Chapter Twenty One

Carza was blind. The sackcloth was thick, and reeked of old grains. Idly, she wondered if they'd repurposed this from some raided farm, emptied the grains and used the sack for prisoners. She wondered if the sack had been used before, on someone else who'd cried 'yalsa', who insisted that they could be ransomed. Honestly, she couldn't be sure if the stench of iron in the air was from the corpses, or from blood dried into the sack, the remnants of a broken nose, a split lip, a gouged eye, a gash along the skin which bled freely as the inhabitant struggled feebly. The only senses left to her were touch, hearing, and smell. Her nose was overwhelmed with iron. With rot. The bodies were reeking - and there were so many. They moved with her, and she imagined them walking along, rising up and keeping in perfect lockstep, following her and staring. Why had she run? Why had she been so warranting of ransom, while they were condemned? The sound of footsteps filled the air... and in her rational brain, she knew that it was the Sleepless, and the smell was either an ill wind carried the sent of rot, or the Sleepless were adding more bodies to their trees. Hanging them high, faces purpling, blood slowing and congealing, compressing in their veins until it became a labyrinth of blood sausages, flavoured with desperation and fear.

Shock kept her moving.

It had taken minutes. Minutes. Over twenty men and women, armed, trained, organised... and the Sleepless wiped them out in minutes. Descended and ripped them apart. And now they were trophies. Warnings. The Sleepless were invulnerable in their territory, and they did not tolerate trespassers. The only question was how long until they considered Krodaw their territory, and the residents intruders. How long. How long until the governor's face was turning purple as he swung from a short rope attached to a gnarled tree. Marana strung up and pecked by crows, the torn maggot-holes left by beaks matching the holes left by her needles. The mission burned to the ground. And Krodaw becoming a dead zone, a place to which no trains went and no travellers ventured, where the forests grew thick and ate the city alive, where wide, unblinking eyes stared from the bushes and laughed quietly while drawing long long knives and licking their sharp teeth and relishing in the mutation brewing in them and-

Calm. Down.

There'd been no situation worse than this... but she could still compare it. Right? She had a plan. A genuine plan. Ransom. Play for time. Try and get something from ALD IOM. They might fund it. And sure, she might be demoted to secretary and forced to work her days doing nothing of any importance, but she could work with that. Damn pride. Damn it to hell. Pride? Pride had made her unwilling to just buckle down and do humiliating, unglamorous, unglorious work in the treasury or as a secretary. She could work with humility if it meant life. Anything was better than the alternatives of pain and death. And when she found that her only responsibility was to live...

It was a feeling she had no desire to relive.

She'd already gone through it enough when she was younger.

Her skin burned when fingers touched her. One of the Sleepless was guiding her, maybe the one she'd seen, maybe another. All she felt were rough hands pressing her, prodding her, driving her onwards at all times. She stumbled and fell more than once, and was kicked until she stood up again. She could imagine how filthy she was. The swollen purple growths of mutation would be joined by a mottled carpet of bruises soon enough, she could feel it. No idea how she looked. All she knew was feeling. And she could feel mud on her skin like a cockroach's shell, could feel blood crusting over, could feel flies biting and leaving little mounds of swollen flesh in their wake. Maybe she cried. If she did, the sack soaked it up, and so it became irrelevant. Her mind flicked to childhood. To survival instincts, the kind which dwelled in the most primitive corners of her brain. Past vanished. Future diminished. All that mattered was survival. Her tongue was swollen with thirst in less than an hour. She was far too nervous for her stomach to churn with hunger, so it just churned with fear instead.

Hull lived.

As long as he was alive, she'd be alright.

As long as he was alive, this expedition hadn't been a complete and utter disaster. If she lost her one and only friend on this, she... she...

Founder, she wasn't even thinking about Lirana, the local girl, Anthan, Egg, the soldiers, the ones not so wounded that they weren't good sport...

Selfish bitch.

Vulgar, now.

She gasped for a moment.

"Water, please…"

The Sleepless behind her barked in anger.

"Alath? Co alath, ha?"

Alath? Did that mean water? She'd spoken... she was a little hazy, and when she was hazy she tended to think in a variety of different languages, some of which she only knew a handful of phrases from. But she was fairly sure she'd spoken ALD IOM's city-speak. She tried again, this time... no, no, no, don't speak Mahar Jovan civisprach, that would be suicide. If they thought she was from that city, she'd end up like that woman who'd been crucified as a distraction. But she doubted she'd get the benefit of someone shooting her and killing her. So her voice died in her throat, and the man behind her yelled again.

