From the other side of one of the walls, I heard a muffled exclamation followed by a set of footsteps. Then a knock sounded on the cell wall, near to the bars. “Hello? Are you there?”

My head jerked up, followed by the rest of me. I hurried to the bars. “I am! And you can speak my language!”

The speaker was a man, going by his voice, but it was impossible to see what he looked like with the wall between us. “I didn’t expect to find another Servant so far out here,” the prisoner’s voice said gruffly. “Might be why they put us in together. What did you do to end up here?”

I wanted to ask what a Servant was, but it sounded like the kind of title that came with a lot of assumptions attached. Until I knew what they were, it might be better not to lay all my cards on the table.

Of course, lying wouldn’t get me far, either. Not when I didn’t know what I was lying about. “I didn’t do anything,” I replied, aware it sounded a little petulant. Rightly so. “I arrived in this settlement, and the next thing I knew, I was thrown in here. What are they going to do with us?”

The voice snorted. “Well, that depends what you did, doesn’t it? Unless you’re working for Blue – which I doubt, given that you’re here – it’ll likely involve an interrogation.”

“They tried,” I acknowledged. “It didn’t go far with the language barrier. But now that you’re here… if it’s not too much to ask, would you be willing to be my interpreter?”

An extended pause came from the other side.

I realised I’d made an assumption. “Sorry. I assumed you’d speak the local language.”

“I do,” came the reply. “Yes, I could interpret for you. You did nothing, you say? Me, I got caught in the wrong place.” The sigh that followed was long and drawn-out. “I underestimated the suspicion Blue sows in her people. And so, it seems, did you. A sorry pair we make, even if we are on opposing sides. In the end, we’re doing the same kind of thankless work with nothing but punishment waiting for us at the end.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why do you think I’m against you?”

“Well, you aren’t one of Red’s.” There was a short pause. “Although it would be foolhardy to believe he wouldn’t have contingencies in place. What would the odds be?”

“So you work for Red?” I repeated, testing the words. “What’s he like?”

“Telling you that would destroy any remaining hope I have of making it out of here alive,” the man replied. “And it wouldn’t do your chances much good, either. I hope you didn’t think stealing enemy secrets would be that easy. But since we’re sharing, I wouldn’t mind knowing where you stand with your allegiances. Between two doomed Servants and all. I even gave you the courtesy of tipping my hand.”

“Ah -“ A hitch caught in my throat as a wash of alarm passed over me. “Which of the ten, you mean?” Orange had warned me to distance myself from the Ancients, and I was guessing the use of colours as names wasn’t a peculiar coincidence, as much as I wanted it to be. He’d mentioned there were ten of us, so if dropping that reference didn’t confuse my companion –

“Gee, you’re a bright one, aren’t you?” the other prisoner drawled. “I can see why you were caught.”

I frantically back-pedalled. “You’ve got the wrong idea,” I said. “I’m not a Servant. I’m just -“

“– in prison under mysterious circumstances, speaking the Ancients’ tongue and not even trying to hide it.”

“That’s because I don’t speak the language here.”

“Obviously.”

“Then doesn’t that prove my point?” I suggested. “Why would you position someone on a job where they can’t communicate?”

“Any number of reasons. You’re part of a retinue. Accompanied by interpreters. Victim of petty internal politics. Deserting your post.” An interested note crept into his voice. “Do tell me you’re a deserter. I’ll meet my death laughing.”

“I’m not a Servant at all,” I insisted. “I’m just someone who ended up here by mistake and got captured for reasons I don’t understand.”

A sigh sounded from the other cell. “Be that way, then. I was hoping for some last measure of decent company before my death caught up with me, but instead I got a loyalist. How terribly unexciting.”

A sinking feeling wrenched in my gut. “You think they’re going to kill us?”

“You, maybe not. If you keep your mouth shut. My chances aren’t good. Some do cut a bargain during an interrogation, but it doesn’t happen often. Not that that should be a problem for you, Miss ‘I Did Nothing’.”

“I don’t understand,” I complained, wrapping my fingers around the cusp of the bars. “I suppose I look foreign. Do they really arrest people for that?”

“Maybe in the Crumbling States or the Far Inner. Not here. Blue likes to think she’s civilised. Owning the people through goodwill, as if it wasn’t a farce they can all see through. Only reason they’d discriminate on looks is if someone was dumb enough to wear the wrong colours.”

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I thought back to the man in the station chamber tugging at his clothes, and fell silent.

“Hello? Still alive in –” The prisoner broke off, his tone changing. “Oh, snap,” he said. “That’s it, isn’t it? You did. Maybe I got you wrong, after all, because that’s either suicidal or idiotic enough to beggar belief.”

I took my hands off the gate and stepped away shakily, dropping into a crouch where I could rock back easily into a seat on the stone. Short of robbing someone for their outfit, I’d been disadvantaged from the start. There was no way I could have known. Not after being alive for only a matter of hours.

And now that life – or its current cycle, at least – looked on track to be over in just a few more.

“Sorry,” I muttered to Orange, wherever he was now. “I tried. Someone else will have to help you now.”

“Eh? These walls are thick, you know.”

I put my elbows on my knees and rested my forehead in my cupped hands. “I didn’t know,” I said more loudly. “I just arrived, and I didn’t know the rules in –“ I hesitated, reluctant to commit to risky conclusions from unconfirmed inferences. Which was almost all of them. I committed anyway. “– Blue’s territory.”

