“No, but the picture is a little bleak.”
“That’s just the paint they use in these things,” Ramaro mused as he glared at the dank interior. “Gray with a dash of torture.”
Marc winked. “Keep your courage. They’re not as tough as they look.”
The ride was both long and short, as I oscillated between hope and fear. The wagon rolled beneath a stone arch and into a courtyard. The temperature seemed to drop, especially when the door was flung open.
“Get out of there and bring the creature!” someone barked.
“Who’s the creature?” Ramaro grumbled.
Marc picked up his cage and stepped out first, and I followed. The bleak courtyard was ringed by a tall structure built from black stone, roughly cut but meticulously stacked. Not even an ant could have gotten between the slabs. Short, narrow windows broke the monotony, but not the atmosphere. A dark portico ran around those three sides, casting the three different entrances in almost complete darkness.
A gate slammed down behind us, shutting off our only exit and making me jump. One of the men yanked the cage from Marc, while two others grabbed one of his arms. They turned away and dragged him toward one of the doors.
“Marc!” I shouted as I tried to follow.
One of the men grabbed the crook of my arm and yanked me back. Marc looked over his shoulder and grinned at me. “Don’t worry!”
“Ya better worry, miss,” my captor whispered as he sneered at Marc’s retreating backside. “That pirate has a date with a short rope.”
“Take the woman and the creature to the upper cells,” their leader commanded the man.
He nodded and pulled me to the door opposite where they had taken Marc. The portal led into a dark landing, and a set of stone stairs on the left seemed to sink into the very earth. The air smelled damp as we made our way down the steps to a cellar below ground level. There was a hall in front of us, and a corridor leading from left to right. A large desk sat at the intersection, and a short, grimy fellow sat in the chair.
He looked up at our coming and his sharp, beady eyes stared hungrily at me. “A little sweet midnight snack?”
My captor leered at me. “This one’s for the cell, but you never know about later.”
“Did you check her for anything?” the jailer questioned my captors.
“I was just getting to that,” the man argued as he patted me all over. I shuddered at the pawing and was partially glad when his attention fell on a lump in my pocket. He drew out my whistle and looked it over. “What’s this?”
The jailer pushed a box full of junk toward him. “Probably just a toy.” He plucked a key from a pegboard and handed it to the man. “Go on. Get her into number fifty.”
“The one at the end,” my captor mused as he tossed the key in the air and caught it. “Good idea.”
The jailer glared at him and jerked his head over his shoulder. “It won’t be if you keep blabbing about it, now git.”
Our captors led us down the central hall to the end, where another corridor ran perpendicular to it. We turned right and went to the very end, where the Ironshore opened the last cell on the deepest wall. The other guard tossed the cage, and I was pushed inside.
The men shut the barred door behind us and grinned. “Hope to see ya later, missy,” one of them mused. They burst out laughing and sauntered away.
“Not if I have anything to say about that. . .” Ramaro grumbled as he righted himself. He turned his butt toward the gate, and his tail slithered out through the bars. The tip held a small file in its curl, and he began to play with the lock.
Hope sprang in me as I hurried over and dropped to my knees in front of him. “Where did you get that?”
“Quiet!” he hissed as he worked away at the lock. “Just let me do-ah!” The lock sprang open, and he kicked the cage door with a back foot. The door swung open, and he sauntered out. “They haven’t even bothered to change the locks on those things. Now, to fix this mess you two couldn’t escape.”
My eyebrows crashed down. “I didn’t see you in the fight until it was over.”
“There wasn’t much chance of us winning there, not when they had whisperquills,” he pointed out as he strolled up to the cage and looked down the hall. “But since they don’t know who I am, I have a chance to free you both.”
“How?”
He twisted his head around and his tail whapped against the floor. “The captain is so good at escaping these cells because he always has me on hand. There hasn’t been a lock invented yet that I can’t pick.”
“What if there’s magic to it?” I pointed out as I joined him at the cell bars.