"Alath, ha? Alath, ha?"

She was confused. No idea what he was saying. No linguistic foundation to rest on. Her hesitation clearly irritated the man, and he kicked her solidly behind the knee, sending her falling face-first into the mud of the forest. Filthy water foamed through the sackcloth, and for a second Carza was terrified of drowning - the water coursed over her nose, her mouth, crept into her eyes, and she saw nothing but the rising murk, riddled with particulates and insect eggs. Her mouth was closed on instinct, and a shoe pressed into her back, forcing her deeper.

"Alath!"

A mocking laugh.

She wanted water?

Have some.

Her mouth opened, and she drank. The taste was putrid, like rotting eggs. It was warm. It was muddy. There was no satisfaction - she was more thirsty afterwards, desperate for something clean to wash away the dirt now coating her throat and mouth. Her stomach rebelled, heaving slightly, and she had to resist the urge to vomit. She'd had her fill after a second of drinking, but the foot on her back was still forcing her head down, forcing her to drink, forcing her to consume more and more and more of the rancid water, flooding her lungs, pouring down her throat, filling her stomach, staining her skin, flowing up her nose until her face stung... she tried to get some air into herself, but the foot forced down, and her desperate gasp just flooded her with more mud. The sackcloth was soaked, clinging to her, a mask that drowned her despite being hundreds of miles from any ocean. When she tried to breathe, the fabric seemed to slither through her mouth, her nostrils, chasing the air and sealing up any passage. She was blind. She was drowning on dry land. She could barely hear anything but the laughter of her captors, and she began to flail, clawing at the earth, incapable of even screaming...

"Oy, let her back up, you're drowning her!"

Hull's voice, raised to a yell. A second of accidental Mahar Jovan civisprach. No, idiot, idiot, don't make them angry, don't make them-

She heard him grunt in pain, air forced out of his lungs. Barks of irritation from their guards, offended at the language of the colonials being used in their presence.

The foot slipped from her back. And in a second she was scrambling back to her feet, snarling like a wild dog. If they hurt him, if they killed him, she would bite their ears off, claw their eyes out, she'd kick and scratch and bite and scream until they put her down like a rabid animal. Hull yelled quickly in city-speak.

"Don't! Just... I'm fine, they just hit me in the-"

A crack. And a yelp of pain.

First in the stomach to stop him yelling at them. And then in the head to shut him up. Probably a club or the butt of a pistol. She felt a pulse of anger in her gut... and barely tamped down on it. If she played nice, he'd be alright, and if he was alright, she'd play nice. He was the one fragment of her home that wasn't an inanimate object, and... and she couldn't let him die here. Maybe it was childhood instincts, maybe it was just isolation... but she wasn't willing to give something up once she had it. And she couldn't imagine sloping back to her office and getting to work, knowing that her one and only friend was dead, and it was because she'd failed him.

The stumbling continued.

There was no certainty to when it was going to end. Nothing in sight. She understood nothing of what her captors said, all she heard was their strange language, and her own laboured breathing as the day grew longer. A few minutes... just a few minutes of grotesque violence and the patrol was dead, and the entire expedition had gone mad. Birds chattered in the forest canopy, almost like they were laughing. Hours passed. Nothing existed beyond the next few steps, the next agony of stumbling. She was just glad that nothing had been used to bind her ankles - it was bad enough with her head covered and the knowledge that she was surrounded and helpless, the idea of having her hands or feet bound was... anyway. The worst thing was, the air was becoming cleaner. She thought this would be like descending into hell, surrounded by bodies and rot... but no, nothing close. The bodies were for frightening others. The Sleepless didn't need bodies hung everywhere, they didn't need screams to fill the air - the fact that others would react to these things justified them. She had passed through the veil, and now she was surrounded by a perverse sense of peace. The forest was simply full of animals, nothing hid from her. The Sleepless were here, they were known, they were absolutely confident - no paranoia about when they might emerge, they had, and that was it. Without the whistling of the detectors, there was no indication that they were close to a wellspring of contamination. The air was clean, what little she could taste of it through the filthy sack covering her face.

The forest was clean and fresh.

