Clariel climbed on the table and then pulled herself up to crouch on the bedhead, now a kind of shelf seven feet up the wall. It shook a little but the table seemed to be holding it firm, so Clariel stood up.
With that head start, she began to scrape away at the mortar around a brick at waist-height. This would be her first toehold, she thought, and she would have to make fingerholds as high as she could reach. It would get much, much more difficult after that, because she would have to hold on and scrape one-handed, making small advances up the wall.
Even if she did get to the top, she might not be able to open the shutters, or the windows for that matter. But that was another problem, to be surmounted when she made the climb.
It was likely she would fall, she knew, but Clariel almost welcomed that. Better to die trying than to just lie in the dark, remembering what had happened over and over again.
chapter nineteen
a mouthful of earth
Clariel did fall. Twice. Both times she landed on the table, which was a small blessing compared with hitting the floor, though in the second fall she also struck one of the stumpy legs of the bed on the way down.
After the second fall, Clariel didn’t have the strength to start climbing again. Nursing her bruises, she dragged the table slowly back into place and tipped the bed back down. Sitting on it, she drank some water and dabbed a little on a strip of cloth torn from a bed sheet to wash her bloodied fingertips and toes. Then she used the chamber pot and laid down, the precious metal button under her pillow.
She didn’t mean to go to sleep, and would have thought it impossible, as her mind still grappled with the enormity of what had happened, with her parents’ deaths. But sleep did come, almost as soon as her head went on the pillow.
It was a restless sleep. Clariel woke several times, each time in panic, raised from a dream of death, her heart pounding with terror. It was made no better by waking in complete darkness. Each time, she calmed herself, following the breathing and mental exercises outlined in The Fury Within.
When she finally awoke properly, there had been no change in the darkness. Clariel had no idea how much time had passed, save that she needed to drink again and use the chamber pot and that she was hungry, though it was the kind of nervous hunger that says your body needs to be fed even though you are too upset to eat.
She washed her fingers and toes once more. They felt sore, but she couldn’t really tell how badly bruised or cut they were. There were scabs and extra sore places, but no free-flowing blood. Even so, she didn’t think she could try climbing and mortar-scraping for a while.
Clariel was thinking about that when there was thud on the shutters high above, followed by a sudden, narrow shaft of sunlight. She cried out as much from relief as from the sudden pain in her eyes, but stopped herself from leaping up and showing too much gratitude for the light. Deep inside, she knew that if this continued for too many days, there would come a time when she would beg for any chance of fresh air and sunlight, even whatever little might come down to her prison from above.
‘Stay on the bed!’ ordered a voice from above. Clariel recognised it, not favourably, as Reyvin. Once her guard. But she obeyed, blinking as the other shutters were raised, the central window was opened and then a long, thin ladder of what appeared to be lashed-together bamboo was lowered down.
The ladder was held at the top by Reyvin and another guard, but the person who started climbing down with a large basket on her back was too small to be a soldier. Just a young girl, perhaps nine or ten years old, dressed like a kitchen servant in a plain tunic and apron, with wooden clogs that were giving her some trouble on the ladder. She stopped halfway down and looked fearfully at Clariel.
‘You won’t kill me, will you, milady?’
‘No!’ protested Clariel. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘They said you might,’ said the girl, gesturing upwards with her head. ‘To try to get up the ladder. But there’s lots of them up there, milady, and I’m the only one in the family has a job now –’
‘You’re perfectly safe from me,’ said Clariel. ‘Look, I’ll sit cross-legged here on the bed. Are you bringing me food?’
‘Yes, milady,’ answered the girl, continuing her descent. ‘Simple fare, and new water. I’m to empty your chamber pot too, even though I’m not a night-worker. I’m tenth in the Governor’s kitchen.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Clariel. She leaned back as if to yawn, and took a look at the wall to see if her handiwork of the night before was noticeable. It wasn’t too visible, not on the wall itself, but she was disturbed to see spots of fallen mortar on her blankets and sheets. In the daylight, the sprinkled mortar was quite a bright yellow, possibly even obvious enough to be seen from above.
