She and the warden retired to the central room. Slate returned his keys. He glared. She pretended not to notice.
The silence got uncomfortable. The muffled sounds of prisoners talking and moving around in the other rooms didn’t help. Slate dug for another handkerchief, didn’t find one, and tried to locate an unobtrusive patch of sleeve.
The warden cleared his throat. “It’s not too late to put him back.”
The door opened, and Caliban came through. He looked considerably better in the clean clothes, which were too large rather than too small. He was still dirty and bedraggled and his beard was truly unfortunate, but now he only looked very bad instead of like death warmed over.
A decent bath and a shave, and we might aspire to “human.” Or, err, demon. Something.
He can’t still be possessed. They wouldn’t put him in a regular prison if he had a demon in him. He’d be so loaded down with spells and irons that he couldn’t sneeze without banishing himself.
Well, assuming he was even possessed in the first place. He might just be mad, after all.
He seems sane enough at the moment, except for the twitchiness. ‘Course, if I was in a cell for a season, I’d likely be twitchy myself.
Slate was probably the only one who noticed the way Caliban paused before stepping through the doorway, as if he still could not quite believe that there were such things as open doors before him.
“Right!” said Slate brightly, turning to the warden. “I assume you have something for me to sign?”
“What? Err…yes…” The warden rummaged through a stack of papers on his desk, then in a desk drawer. Slate read a few, upside down, and picked one out.
“This it?”
“Oh, yes, err…”
She signed it with a flourish. Paperwork, at least, Slate understood. “And a copy for me, and one for you, and…excellent!”She folded hers up, saluted with the corner, and strolled out of the guardroom.
Her heart was pounding. It usually pounded when she offered people documents, but generally that was because she had forged them and was waiting to see if she’d get caught. It was interesting to learn that being on the correct side of legality didn’t help much.
The warden didn’t stop them. Slate hadn’t expected him to. Once papers were signed, people seemed to give up. It was a strange sort of magic.
The door led to a hallway, which led to another hallway, and then to a flight of stairs with a pair of guards. Sir Caliban fell into step behind her, a pace back and to her left, a practiced distance.He’s probably been an honor guard more times than I can count.Slate’s lips twitched.
What the guards might have thought of the small, drab woman and her grim escort was anyone’s guess. She wondered if they even recognized that he was a famous mass murderer. Guards tended to rotate regularly—prison duty was a punishment, not a reward—and many of them might not even recognize him on this side of the bars.
Of course, anyone with an ounce of sense ought to recognize that a grimy man in ill-fitted clothes, who paced like a bodyguard, was not in the normal run of events. But that was bureaucracy for you. Get past the first layer of guards, present official-looking paperwork, and nobody asked questions.
They swept by the guards unchallenged. Slate felt a small bubble of triumph, or possibly hysteria.
There were more corridors and more halls and more guards.None of them challenged her, even when they left the prison and entered a corridor more suited to a palace.
“This really is foolishness,” said Caliban in an undertone behind her. “The warden should have given you guards—an escort—something. Letting a woman walk out of here with a murderer—I’d have his skin if he were serving under me.”
He sounded genuinely outraged. Slate had to laugh.
“Relax, mister murderer, you’re not getting off that lightly.”
She turned her head as she spoke, in time to catch his grimace.
“Sorry.SirMurderer, should I say?”
“Whatever you like, madam,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
Still raw. He can say it, but he doesn’t like it when I do. Interesting. Not surprising, but the way he speaks, you’d think he’d hide it better. Ah, well.
“Here we are.” She turned down another, narrower hallway, and knocked on a door at the bottom of a shallow step. Caliban stood behind her, feet apart, his hands folded behind him.
Good lord, is that parade rest? I think it is.
