Nestor pressed himself further into the dim corner of his cell. The side of his head throbbed, and his lip had swollen, but it wasn’t enough to distract him from the numbness in his chest.

From beside him, Sylvie mumbled something in her sleep and shivered.

Nestor let out a slow breath, waiting for whimpers or cries of terror, but she stilled. They had been taking turns sleeping since they had been captured. Skies, that felt like weeks ago. In all reality, it had only been a couple of days, but in the dark below Skystead, every hour seemed to stretch on for eternity.

He shuddered as he remembered being thrown into the cell with Sylvie made to follow. Why hadn’t she just run? “You shouldn’t be here,” he muttered to her.

Sylvie’s eyes cracked open. Their normal vibrant green seemed muted somehow and she blinked a couple of times before recognition flashed through them.

“Nestor?” she yawned. “Is it my turn to keep watch?”

“No.” he tried to smile. It felt like a grimace. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

Sylvie sat up and shivered again. “What time is it?” The only source of light they had in the cell was a tiny window that opened up to what Nestor assumed was one of the lower streets. Right then, it was dark out, either a moonless night or the light was being blocked by the city above.

“It’s probably my turn,” Sylvie decided. “You should get some rest.”

“I’m not tired,” he said a little too quickly.

Sylvie’s eyes narrowed and he regretted saying anything. “I can keep watch just as well as you can,” she said evenly.

“It’s not that,” he sighed. “It’s…it’s hard to explain.”

“I have nightmares too.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised. With them in such close quarters, it would have been concerning if she hadn’t noticed.

“It’s a lot worse down here,” she continued. “Things I haven’t thought about in years I suddenly can’t stop thinking about.” She shuddered.

Nestor had to suppress a shiver himself. Something about the dampness of the air and the way the shadows flickered and moved made every fear suddenly viable. Every nightmare be reborn.

“Some of the crew used to talk about it,” he said, desperate to stop looking at the shadows. “You end up with so much time to just think in prison it messes with your mind.”

“So it is your first time,” Sylvie said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Should’ve known the pirate in my attic was still green.”

Nestor forced a laugh. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, huh? It was just a matter of time.” He felt the smile slip from his face as he looked at Sylvie again. Her hair, normally braided back, was loose and tangled. She was covered in the soot that kept flooding through their window and she seemed paler to Nestor. “You don’t belong here,” he said quietly, barely above a whisper.

“Does anyone?” Sylvie laughed, but her eyes were pained. “We’ll find a way out,” she said with a forced note of enthusiasm. “We just need to…to steal a guard’s key! Or we can try to get someone from outside to help us! Or—”

“Or you’ll stay there until it’s time to come home,” a cold voice said.

“Ignis’s skies!” Nestor yelped before he could catch himself.

Two men stood in front of their cell. One rather portly and ruddy cheeked and the other with bruised knuckles and perfect teeth.

Sylvie’s uncle raised an eyebrow. “Ignis’s skies?” he asked incredulously. “So you are a pirate. I suppose it tracks that my niece would consort with such rabble.”

“I can say other things if you want,” he spat out before he could stop himself.

“A surprise to be sure. Anything beyond petty curses must be exhausting for your uneducated brain.”

His cheeks burned, but before he could say anything, Sylvie had climbed to her feet.

“What do you want, Henry?” she said through her clenched jaw.

“I was merely wondering if you wanted to come home,” he said, looking bored. “The shop needs running.”

“What, your money finally ran out?” Sylvie drew in a deep breath and gave a savage grin. “Yeah. Can’t smell a drop on you. Must be killing you to go without a drink.”

Her uncle’s eyes flashed. They were the same shade of green as Sylvie’s, but looked misplaced in his face. “What I do with my money is none of your concern,” he growled. “If you want to rot in this cell, be my guest.” He turned on his heel and Nestor let out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding in.

“Wait,” Sylvie said. “What about him?” she gestured to Nestor. Oh, skies no.

“What about him?” Henry asked, slowly turning around.