‘Can’t say,’ said the girl cautiously. She shrugged the basket off her back and set it on the floor.
‘Sharrett!’ roared Reyvin from above. ‘Don’t talk to the prisoner!’
Sharrett sighed and rolled her eyes. Clariel winked at her, and the girl smiled. She took a small loaf of plain bread and a round of soft cheese out of the basket and put them on the table, filled up the water jug from a bottle, and with her face screwed up and nostrils clamped as best she could, tied a string several times around pot and lid of the chamber pot to make sure it would stay shut in her basket and swapped it for a new one.
‘Thank you,’ said Clariel quietly. She was thinking about when she had been Sharrett’s age and much more carefree than this streetwise urchin. She had worshipped her father, and been both afraid and respectful of her mother, and the world had seemed an open, easy place. Even back then she had been drawn to the wild, and had spent many happy hours in Estwael’s parklands. In retrospect the age of nine or ten had been among the happiest times of her life.
Sharrett finished sorting out the chamber-pot swap, and crouched down to settle the basket on her back before starting up the ladder. When she got to the top, she was helped up over the edge and then the guards pulled up the ladder. As they began to fix the shutters closed again, Clariel called out.
‘Hey! Can I have a candle and some friction lights?’
‘No!’ shouted Reyvin. ‘Orders!’
The final shutter came down, and once again the prison was locked in darkness. Clariel shivered. With the dark, she felt the walls come closer, the air grow more still and dead. Worse still, she couldn’t imagine a way out. It felt like she had reached an ending in her life, that it had stopped with her parents’ death, and this was just a short continuation …
‘Enough!’ Clariel told herself. She got up and stretched, then carefully found her way to the bread and cheese and forced herself to eat and drink some water. Then she took a deep breath, stripped the bed of sheets and blanket – pausing to consider that it was surprisingly warm inside this prison, when it should be dank and cool – put the linen in one corner so it would be away from any falling mortar, moved water and chamber pot, dragged the table over, lifted the bed, took up her button and once again resumed the making of finger- and toeholds.
Clariel did better this time, and several hours later made it to the top. There were beams there that supported the slanting roof, and she was able to hook a leg over one and pull herself up. She lay at a full stretch along the beam for a long time, her fingers completely numb and her muscles aching. Eventually, she forced herself to feel the window above her. Given that no one could expect a prisoner to climb up, she hoped it might not be locked, bolted or barred on the outside, and that the shutters above might be simply planks laid on top of the glass.
Clariel pushed up. Shutter and window moved together, opening enough to admit a slight breeze, but no immediate light. She was puzzled for a moment, but as she peered through the gap she realised it was a little lighter outside. But it had to be early in the morning, likely just before dawn.
Clariel held window and shutter open for some time, drinking in the breeze that came through. She also heard human noises carried by the wind, a yawn
or exhalation of breath, then a muttered comment, answered a moment later by someone else. Guards, she thought. Perhaps a dozen yards away, not right outside the window.
Eventually Clariel slowly closed window and shutter. She lay on the beam and thought about what to do next. There was a good chance she could surprise whoever was directly outside, but she had heard at least two guards. She couldn’t fight two armed and armoured enemies, no matter how much she surprised them. But there was the faint possibility she might be able to sneak out in the night, if it was dark enough.
Reluctantly, she concluded for the time being that she had to climb back down again to disguise the fact she could reach the top.
If only I’d got here earlier in the night, she thought, feeling frustration and anxiety in equal measure.
Clariel sighed and swung her legs over, feeling the wall with her toes. At least it would be easier to make the ascent the next time, since she’d dug out the finger- and toeholds. She could make them deeper and longer, perhaps even loosen some bricks enough to pull them out entirely, and a loose brick would be a weapon as well.
She was about to start down when she heard an almighty crack below, like the sound of a flawed crucible breaking apart when it was quenched.
‘Clariel?’
Clariel didn’t answer. The voice was monstrous and rasping, as if shaped in a larger and stranger mouth than any human could possibly have.