“Storm and blood, where did you spring from, then? Those are the rules everywhere. No one wants to cross the Ancients.”

“What is the rule, exactly?”

“You really don’t know?”

“I was very isolated.” In a grove on a floating rock, with only a dying man for company.

“Isolated, and speaking the Ancients’ tongue. How very interesting. The rule, my ignorant jail fodder, is simple. Don’t wear the Ancients’ colours.” He barked out a laugh. “At best, it’s a gesture of disrespect. In most places, a crime. Some of the ten would take it as tantamount to declaration of war and have you killed on the spot. You’re lucky you made the mistake in Blue’s lands.”

“Lucky? How is this lucky?”

“Well, they won’t kill you until they perform the check, which means you have a few more days left on this planet. Weeks, even. It will take them time to send news up the chain to summon Blue, even if she answers immediately. Then, if she decides to offer mercy, you can say you’ve met one of the Ancients. But I think you can already say that, can’t you?”

I raised my head from my hands. “Excuse me?”

“Which one are you?” my companion asked.

A cold chill ran down my spine. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he replied. “I know you do. I’ll find out soon enough when I ask the wardens about your colours. The average person won’t spot it, but you’re talking to a Servant. The hallmarks are all there. The colours. The ignorance. The language. You’re one of them, and just reborn.”

The chill deepened into a cold thump in my centre of my chest. “I don’t know what you’re trying to insinuate –”

“Yes, you do. Regardless, there’s an easy way to prove it. Promise me you’ll break your finger. I won’t hold you to it. Just say the words.”

“No.”

“I rest my case.”

“No one would agree to snapping their own finger.”

I heard a short sigh from the next cell over. “Don’t worry. Not only do I have nothing to gain by turning you over, I think you and I can help each other. You can help me escape, and in return, I won’t tell Blue’s people your secret. How does that sound?”

“I thought you had nothing to gain.”

“Other than my life, no. And to preserve that life, I’m not above resorting to being petty and vengeful. Unlike you, I only get one.”

He’d seen through me so easily. I rubbed a hand across my eyelids, massaging the bridge of my nose. It still had dust on it from my time at the grove.

--Capacity availability is expected in three hours,-- said the Guide, before I could ask.

“I don’t think I can help you escape,” I said eventually, hearing the resignation in my voice. “I can’t do much. Much less than the average person. And what I can do is hampered by my lack of knowledge.”

“That may be true now,” said the Servant, “but it won’t be for long. I can help you with that. Even before you come into your abilities, you can bend reality. If you value your freedom, trust me when I say you’ll want to make use of it before Blue arrives. Promise me you’ll break me out with you, and I’ll provide you all the advice you need.”

No promises, Orange had said. He’d been clear.

“No promises,” I reiterated.

The Servant tutted. “Whoever told you that had your best interests at heart, I’m sure. But it’s overly-simplistic and very limiting. Promises are exactly what you want, especially this early in the game. Fickle, yes, but when the odds aren’t on your side, fickle tends to improve them. Say, for example, you promise someone you’ll never give up the search to find a lost treasure. On the one hand, I hear it does wonders for productivity and motivation. On the other, it may drive you to waste the rest of your life pursuing a goal that doesn’t exist. Or to drive you to obsessive distraction allowing your enemies to take you off-guard. Incidentally, that’s what happened to the last Green, if you believe the rumours.”

Second-last now thanks to Orange, I thought to myself, but kept my mouth shut.

“That’s your first piece of advice,” the Servant finished. “On the house, to illustrate my good intentions. Useful promises are short-term and finite. Otherwise you’re bound to lock yourself into some form of accidental hellish existence sooner or later.”

I could still feel the weight of my first promise to Orange settled around me, turning me away from my past, and realised it had included an expiration date. He’d known - of course, he had to have – and had left me a way out.

The one person I could trust, and he was dead.

And also alive. Out there. Somewhere.

“You mentioned they’d perform a check?” I asked. If the secret was out, there was no point in playing coy. “What’ll they do?”

“Mmm,” the Servant hummed knowingly. “They won’t think you’re actually an Ancient. What are the chances one just wanders in, after all? Much more likely you’re some idiot child doing it on a dare, or just an idiot. Lucky for you, that should mean they’ll drag their feet a bit. But the law’s the law. They’re checking to see if you’re real.” The voice paused. “They’ve also done it wrong. You don’t need an Ancient to know if someone else is. At a guess, I’d surmise Blue wants to inspect all candidates herself.”

I didn’t know what to think of the Servant. Mercantile, but for someone about to die, who could blame him? Without a baseline to compare him to, he could also have been the world’s saintliest person, for all I knew. And that was the problem. The framework in my head covered concepts – with notable omissions – but no indication of how they compared to the real world.

I should have taken the other node at the station.

My eyes felt dry, and I found myself rubbing at them some more in fruitless compensation. “I think,” I said wearily, turning to gaze at the shimmering pallet on the floor, “imminent consequences or no, if I’m going to do anything useful at all, I need to get some sleep.”

To my surprise, my neighbour didn’t argue. Much. “Don’t take too long,” he specified. “Both our days are numbered in hours.”