“Will you let him out if I come home?”

“Sylvie, no!” Nestor said sharply, but Henry was already laughing.

“Him?” He asked. “My girl, that boy is a pirate. He’s exactly where he belongs.”

“Then I’m not going back,” Sylvie said. She settled back onto her bed roll with her arms folded. Nestor groaned.

“Have it your way. You’ll be begging to come home before long,” Henry said. He turned and headed back up the stairs.

“There won’t be anything worth staying for much longer, Miss Sylvia,” the man that had attacked them said. “Best come home before much longer.”

Sylvie glared back, but didn’t say anything as he followed her uncle up the stairs. They waited until they couldn’t hear the click of shoes on the pavement before turning back to each other.

“I hate him,” Sylvie said softly. “I am never going back.”

“You’re not going to,” Nestor said immediately. He glanced at their tiny barred window. If the crew had been able to figure out where they were, surely they would have come to rescue them. Or at least let them know they weren’t out here alone. “We need—” he cut off as the sound of footsteps clicking down the steps sounded.

A couple of men in constable's uniforms stepped into view. “Come on,” one said gruffly. “Cell transfer.”

“Why?” Sylvie asked. “And where?”

“Does it matter? You’re going.” The man opened the cell door and grabbed Sylvie by her wrists. Before she could do anything he had fixed a pair of handcuffs on her.

“Right, you next,” he said, fixing his gaze on Nestor. A second man stepped into the cell, pair of handcuffs in hand.

Nestor let out a slow breath and then held out his wrists. He kept his fingers flared, hoping against hope that it would make his wrist large enough to slip later.

The guard didn’t seem to notice and clamped the cuffs down before dragging him out by his shoulder.

Nestor balled one hand into a fist, testing the give of the cuff. Not enough to slip them, but enough to twist his hands. Good enough.

The air seemed to become heavier and damper as they descended a staircase so dank and well worn, it appeared to have been there before the construction of Skystead itself. Nestor stole a glance at Sylvie, she had her head bowed, but he could see the subtle movements around her eyes, taking everything in.

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“Here’s your new home,” one of the guards said as they came to a dark cell. This one had no windows. The guard holding Nestor’s shoulder shoved him in, sending him stumbling to the damp, stone floor. Sylvie hit the ground beside him a moment later and the door was slammed shut behind him.

Nestor forced himself to his hands and knees, something made much harder by the fact the guards had never removed his handcuffs.

From beside him, Sylvie let out a slow hiss of breath as she did the same.

“Are you alright?” he asked, noting her ginger movements.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly. She tried to twist her hands to look at the palms and let out another hiss. In the dim light, Nestor could make out the raw skin on the palms where she had hit just a little too hard.

“It’s fine,” Sylvie said quickly. She tried to tuck her hands out of view, but with the cuffs that was difficult. “These. Stupid. Handcuffs!” Sylvie growled. She brought her fists down on the ground, but the handcuffs just clanged uselessly.

Right. Start there. Nestor took a closer look at his cuffs. They were old—either slightly rusted or grimy from lack of use, he couldn’t tell in the low light. A threaded piece of metal stuck out from where they had tightened the cuffs across his wrists.

“I’m pretty sure this is a single lock,” he said, running one thumb along the edge of the serrated metal. The teeth all went in the same direction.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sylvie asked. Thankfully, she had taken a break from trying to bash her cuffs open.

“I can shimmy them open. I just need something thin and flat.” He paused, looking her over. “Do you have a pin?” They had taken Sylvie’s tool bag when they had been captured, but girls had all sorts of things for their hair and dresses. Geralt usually kept a few hat pins in his boots.

“A…a pin?” Sylvie frowned and reached into her own boot. “I don’t have a pin, but I have these.” She pulled out a pair of long tweezers. “Gems are hard to hold,” Sylvie said with a shrug. “And these kept falling out of my tool kit.”

Nestor took them from her. They were a little wider than he would have liked, but they would have to do. Holding the pliers against the threaded end of the handcuffs, he delicately slid them through the locking mechanism.