The tranquillity of it was only broken by the soft speech of the Sleepless, and the thirst boiling in her throat. The sickness in her gut. The hunger that brewed as the hours dragged on... had it been hours? There was no way of telling, no sun to feel, and no sky to watch. The barest glimmers of light made it through the sackcloth, and they formed a miniature night sky of golden stars, charting out strange constellations. A whole array of bad omens to watch for. A whole zodiac of animals that only she would know and name. A long, sinuous coil of golden stars... looked a little like a snake. And that curved segment, that almost seemed like the horns of a bull. Then she'd stumble, the sack would be adjusted, and the constellations would change. No more snakes or bulls, now there was a vacant cauldron, a tattered cloak, a sword with a broad hilt... another twist, and there was an axe instead, and a wolf in full sprint. It was ridiculous, but she kept obsessing over this. Kept charting it out, re-charting, re-charting... because what the hell was she meant to do?

Scheme?

She couldn't even speak in a language they'd understand which wouldn't ludicrously offend them, maybe. The best she could do was just keep saying that she could be held for ransom, and they needed to get in touch with the Court of Ivory.... though she would need a translator for that, or she'd need someone to make it clear that speaking Mahar Jovan's civisprach wouldn't just get her killed. It would be humiliating, her career would be over, and that'd be it. That'd be the end. Worst case... the Court wouldn't pay up, the Sleepless would decide to kill them anyway, or would be offended at the long wait, or getting in touch would be impossible for some reason, or they'd die in the crossfire of some awful battle, or... the Sleepless leaders would find tattoos to be violently offensive and Carza would be impaled. Or they'd die during captivity from... dysentery, or something equally unpleasant.

A thousand awful things could happen.

And the only way out was still pretty bad.

But compared to the others, it was damn fantastic.

And with that in mind... she stumbled onwards, refusing to cry, to ask for water, to ask for mercy... the only things she did which didn't involve moving blindly into the heart of the forest was reach out wildly when she tripped, trying to... there. She felt a woman's hand - Lirana. A quick squeeze. She barely knew the woman, but if Carza could get her out of this by riding on the Court of Ivory's coat-tails, then she'd do her damnedest to achieve that. Another flail... a hand that froze in nervousness. Anthan, Egg, or... no. It wasn't as worn. Not as used to manual labour. Had the same furrow that her right hand had - the furrow from holding a pen for hours and hours and hours until it wore a small red trench into the flesh of the palm. She squeezed. And Hull squeezed back, right before their captors dragged them apart, barking reprimands and tapping them firmly with heavy clubs, reminding them of the consequences of disobedience. The Court of Ivory might pay for them, but would it pay for every single part of them? Would it pay for each intact bone? Each remaining limb?

But the tiny moment of contact transmitted warmth. Humanity. She wasn't alone. He was still alive, he was still moving, she had a friend in all of this.

Employees, too.

...crud, she was going to lose all those nice golden bracelets, wasn't she?

...she really, really hoped that her employees wouldn't take that too poorly.

Hours slipped.

No horses out here, not with the terrain so poor. And as night fell, she found herself being shoved to the ground, and the sack was removed from her head. Above her stood one of the Sleepless, maybe the one who'd found her in the first place, maybe not... maybe even the anonymous face which had infiltrated the fort. Carza barely noticed him, immediately glancing around, panic pulsing in her throat like a tumour. Where was he? Where were the rest? How many had lived? She stared frantically - the night was dark, the Sleepless carried few torches, she barely even knew how many captors she had, let alone how many fellow prisoners. The Sleepless man glared down with dispassionate antipathy - he disliked her because she wasn't one of his own, because he had to make sure she didn't trip and snap her neck, because he knew his superiors would want to see her. She was an irritation... but Carza thought she understood why he didn't particularly care about her, regardless of how annoying she might be. He was one of the Sleepless. He'd helped butcher that patrol, he'd probably tortured people, murdered innocents, crawled through dangerous wilderness in the name of his group. After that... what could she do to him? How could she impact him in any way?

