had passed down the row and disappeared, then she crawled forward, feeling over the mossy floor until her fingers bumped into a couple of wooden bowls.
She cautiously slid a finger inside each. One felt like water, the other a cold, lumpy mass. Food?
She lifted the water bowl first. The edge was rough with splinters, so she rested her lip lightly against it and took a sip of the water. It was stale, but didn’t taste like poison or anything, and she was horribly thirsty, so she drank it all down as fast as she could.
Then she sat back, wondering if she’d get sick, but nothing happened, so she picked up the second bowl, wiped her fingers down her dress, then felt the food. It was cold, greasy, and slick—like over-boiled vegetables soaked in half-solidified lard. She sniffed her fingers. The stuff on them smelled like sour cabbage.
She’d been too scared to get hungry, but one thing she’d learned the hard way when she’d had to live with the Wheelwrights—if food was offered, you ate. Even if you didn’t like it.
She popped a fingerful into her mouth. Something gritted in her teeth, but she kept on chewing. It’s just sand, she told herself, remembering the time she accidentally dropped her sandwich at Mr. Wheelwright’s company picnic, and how the Wheelwrights had made her eat it anyway, to teach her not to be careless.
The food was largely tasteless, except for a faint tang of slightly spoiled vegetables—like Brussels sprouts and beets. She ate most of it, until the vegetables were gone and what remained was just grease. Then she put the bowl down by the door and retreated to her corner.
After a time her back hurt too much to continue sitting up so she curled up on her side and closed her eyes against the fitful reddish light beating unsteadily on the opposite wall.
Then she fell into a jumble of weird, threatening dreams.
o0o
When Joe woke up in the morning, at first he couldn’t remember where he was. The sound of whispering voices had wormed into his dreams. He almost dove out of bed, remembered the hammock—then remembered he wasn’t in a hammock.
I’m at that inn—and Nan got grabbed by the warts. Now it was all back. Joe sat up and swung his feet to the floor to steady himself.
“Hungry?” a voice said behind his head.
Tarsen was waiting, his eyebrows qui
rked in question.
Somehow just seeing Tarsen’s homely, big-eared face made Joe feel better. “Sure. Um, where is everyone else?”
“Spying. Getting supplies. Blackeye’s gonna meet with Noss—”
“Who’s that?” Joe asked.
“Speaks for most of the city groups,” Tarsen said. “Anyway, she thinks you ought to be there.”
“How come?” Joe asked as they ran downstairs.
Tarsen peered in all directions, then said behind his hand,” Might have to prove you’re from another world. No one’s gonna believe it at first.”
Joe nodded. He had no problem with that. Picturing the reactions of people like teachers and police and politicians at home on Earth if someone showed up claiming to be from another world made him grin.
“We’ll eat first, though,” Tarsen said.
Joe had no problem with this plan, either. As they entered the common room and he smelled fresh bread, cinnamon, chocolate, and some kind of braised meat, his mood lightened even more.
o0o
Boots tromped by Nan’s cell once, twice, then several times.
Though there was no more light than before, she heard a lot more noise, and wondered if it was morning. The first few times those boots klumped by her heart started to race. Surely they were coming for her.
But then they moved on past. She heaved a sigh of relief, then moved fretfully in the cell, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit. Her clothing felt damp and gritty, her face was sticky from that rotten fruit, and the air was just cold enough to make her uncomfortable, but not enough (she hoped with a kind of fierce misery) to make her freeze to death.
Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! Another squad was coming. She counted the steps, as she had the last two times. Both of those groups had taken exactly thirty-five steps to reach what she thought was the point just outside her cell, because after that the sound slowly started to diminish.
Thirty three steps, and they stopped. A clanking at her door made her back against the wall, her heart thumping sickeningly.
The door graunched open.
No one spoke; someone held a torch, which sent fitful red light flickering over the grim, scowling faces of six soldiers—four men and two women.
The foremost man motioned for Nan to come out. His other hand rested on his sword-hilt.
Trembling with fear, Nan walked out of the cell. The soldiers closed in around her. She had to skip to keep up with their pace—when she was slow, someone prodded her hard in the back.
Up some narrow stairs, the flickering light of the torches making the stone steps seem to be moving. Nan hugged her arms close, feeling that awful food churning inside her. She kept swallowing against the urge to barf.
Down a long hall to a huge wooden door bolted with iron. With a shriek of metal it opened, and again the heavy hand shoved Nan through.
She stumbled into a large stone room. A narrow window set into one wall drew her attention first. Outside was light, and noise—mostly the rhythmic step of drilling soldiers.
“Come here.”
Nan jumped, whirled around, saw a bulky figure sitting behind a big desk. He had to be Commander Nitre. Fear made her mouth go dry as she took a small step toward the big desk.
The man had a harsh face and narrow, mean-looking eyes—the expression in them reminded her of Mr. Wheelwright, who had only noticed her when she was in trouble.
“Understand this,” the commander said. “You are mine, now. As far as the city is concerned, you’re already dead. No one has any interest whatever in you, except to cheer when they see you hang, for to them you are just another worthless, lawless rat taken off the streets to make room for decent, law-abiding people.”
Nan was still terrified, so much her mouth had gone completely dry, but beneath that anger stirred.