The cuffs were definitely rusted, he realized as he struggled to get his makeshift shimmy over the teeth. It was a wonder the guards had gotten them open at all. At last, the end of the tweezers poked out from the other side of the lock bar.

“Did you get it?” Sylvie asked curiously.

He grinned at her and pulled. The cuffs slid open, making a scratching sound against the tweezers. “One down, three to go,” he announced. He repeated the process on his other hand and then started on Sylvie’s.

Hers were cleaner than his, which made sliding the shimmy along a little easier, but he still went slow, suddenly wary of the tweezers snapping in the lock.

“You would make a good automaton craftsmith,” she said quietly, watching as he pulled the first of her cuffs open.

“I can’t make things,” he said, focusing on the second cuff. “Just break them. All of mine would end up being crushed.” He snapped the last cuff open and Sylvie rubbed at her wrists gratefully. The guard had fastened them on much tighter than he had for Nestor, leaving the skin red and swollen.

“I don’t believe that,” Sylvie said, taking the tweezers back. He had bent them somehow, the two ends pointing in opposite directions.

“Really.”

“They’re not broken, they’re…what did you call them?”

“A shimmy.”

“That is a stupid name.”

Nestor shrugged. “Take it up with the first burglars. I didn’t name them.”

“Wouldn’t they be lock picks? Or is shimmy a special pirate name?” She reached up for goggles that weren't there and then tried to disguise the motion by tucking a bit of hair behind her ear.

He couldn’t quite stifle a smile. “Lockpicks are for keyholes. Shimmys are for when there aren’t any pins.”

“Pins?”

“Yeah, they’re…” he trailed off, trying to figure out how to explain them. “Most locks have a bunch of bits inside that have to be in certain places to open. A key has that pattern in the teeth, but if you want to pick a lock you need to manually move all those pins where the key would—without the key.”

It was a horrible explanation, but Sylvie was nodding. “Like the bearing start,” she said thoughtfully. He had no idea what that meant, but he nodded.

“Who taught you to do this?” she asked suddenly.

Nestor faltered. “Amos. Our captain.”

“Oh.” even in the dim light he could see her eyes widen. “I’m sorry, I…do you want to talk about it?”

Talk? Well, anything had to be better than sitting in silence in this new cell. “He practically raised me,” Nestor said awkwardly. “He pretty much raised all of us.”

“All of you?”

“Me and Geralt. A few of the others. The previous captain didn’t like picking up strays, but Amos was different. We could hardly get a winter in without picking up a couple of orphans.” Nestor leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, remembering Amos’s bearded face instructing him how to hold a sword for the first time.

“He sounds like a good man,” Sylvie said softly.

“He was. I mean he wasn’t perfect, but who is?” Nestor laughed, and to his surprise, it wasn’t hollow.

“Tell me about him,” Sylvie said.

He did, telling her about every memory as it flashed across his mind’s eye. He told her about the time Geralt had stolen the captain’s boots and been made to wear them for the day as punishment, about his first misadventure in pickpocketing where Amos had had to physically grab him and run out of the city, and even about the long winters where there had been little to do beyond play cards.

Through it all Sylvie listened, nodding and occasionally asking for more detail. By the time he finished a stupid grin was plastered across his face and something he couldn’t quite place was swelling in his chest.

“I think I’ve had the wrong idea of pirates,” Sylvie admitted quietly.

“What, ruffians that steal everything that’s not nailed down? That’s pretty much correct.”

“A family. You’re all just one big family.”

Nestor’s smile slipped a bit. “Amos held us together,” he said, his voice falling flat. “We’ll see if we can survive the winter.”

“We’ve got to get you back first,” she said briskly.

“We both need to get back,” he said, trying to match her tone, but it just made their situation come crashing down on them instead. No one knew where they were. How were they supposed to escape?

“N-no!” A voice broke through the silence. “You can’t take me!”

“Hush!” a second voice ordered. A hollow thump rang out and the first voice whimpered.