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He was tall. Had a hardened, sun-scorched look to him. Wore similar clothes to the locals in Krodaw, but... ornamented. She saw strips of colonial uniforms pinned to him, fine belts stolen from officers used to hold a brace of pistols. And at his waist hung strange, furry pouches that... oh. No. Not pouches. She could see the flesh. Scalps. She'd seen some of the patrol being scalped in front of her, just before the horse fell. Some of the Sleepless hadn't even waited for them to die before staring their gruesome work. And this man... he must've been in dozens of battles to collect that many... he loomed, and Carza felt a whimper building in the back of her throat, one she had to force back down again. Don't show weakness. Don't make this entertaining for them. Don't encourage them. The man tilted his head to one side, humming... then grabbed both of her wrists and tied them to the tree she'd been pushed against. Immobilised immediately. No chance of escape, not that she had much to begin with. A second later, he thrust a piece of food in her face. She stared at it - just a piece of... dried bread? Maybe? It didn't look overly mouldy, just... old, and dry, and tasteless. He pushed it against her lips, and she reluctantly accepted it...

The man grinned cruelly, and promptly poked her, just underneath her eye. Her face immediately twitched, her head turned... and the bread fell from her lips to the ground between her legs.

A laugh.

"Gro tsh-ka? Ha? Tsh-ka?"

His voice was mocking.

The bread lay on the ground, mocking her.

She could get it back. The slack in her bindings was enough for her to lean down... but she'd need to pick it up with her teeth, worry at it like a dog. And she could already imagine the laughter. The Sleepless, appropriately, weren't sleeping - they just stood around and waited for their captives to recover enough to keep going. No fires were lit. No bedrolls were set out. The food they ate was small and efficient... and usually stolen from the patrol. They were dining well tonight, then. She tried to see... yes, there were other prisoners, scattered over a wide area. Arrogance? Or just confidence? Why bother keeping them all together - they weren't going to run, half of them were too injured, the other half knew better. If they ran, she knew there'd be consequences, and ugly ones. She couldn't survive here on her own. Embarrassing as it was... being a captive was probably a surer route to survival than being alone in this place with minimal equipment. She felt her arms itch... mutations? Needed to get to work on them, and quickly, but... couldn't even speak their language.

Hull was tied to a tree some distance away, blood running over one of his eyes from a gash on his forehead. Dazed, but otherwise intact.

Egg tied at the ankles - he was large and intact, so he deserved more security. A little insulting that Carza didn't deserve that, but... no, that was a very strange impulse.

Lirana was scowling fiercely, but fear burned in her eyes as she watched their silent captors eat. Dispassionately recovering their energy for another march. No rest, just... a pause in activity while muscles recuperated, and their reserves could be replenished. They didn't sigh in relief, didn't even really sit down, just crouched or leant against trees.

Where was Anthan?

No sign of him. Could be tied around another tree, out of sight...

Oh, Founder... the local girl from earlier, the grim one who kept laughing, she was... she was still alive. Hadn't managed to kill herself to avoid being captured. Too close to the ambushers. Her face was a pulped mass of purple bruises, one eye completely swollen shut, chest rising and falling rapidly as she slumped against a tree. Founder... Carza felt a pulse of sympathy and fear. She'd been so adamant about dying instead of being taken alive, but here she was. Here she was. The Sleepless were staying away from her, offering no food, no water... shunning her like she was diseased. But based on the bruising, they'd already roughed her up a little.

Founder...

A dull sense of foreboding brewed in her.

And she wondered what waited for her at the end of this forced march. If they were going to save the worst for when they had a safe place, more allies, more tools, an audience...

Maybe this civility towards her and her companions was just as ephemeral as it was towards the local girl.

She managed to snatch a small glance with Hull, who smiled blearily.

She smiled back.

* * *

Another day of marching. She'd stopped feeling pain in her feet, all she felt was thirst and growing weariness. Weak. Should be stronger than this. Couldn't even ride a damn horse without someone else doing all the work, and she'd thought about going on an expedition to the steppe, where people famously rode a hell of a lot of horses. Bitter thoughts like that ran on repeat through her head as the Sleepless drove her onwards, the world reduced to the sack enclosing her face, to the shifting constellation of lights that filtered through the thick, rough threads. No words between her and her fellows. Isolation, her only contact the rough directing hands of someone who didn't speak any language she knew. Hours and hours and hours... occasional sips of water from a skin, occasional nibbles at hard tack that took minutes to chew up into a vaguely edible paste. Flies clustered along her arms, and she could feel them slowly draining her of blood, riddling with itchy white bumps, little barrows to accompany the purple mutations rising up through prolonged exposure to contamination she couldn't even tell was there. Purple and white... she must look like a bowl of porridge with mulberries scattered over the top. The thought entertained her - better than other, grimmer thoughts about how idiotic she'd been.

