“Someone you will endeavor to forget.”
Leena stared at St. Silas, at this man who had the very Warden of Newtorn Prison in the palm of his hand. Who relished the hold he had over others. That was why only the desperate sought the Saint of Silence. Her stomach tightened; she had delivered her own weakness to him. If she survived the night, how would he use her secrets against her?
The Warden bowed, deep and low, before bidding them to follow.
Leena’s chill had worsened, and her teeth chattered as she and St. Silas followed the Warden past the guarded gate and down a long corridor. She’d never been this far in, although she had dreamed many times of running down the length of the prison, finding the exact cell that housed her father, throwing off his manacles, and freeing him. Now, as she was led farther inside, the sheer volume of this place stunned her, lines and lines of prison cells stacked on top of one another like cages. She caught flickers of movement from within, feet pacing stone floors—disturbed, frenzied pacing—like animals circling bars.
She staggered, then gagged. The reek of the prison had reached her all at once—an overwhelming mixture of excrement and soiled, decaying flesh. Breathing through her mouth, Leena straightened, not wanting to appear afraid.
She searched hungrily for the faces behind the bars, but shedoubted she could recognize even her beloved baba in this darkness. How could he survive this place? The image of her father here in threadbare clothes, eyes staring unseeing at the wall, unnerved her so much that she struggled to keep walking.
Ahead of her, the Warden spoke as if he was giving them a tour, his eyes continuously jerking toward and away from St. Silas uneasily. He gestured at one of the cells, inside which Leena could see only a shadowy silhouette. “Aspecialvisitor, sent from the Algaraan Malik himself,” the Warden continued, despite St. Silas’s lack of response. “One of Commander Yosif’s best captains, captured moments before a planned invasion of Algaraa’s capital.”
Leena’s head whipped up. “Which captain?”
Everyone knew of Commander Yosif, the charismatic leader of the anti-Malik movement—a university student who had led the first marches nearly twenty years ago, and had paid for it when the Malik’s soldiers responded with violence. He was one of the few who had survived the ensuing onslaught. His comrades had been butchered on the streets, the gutters clogged with their blood.
Leena’s own uncle, Baba’s younger brother, had been studying to be a lawyer when he’d joined that first march; Baba had once told her in a choked voice that there had not been enough of him left to bury. All the corpses were set on fire by the soldiers. Unmarked. Desecrated. Ashes.
The Warden threw her a disdainful glance. “It is confidential.”
She had grown obsessive about the Algaraan war ever since Baba had been taken. It tied her to him and to a homeland she had never seen. She combed through the newspapers, driven to anger when most of the Morish articles were skewed in favor of the Algaraan monarch, painting the Liberation Party as savages and the Algaraans who supported them as equally barbaric.
Leena screwed up her mouth but said nothing, even though she wanted to turn spitefully to the Warden and tell him that the capture of one captain would not save the Malik. That there would be many who would take his place.
None of the Morish papers had ever mentioned that the Liberation Party had gained so much power that they were now at the steps of the capital. This meant they were closer to taking the Malik’s palace than she’d ever thought possible.
Leena wished she could tell Baba this. She wished she could scream it so loud that every cell in Newtorn Prison could absorb her words, and maybe Baba could hear her and gain hope from her voice.
Of course, she could not.
Instead, as she passed the captain’s cell, she whispered to him in Algaraan—an old phrase that was said to loved ones when they left home, to remind them to be resolute in foreign lands.
May your spirit endure.
At first, she was not sure he had heard her from deep within his cell, but the responding tap on the metal bars confirmed he had. Spiteful gladness almost made her smile. She did not care that the Saint of Silence turned to her sharply, his eyes boring into her. He did not comment, though.
As they roamed deeper into the prison, a strange whirring sound sent vibrations through the walls, rattling the bars and raising dust from the ground. For an odd moment, disoriented and faint, Leena swore that it was Newtorn Prison’s own stomach that rumbled, salivating for a feast.
“What is that?” Leena asked, goosebumps trailing across her neck.
The Warden turned around, the lamplight bouncing across the gritty walls, momentarily shedding light into the cell closest to her. This time she did manage to catch a glimpse of another inmate. His face was pressed flush against the bars, his hollowed eyes gaping, mouth slack, so close that he could have reached out to grab hold of Leena’s dress. But she didn’t shrink back. For a moment, she was unable to tell if he was another of her ghosts.
Evidently, he was not, for she felt a firm touch on her shoulder leading her to the center of the corridor. It was St. Silas, withdrawing once more behind her, collecting shadows in his wake.
“Mind your step,” he said silkily, as if he was a gentleman escorting her down a promenade.
Leena nodded. She’d been purposely walking near the cells in hopes of finding her baba, but she now saw the hopelessness of that endeavor. Ahead of them, the hall stretched and stretched and…
“What is causing that vibration?” Leena repeated, her voice raised this time.
The Warden appeared pleased by this question. “I view Newtorn as less of a prison and more of a factory, and the inmates as workers. We give them earnings to stoke the fires, to manage the kitchens, to work the assembly lines packaging flour and other goods to feed the nation. They can choose to send those earnings to their family once they’ve reached a certain amount. It gives them a sense of purpose, essential in the rehabilitation process.”
That was what the Algaraan Malik did as well—allowed his people to work their fingers stiff while he lived a life of decadence. The Warden, Leena thought, could not in his arrogance draw the parallels between the two countries. Hunger was hunger, and it always incited violent change, no matter if it was felt by an Algaraan or a Mor.
Leena had never seen a penny from Newtorn Prison. She knew Baba—knew how he’d worked his entire life for his children, knew that he must be breaking his back for the mere promise of providing for them. She wondered bitterly which guard’s pocket the money must be disappearing into. Anger built behind her eyes like a headache.
“It is nearly three in the morning,” Leena said through gritted teeth. “What benefit is to be had from working the assembly line during these dead hours? That is not rehabilitation, sir, that is profit.”
