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by Valerie Estelle Frankel
Children, 20 pages.
Originally Published in In the Outposts of Beyond anthology, 2003
(2) Rate this Story Water dripped down from the ceiling in fast, stinking streams. Greenish grime filled it, racing down from the higher levels of the prison. Kia’s lips and throat ached with dryness, but she knew that tasting the filthy water would make her sick for weeks. Not that it mattered.
Kia studied the man chained beside her in the cell. Untidy brown hair, dark, shadowed skin, once-fine clothes that now hung in a conglomeration of tatters. His slender bulk towered over her own scrawny frame. Too well off to be a thief as she was, he must be some sort of traitor. Only thieves who had been caught a third time or traitors to the Council merited lock ups in these cells. This one lacked the paranoid, darting eyes of a murderer.
Kia had been confined twice in the cells above, where there was light and air, with feeding twice a day. She might have arranged deliberate imprisonment just for the food, if she hadn’t known what a third confinement would bring her. And now it had happened. She lay there, wrists chained in near darkness, with only a few drops of light trickling from the barred window leading to the corridor. Her wrists stung where the metal scraped skin rubbed raw, while her shoulders groaned at the chilling weight. The place smelled of rank, unwashed bodies, but here in the darkness the scent festered and grew until it threatened to overwhelm her senses and choke her growling belly. Even her prolonged exposure hadn’t deadened the stench to her nostrils. She had been alone until that morning, when the guards dragged the other prisoner in.
The man shifted, something Kia could feel more than see or hear in the dimness. Then he sighed and stretched, jingling his heavy chains. This man remained surprisingly calm for one who awaited torture at the hands of the guards. It was even stranger that he hadn’t bribed his way out by now, given the apparent luxury of his clothing. On the other hand, the man’s ghostly figure disdained the long, floppy sleeves that covered the fingertips, instead choosing practical wrist cuffs. This lack of fashion might indicate either a short-term lack of money or complete contempt for society’s opinions. He turned his head, and Kia darted her eyes away, embarrassed at being caught staring.
“There’s nothing to fear, little one. How long have you been here?”
Was this noble traitor actually speaking to her? “F-five days, sir.”
“Then you’ll know I just arrived this morning.” The man made it sound like a trip from the country. “How often do they feed us here?”
“Once a day.”
“No wonder you’re so scrawny.” His smile, somewhere between patronizing and sympathetic was enough to infuriate Kia. She longed to scratch his eyes out. The man scrutinized her and nodded. “A loner, just like I was.”
“I’m nothin’ like ya ever were.”
“If you say so. I’d wager you’d be surprised.” He pulled a length of something, twine or ribbon from his pocket and played with it, twisting it idly in his hands. His hair dangled in scruffy straggles, but glimmers of light drifted over his face, revealing skin rather than dirt. He was much older than her, perhaps eighteen or twenty. His eyes drifted half closed, as if he prepared to take a nap.
“Ya seem very calm fer a traitor.”
“So you think me a traitor, then?”
“I think ya a man well dressed enough to be well paid and criminal enough to be locked in here.”
The man laughed, with a flash of white teeth in the dim light from the corridor. “Never assume things just because I’m dressed like one of those silk doublets. One place is much the same to me as another. And being in this charming prison of Lotorinum, my homeland, is enough to remind me why I found myself a new country.”
“But yer to be executed. All traitors are.”
He shrugged. “The sentencing’s in a week. Plenty can happen between now and then.”
“And between now and tomorrow? That’s when the torture starts.”
The man’s jaw dropped. “Torture?”
Kia grinned in the darkness. It was almost pleasurable to watch the man’s smugness dissolve like that into pure shock. “Ya didn’t know?”
“You said tomorrow? I’ve a week before the execution.” The man’s voice, calm when he spoke of being executed, definitely held a note of panic now.
“The guards torture traitors for six days before the sentencin’. They want the full truth of the crime, and any accomplices. Besides, the screams deter those with lighter punishments.” Kia forced the tremble in her throat back down to her stomach. Just the reminder of those screams she’d heard during her times in prison was enough to make her shiver. For days she had struggled against the bars, the iron chains, but she had no way to escape the prison. Her arms still ached from their knifelike edges. Soon, too soon, her own punishment would arrive.
“To make sure the traitors stay out of the country of Lotorinum, eh,” the man said, forcing a note of levity -- [End of Preview.]