She wondered if the Court of Salt had made contact with these people.

They'd found some trash from that Court... maybe they'd made contact and arranged an alliance.

The war which had consumed her party was one composed of two sides, neither of which she understood. One side was from a city she knew nothing about and was disinterested in justifying itself, not now that it was on the way out. It couldn't justify itself to itself, how could it justify itself to her? And the other side spoke no language she knew, didn't need her approval to do a damn thing, and seemed to see her as a source of convenient ransom money.

She was bound up in a structure she didn't remotely understand.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the sun began to descend - based on the way the heat changed, sliding downwards to her neck, her back, accompanying the fading light. The sound of her footsteps had changed.

No more dirt.

Stone.

They'd arrived somewhere. Uneven stones under her feet, more voices all around, talking quietly. Carza began to breathe rapidly, nervousness rising. No more time for plotting or simple drudgery, time for do-or-die.

The hands shoved her forwards.

And she felt a seat.

The sack was dragged off before she could muster another thought.

Her first thought, petty as it was, was simply that... she must look awful. Her hair had been trapped ina stifling bag, soaked by sweat and water, unwashed and uncombed... her face hadn't been much better off. And her arms were, indeed, marred by pale bug bites and small purple growths where her body was trying to purge contamination by any means necessary. Needed to clip them, just like how Egg had shown her. She glanced around frantically, taking in the scene. A stool underneath her, rickety and warped by heat. unvarnished and splinter-laden. A small table in front of her with a few bowls of some kind of grain, boiled up and turned into a pulp, coated with spices she didn't recognise. Anyone... there. Hull, on another stool. Lirana and Egg standing up, hands tied behind their backs, Egg looking resigned, Lirana looking terrified. If she spoke a few words in Mahar Jovan's civisprach, she'd be found out and killed. Hull groaned as his own sack was removed, flinching at the flickering light of the candles which surrounded them on all sides.

A grotto of some kind. A stone ceiling that receded into the dark. Grey walls, pocked by years of erosion until they seemed to be made of pumice or the material from the interior of insect hives. The centre of a vast ant colony. Candles were everywhere, made of sickly yellow wax that reminded her of jaundiced skin. Wicks that flared with tongues of sooty flame that licked eagerly along the walls, and sent puffs of oily smoke into the distant recesses of the ceiling. It was... it wasn't a cell. She wasn't imprisoned. This looked inhabited, and downright civilised. A low table with some food and a pitcher of water, not to mention a bottle of unmarked liquor - she could tell from the way the light entered and left the clear liquid, the tiny distortions which marred its passage. A bookcase sat in the corner, seemingly full of handwritten journals based on the lack of titles on the spines or covers, and the way the pages bulged strangely - handled over and over, written on lovingly, sourced from dozens of different supplies who made paper in very different ways.

Opposite her...

A bed.

And on the bed, sat a man.

And the man's face, only half-visible in the candlelight, was turned towards her. The flickering light made him not seem quite real - like an illusion in the ripples of a pond, a trick of the eye, finding meaning where there was none. His eyes were hidden from her, just a pair of small twinkling lights at the bottom of dark pits. His face was broad and honest, but tense. Every muscle contracted at once, like he was suppressing some awful internal pain or resisting the impulse to do something violent.

He stared.

And he hummed.

And he spoke, in flawless city-speak, an accent so urbane that Carza almost wondered if he was some exile of the Courts.

"I apologise for the brutish treatment my men have exerted upon you and yours. You must understand, we are accustomed to receiving brutality, and accustomed to delivering it back - much of our soft impulses have been excised surgically."

He smiled. A wide, gentle smile.

"Not conducive towards being good hosts, I am afraid."

Carza stared at him with wide eyes. The man nodded a few times, as if listening to something only he could hear, before idly gesturing to the pitcher and the cups in front of it. Carza reached out with shaking hands. Water. Water. Her hands shook as she felt the cool perspiration on the glass, her tongue poked between her lips as she poured glasses for herself, for Hull, for Lirana, for Egg... and her reserve vanished the moment a single drop entered her mouth. She gulped greedily, water spilling freely, and she immediately poured another. Her stomach cramped instantly, trying to absorb too much too quickly, but she ignored it, drinking more, more... when Hull's hand fell around the pitcher, she almost hissed at him - her water, her water. Only considerable restraint held her back, let him go before her. She drank, and drank, and drank, until nothing remained, and something resembling humanity went into her. The hellish heat of this place seemed to drive out humanity, and cool water brought it back. It was definitely just her being unused to heat, but... she really did think, in that moment, that humanity was carried on the back of flowing, clear, ice-cold waters, and when that water grew warm and brackish or simply absent, then humanity dried up too. The man in front of her smiled again, his wide, gentle smile, innocent as a lamb.