“The merchants you robbed have been paid out of tax money,” he went on. “Tax money paid by good people, meant for repairing roads or building new buildings. So now you are worse than worthless, because you owe the taxpayers. What have you to say to that?”
The anger spiked. Mr. Wheelwright had been just the same, and Mrs. Evans, and just about every other adult in Nan’s life. They seemed to love dragging out this kind of conversation, making her act humble and say things she didn’t mean.
“I’m sorry I stole.” She forced the words out.
And of course they weren’t good enough—just like on Earth.
“‘I’m sorry I stole,’” the huge man mimicked. “That doesn’t pay the tax money back, or the food we had to give you.”
From long experience Nan knew that whatever she said would be turned against her, but if she just stood like a lump he’d get to the point. So she stayed silent.
Nitre glared at her for a long, painful pause, then said, “The penalty for theft is death. We can hang you in the morning. There’s another choice, which is to pay the taxpayers back through labor.”
“I’ll do that,” Nan said. “I’m not afraid of work.”
“Shut up,” Nitre snarled. “You’ve just added a year onto your rehabilitation sentence by speaking out of turn—that’s if they don’t have too many workers, in which case you simply hang. Ten years it would take, and during that time we expect you to learn good habits of obedience and diligence. You will work hard at whatever we tell you from the moment the sun comes up until it is dark, without cease, without complaint or malingering. Every infraction adds another year, thus guaranteeing that when the sentence is complete, you will have learned to be a proper citizen—even if it takes your entire lifetime.”
He paused, glaring at her.
“There is an alternate choice,” Nitre said, and his voice lessened in its harshness, though his thin lips still sneered. “We know that all you brats are connected in some way to one of the lawless gangs of young criminals plaguing our city. Our goal is to make our city safe once again, and to this end we offer you this bargain, only once. You will not have the offer again, if we decide to let you live and work off your sentence, for whatever news you would have that still might hold would be suspect. So you can’t change your mind after a month of hard labor.”
He paused, glaring at Nan, who still did not speak. “The bargain is this. You simply tell us where to locate your gang-leader, the wretch who calls himself Noss, or something of his route so that we may lay him by the heels, or some other information that helps us to arrest one of the gangs, and you will go free. Free,” he repeated, “and with a purse of gold in your hands to help you get a start elsewhere. You will have a day and night to think about it, and you will make your choice before dawn tomorrow, when we get the condemned ready for hanging. All we need is information, and no one will ever know where it came from. And remember,” he said, waving a hand toward the window. “Noss doesn’t care about you anymore. You were stupid enough to get caught. You’re less to him now than you are to the good citizens of Fortanya. Dismissed.”
A hard hand clamped on her shoulder, jerking her backward and shoving her through the squeaking door.
A couple minutes later she was locked in her cell, alone.
o0o
“How do you find him?” Joe asked, as he walked with Tarsen and Blackeye.
“We will show you,” Blackeye said softly.
Tarsen sent a look around, his face comical with his obvious attempt not to grin, and he said in a low voice, “Some kids love to run the warts around by writing fake codes and mysterious letters, and letting them be found. Kids!” He repeated, and snickered. “I love that word!”
Blackeye smiled faintly, but Joe could see she was troubled. She was calm and efficient as always, though; Joe was glad, suddenly, that no one expected him to be a leader.
“Goats, bears, kids,” Tarsen muttered, snickering again.
Joe smiled as well. Over breakfast they had compared slang in their languages. Tarsen’s language had a slang word that worked like the English ‘kids’ but it turned out to mean bear cubs. Tarsen thought the idea of children
being baby goats was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and he’d laughed about it through half his breakfast.
“Here we go,” Blackeye said. “Pay attention!”
They had reached an intersection where four narrow, windy streets met. Just outside a candle-maker’s shop were three or four kids of various ages, all playing some kind of game on the cobbled stones next to the wall of the shop. One small figure with dark curly hair gave Joe an unexpected pang. Of course this kid wasn’t Benny—a moment later the boy looked up, his face completely different. Still Joe looked at the kid, missing his little brother with an unexpected ferocity. What was Benny doing now? How cool he’d think this world!
Did he miss Joe?
Joe shook his head, disgusted with himself. Here he was, on another world, with plenty of action ahead. Nobody traveled to other worlds and got homesick for their little brother. He turned back to the kids playing the game.
“Hey,” Tarsen said. “Let me in!” Pulling some glass markers from his pocket, he flung himself down among the other kids, who made space.
Joe glanced at Blackeye for a hint of what he should be doing. She just bent over as if absorbed in watching the kids play. So Joe looked down and saw a kind of little mud city, with the kids moving markers back and forth on the streets. It was kind of like chess or checkers, only with a city instead of a board. But what did that have to do with their meeting?
Tarsen was busy playing. With yells of triumph and shouts of insult, he and the other kids moved the markers around almost faster than Joe could follow. Then Blackeye bent down and flicked a leaf off one of the mud huts, and threw it into the street. The leaf must have been stepped on, or pressed in, because it had left its impression in the mud, and under it, half-buried, was a green marker.
As Joe watched a girl leaned over and her brown hands reshaped the mud hut, making it smooth again. She threw the marker back onto the game, all of this without looking up once. Then she went right back to the game.
After a short time Tarsen let out a howl, the other kids laughed, and Tarsen swept up his markers. “You think you’re so nacky,” he snarled. “I’ll be back.”