Bright torch light began to light up the dank stone and Nestor resisted the urge to cringe away from it. A pair of men in constables uniforms were dragging a bedraggled looking man between them. His eyes were wild and a bit of blood was leaking out the side of his mouth. His eyes locked on Nestor’s and he suddenly lunged for the bars of their cell.

“Please!” he cried out, gripping them like a lifeline. “You can’t let them take me!” Nestor swallowed and shifted himself so he was slightly in front of Sylvie.

“Leave the prisoners alone,” the first guard grunted. He pulled the man from the bars and continued dragging him along. The screams faded off in the distance until the man gave one last, feral cry, and then silence fell over everything.

“What was that?” Sylvie asked, her voice hushed.

Nestor hesitated, straining his ears. Nothing. “An execution maybe?” he said, barely daring to speak above a whisper.

Sylvie shook her head. She was trembling. “N-no. Skystead doesn’t do those! Not for anything short of murder!”

The chances of that being fully the truth were low, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her that. “Maybe he killed someone. We’ve been down here for a while. Who knows what’s happening above.”

Sylvie gave a reluctant nod and pressed into his side, still shivering. Nestor slowly wrapped his arm around her, taking comfort in the fact she was right there. They’d be ok. They would have to be.

What felt like hours later, the torchlight began to flicker across the stones again. Nestor nodded to Sylvie and they moved into the far corner of their cell—far from the door, but still with a good vantage point. Nothing they could have done would have prepared them for what they saw next.

The same two constables reappeared, a pale, slumped form between them. Nestor’s breath caught painfully as he recognized the man from earlier. He was impossibly pale, and his eyes lulled listless. Most distressing were the thin scarlet crystals that ran along his arm in a thin, almost spider-like network. They broke through his skin, bleeding in a few places and just visible between his nearly translucent skin in others.

“He’ll need fluids,” one was saying to the other. “Boss says he did a lot better than expected and doesn’t want to waste him.”

From between them, the limp man groaned. Skies, he was still alive? The man’s eyes opened just a crack and Nestor was sure he could see a crystalline iris. He swallowed back the sudden wave of nausea that had just climbed to his throat.

Sylvie gave a tiny squeak from beside him and one of the guards shot a swift glance in their direction. He tilted his head, regarding the two of them huddled in the corner of their cell. “Forget you saw this,” he barked out. They hastily nodded and he and his companion continued to drag the limp man up the stairs.

“We—we have to escape,” Sylvie said. Her voice shook slightly and she cleared her throat. “Can you pick the lock?”

He hesitated, trying to clear the image of those scarlet crystals from his mind. How many staircases had they been taken down? Was that the only entrance? “It’d be too risky without knowing where we’re going,” he decided. “Maybe you could tell your uncle you want to go home and then tell the crew--” He broke off as Sylvie shook her head violently.

“I’m not leaving you!”

“I’ll be ok,” he said in as soothing of a voice as he could muster. “Just get to the crew--”

“No!” Sylvie’s voice reverberated across the stone and she clamped her hands over her mouth. “No, if I go, my uncle won’t have any reason to keep you here.”

“Well, I don’t exactly want to be here,” Nestor tried to laugh. Sylvie glared at him.

“Not when that is on the table as an alternative. Don’t you see? He wanted us to watch what could happen to us, it’s a threat!”

The hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle as the weight of what Sylvie was saying settled over him.

“Maybe…maybe I should go,” Sylvie stood and began to pace the length of their cell. “No, that won’t work. What if…no!” she slammed her fist into the wall.

Nestor stilled. He probably could pick the lock, but what would happen if they were caught again? Would they just be thrown back in their cell? Or would a far crueler fate await them?

A different scream rang through the darkness--this one feminine and twisted. It cut off on a choked note and Sylvie stumbled back over to their corner, visibly shaken. “We need to leave,” she mumbled, collapsing at his side.

He swallowed. One thing at a time.

“We’re going to get out of here,” he said softly, his voice hardly above a whisper. “But first, we need a plan.”