"My name is Kralat. I represent this particular group of resistance fighters. Of course, the nature of our resistance is such that we have no true leader, no council to oversee us. We are united by ideals, not by any formal mechanism. I lead because I am capable and I am effective, and I am united to my other leaders by our efficacy and our dedication. And who are you? I dislike thinking of people simply as 'foreigners' - I would prefer to know your name."

Carza gulped slightly.

"My... my name is Carza vo Anka, of the Court of Ivory."

She hesitated. Ought to continue. Hull was still bleary, possibly concussed, and she... she needed to take command here, she needed to dictate the flow of things. If she didn't, then... she imagined Lirana being hauled up and crucified like that woman had been. Decapitated and put on display to intimidate the city of Krodaw, to spur the departure of an army which was already resigned to leaving. Her stomach churned, her brow prickled with sweat, her arms throbbed with stings and mutations, the room around her swam with candlelight, and Kralat's eyes bored in her with the intensity of the noonday sun... she weanted to shut up, wanted to be quiet, wanted to say nothing else and slip into her own mind, let the world go on without her. But the stink of iron was still in her nose. The stink. And the memory of staring eyes in the dark. Fear. Fear that focused her. Reminded her of being a child. And when she'd been a child, she hadn't just sat back and let things happen.

So, against every impulse in her body, she kept going.

"My friend is Hull va Trochia, also of the Court of Ivory. And this is our... manservant, Egg, and our secretary, Liraza."

Lirana wasn't a common ALD IOM name, Liraza at least sounded plausible. Felt safe. Lying was easy when she was terrified. Kralat smiled.

"I see. A pleasure to meet you, Miss vo Anka, Mr va Trochi... Egg and Liraza?"

His eyes narrowed. Oh Founder, no...

"Egg? That's not a very usual name."

Egg nodded quietly.

"I'm of Fidelizh, sir."

"And you serve them as a manservant?"

A crooked smile.

"I haul bags, sir. Leaves their hands fresh for writing, sir."

He spoke with easy irreverence. He didn't sound devoted to them, and... and that sounded more natural, yes. Eyes flicked to Lirana.

"Liraza... secretary, yes? I take it you were raised in the Court of Ivory?"

Carza's heart almost stopped. Lirana stuttered for a moment, and the stutter actually helped hide any accent in her city-speak.

"Y-yes, sir, secretary, sir."

Kralat laughed, a small sound which echoed hollowly in his wide face.

"Don't be so worried, you won't be killed here, this much I promise. Some of my men believe that any kind of association with the oppressors is enough to warrant death. I do not. I understand that, for a foreigner, the oppressors are easier to talk to than we are. I do not place a burden of proof on you, your language is enough to prove to me that you're not from that cursed city. You are foreign... and I believe that we have common ground, you and I."

He paused for a second.

"But that's for another time, I find ideological talk is best done when not exhausted and hungry. For now... please, eat. I apologise for your unpleasant treatment until this point. Our war parties are not as... diplomatic as would be ideal. I assure you, as soon as your ransom is paid, we will be content to allow you on your way."

Oh thank the Founder... no, wait, these were still possibly-mutated individuals who had butchered the patrol and were still likely to butcher its survivors in the slowest, most demoralising manner possible. They were incredibly violent... and she had no business feeling any kind of gratefulness to them. They were offering her up for ransom because they thought the Court of Ivory could pay it, and she was foreign enough to be distant from their enemy. If she couldn't pay, she'd die. If she was tied to their enemy, she'd die slowly. Lirana was shaking uncontrollably. Egg stared stoically at the wall above Kralat's head, unwilling to even look him in the eye. And Hull... Hull was sweating freely, looking nervous as all hell. But he was playing along. Kralat pushed the bowls of boiled grains across the table, and the smell of food wafted upwards. Oh, Founder... she wolfed it down quickly with a small wooden spoon, and the others followed suit with theirs. Again, the cramps. And again, she couldn't bring herself to care.

