“Try turning it over,” I offered from a corner, where I sat with my forearms propped on my knees and my inky fingers dangling. “You are the one on the bottom.”
He choked in disgust and flipped through the other pages, then cast the notebook aside. It hit the wall and fell open onto the floor, showing a rather explicit depiction of Baffin and a Kessan imp entangled in one another. My drawing hand is quite good, if I may be permitted to preen, and my imagination liberal.
“Lewd drawings?” he growled. “Have you no sense of self-preservation, woman? I offered you a chance.”
“You did not even look at them all,” I replied with false disappointment. “The one with the Sirens of Amarto is particularly inspired.”
Baffin turned to Wake, who had returned from whatever sordid appointment he’d had and now loitered in the doorway. “Find me another Eventide among our Separatist prisoners and have them scour her memory.”
“There are none,” Wake said. “There are several Eventide Affinates, but no one with the strength to get anything off her.”
Baffin was clearly displeased. “A word in the hall, Mr. Wake.”
Wake conceded and the two stepped outside. I watched the closed door, listening, but could not make out their words.
At length Wake came back in and, grabbing my arm, hauled me to my feet.
He did not speak as he led me out of the room, down the hall and towards a flight of stairs. Focused as I was on not falling over, it was not until we walked past a particularly large, lavish mirror that I noticed Wake’s face. It was tight and grim, but his ire was not directed towards me.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The dark.”
Iron clanged. My hair, thoroughly tangled, blinded me as I jerked a bag off my head and hurled it to the floor. I spun around as a key clanked in the lock of a barred iron door, and two nameless jailers strode away.
They took the light with them. I closed my eyes for two breaths, letting my Eventide eyes adjust, and opened them again as I glanced around my prison.
It had a cot in one corner and a grating in the floor of another, where the soft trickle of running water drifted up. There was no window, no source of light whatsoever.
That made the sight of Lewis lying on the cot, flushed and struggling to sit up, all the more terrible.
“Who is it?” he asked, his voice more displeased than threatening. He had been stripped to his shirt and trousers and bore visible bruises. The shot to his leg had been bandaged, but by the fevered look in his eyes, not well.
“Lewis,” I said, running to his side. “Have you been down here all this time? Alone in the dark?”
“Solitude has its merits,” he soothed. He startled me by taking my hand as I crouched beside him. “I wrote you a poem. I know how you loathe my recitations, but if you will permit me…”
He trailed off, closing his eyes as if to remember. Themoment stretched long and, concerned, I reached to feel his forehead. It was burning up, as was his thigh when I gently put a hand near his bandage. “Damn.”
“Indeed,” he affirmed, drawing the word out blearily. “I may die soon, Ottilie. You must read my poem. Promise me you will.”
“You have yet to write it down, so I cannot. You will simply have to refrain from dying for now,” I informed him. “Try not to be so dramatic.”
“My darling, we are imprisoned and I have been shot. I have been bandaged by a manic veterinarian with not a droplet of scrubbing alcohol in sight. I believe I have also been poisoned.”
At this, he found a cup on the thin mattress and held it up.
I blinked twice in rapid succession, struggling to track his words past ‘darling.’ I took the cup from him and sniffed. It smelled of damp tin, and nothing more. “Why do you say that?”
He found my hand again, clinging to it and either ignoring or not processing my question. “I am doomed, and of little use to you. I am sorry.”
I patted his hand and set the cup aside. “You are delirious. Please rest and let me think. I will get us out of here.”
I turned away before the sight of his haggard face could sully my courage. I paced the cell, examining it from all angles and stared down the grate, which was far too small for anyone to slip through, even if it had not been secured.
I went to the barred door and peered as far as I could down the passageway in both directions. I saw other cells, but heard no sounds of occupation.
“Where are the other prisoners?” I asked, coming back over to Lewis. “From the way Baffin spoke, this prison should be packed with Separatists.”