Kralat never moved. He only gestured. Half of his face remained perpetually hidden in the dark, and she wondered if he wouldn't leave the room, simply lean backwards and vanish into the gloom, some underwater creature sinking back below the black surface. The rippling light across his face only added to the impression of a deep-sea creature poking its head up towards the surface, staring hungrily at all the food of the sunlit world, lurking with the patience of those forced to be slow, deliberate, and agonisingly careful in everything they did. No-one else was here. He could kill them, and they might as well have vanished.

She believed he could. She couldn't say why - he'd done nothing aggressive - but she was certain that Kralat could kill her and the others whenever he pleased. So much of him was hidden in the dark. He could easily be huge. Or tiny. Slim. Fat. Muscled. Mutated beyond any trace of humanity. His eyes were dark and watchful, cunning and grudge-bearing. He spoke softly as she ate.

"We will treat you and your people well while you are here. This much I can promise."

Carza nodded quickly.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you."

"A messenger will be dispatched. It may take time for our requests to reach your home, I am afraid. But... we have others of your people here, we will be happy to send your requests together."

Carza froze.

"...others?"

"Oh. Yes. I'm familiar with ALD IOM, you know. Your... many Courts. The party before you was from the Court of Salt, I believe... offensive to us, you see."

Hull looked up.

"...how were they offensive exactly, sir?"

Trying to avoid doing whatever they'd done. Seemed wise. Kralat leant forwards a little more, exposing some more of his wide head, his broad shoulders... he was large, then. And it wasn't fat making up the size.

"The oppressors brought with them factories. They emboldened the merchants and gave them the right to exploit us, to destroy our traditional crafts with their new mechanisms, and to erode our communities and culture with their... new industry. We rebelled against such excesses, against the motive for profit above all else. We rebel against such things in favour of a more humane system which doesn't turn us into numbers in a ledger. Your Court of Salt is... similar to the oppressors that chose to destroy us with industry as opposed to force of arms, then called it merciful and civilised. They oppose everything good and natural, they seek tyranny and call it freedom... more subtle than most oppressors, but nonetheless they're of the same species."

He never varied his tone. He was always calm. Always. He spoke smoothly, too. Carza found herself almost getting lost in the undulations of his voice, which seemed to wash over her in gentle waves, lulling her into agreeing. Everything he said sounded... perversely reasonable. That was the frightening part. His civility, his opposition to the Court of Salt... it almost made him seem like a normal person. And then she'd remember the butchery his men had inflicted on the patrol. And suddenly that smile would seem hungrier, those eyes would seem stranger, and there would be a terrifying certainty in the voice which made her think of a zealot. But only for a moment. And then the smoothness would wash back over her, and she'd be slowly brought into his way of thinking. And each time, the period of being convinced would last for longer. Just by a few moments.

But longer nonetheless.

"We dislike such an approach. Dislike it strongly. It's tyranny under another name, and we oppose tyranny in all its forms. They have been confined to the stockade, where they can meditate on their failures, and refrain from irritating us with them. Our personal distaste, though, hasn't influenced us in any practical sense - we will leave them be, until the ransoms come."

He spread his arms a little.

"You see? We are not savages, no matter what the oppressors say of us."

The severed heads, teeth removed, eyes gouged away, limbs hanging from trees. A woman crucified and flayed. Soldiers scalped while still alive and screaming. The purple face of the local girl they'd managed to capture. The smile of Kralat broadened, until it seemed wide enough to swallow the lights in the room. He was a god here. She imagined his men obeying his orders immediately, imagined how much power he held. How many had he broken? How many people had he, personally, killed? How mutated was he? How long before he went mad? She knew nothing about him. Just a name. The Sleepless had thus far been silent killers who butchered everyone who opposed them. And now she'd met someone who led them, and clearly felt their actions were justified. Her stomach was a lead weight. If the ransoms didn't come through, if the messengers didn't reach ALD IOM soon, if something bad happened out here... there was no central Sleepless organisation, it wouldn't take much for some awful squabble to happen. For captives to die in the fighting or be handed over to other leaders with different policies. How long until someone came along that wasn't so... understanding? How long until disease took them?

And where was Anthan? Had he run away? Was he dead?

Carza smiled weakly.

Kralat smiled back.

And she felt like she was staring down the barrel of a gun.