“Quinn is right,” I spoke, slightly above the muffled tears, but low enough so as not to draw the guards’ attention. “Do not speak unless you must. Do not act or do or say anything you think does not become a cleric. This priestess deceit is the only thing keeping us alive.” I said the last sentence with little to no sound.
“Yes. We cannot give ourselves away,” said River, also quietly.
“What will happen?” Catrin asked.
“She doesn’t know,” said Mischa, somewhat brusquely. “None of us do.”
I held up my hands. “Strangers we may be, but they all think we’ve served Agnes alongside each other. Be gentle. Speak gently. Act like you care about your fellow prisoner, please.” I looked toward Mischa. “And aside from acting so as to perpetuate this priestess ploy, we are in hell together now. Let’s be good to one another. Whatever may come.”
Mischa sort of sniffed at Catrin, which, Catrin may not have known, was an apology from Mischa.
I looked at my friend with her cornsilk curls and plentiful curves. She was alluring in her own audacious way and her personality was, if at times ornery, quick to make amends. She was my family in this city, like Helena and Maureen. I had known them nearly as long as I had had my freedom. But unlike the three of us, Mischa had had someone. Winters before we met, Helena’s miserable husband, tired of waiting for a son, had deserted her and little Maureen. Like me, she was still married, if by technicality. She had devoted her life to Maureen’s upbringing. We all had relationships and friendliness here, but no one man and no one by blood. But Mischa had been with Brox for winters. She had often complained about him, saying he had become selfish in bed, that he never picked up after himself. But there are worse men in this world. And she, fiercely self-sufficient and pleasant to look at, could have left or met a new man at any time. But she had not. And he had been jovial and even kind.
I thought then of his kindness towards me. When I could finally afford something other than boarding houses, he had helped me move my belongings into rooms above an apothecary. He had walked all of us home after many a late festival night. In a tavern, last winter, before snow began to land on Eccleston’s spires, I had been with Mischa, waiting with her while she bemoaned Brox’s lateness. I had promised to stay and drink with her until he came. He had entered with fellow capitol guards, still in uniform. After kissing a purse-lipped Mischa, he had turned to one of his friends and, head tilted at me, said, “This is the one I said was too good for you.” And then Brox had winked at me and said, “Be nice to him for a minute, love. Women that look like you don’t often have the time for men like him.” I had blushed, like I was Maureen’s age, and turned to politely smile at Levi.
I put my hands over my face to staunch any further grieving. It had not been love. I had not been in love since marrying Thrush, but Levi had been generous, both in body and words. He had taken the time to tell me what he liked about sharing my bed, praising my face and my form, often bordering on the romantic. Casual lovers have no need for that, but he had done it regardless. And done it sincerely. And now he was dead. And so were hundreds of others.
A restrained invasion was a Tintarian term. It meant, as the flint-faced captain of our new captors had said, only governing bodies would be struck down. But it was still an invasion and they had still slaughtered Ecclestonians. And, as I looked from woman to woman, I thought, we were still prisoners of war. And I could not help but worry that my impulsiveness had condemned us to something worse than death.
4. Wagon
There is no contemplation like the thoughts one has after chaos. The chaos is relived. I pondered our position as the hours passed. One by one, we all sat on the floor. The two guards outside the office did not move. Sleepiness stole over us, despite the terror. It was now well past the midnight hour. The shouting and clangs of metal on metal had dissipated, giving way to sounds of marching feet and orders. They were at their exodus, pulling away from the city. The scent of smoke had filtered into the chapel and I realized they must have burned some of the buildings.
They came back for us as the sun’s rays made their first appearance. We were herded out of the priest’s quarters to the front steps. A large, uncovered wooden wagon with close together slats had been wheeled into the street in front of the chapel. It was pulled by four mismatched horses, two roans, a bay and a piebald.
“That’s for pigs,” seethed Mischa.
“They don’t have a wagon for prisoners,” Quinn said. “They don’t take them.”
Eefa began to cry again.
The hatch on the back was pulled down by one of the men, acting as a ramp pigs could scurry up into the wagon.
From the gathered soldiers, the captain stepped forward and jerked his head towards the ramp. “Go on. You asked for captivity.”
Outraged protestations about how this was a wagon for carting pigs to the butcher died on my lips. The imagery startled me to action. “We have to go,” I whispered to them. I lifted both the hems of my priest’s robe and my dress. I walked forward and put a foot on the edge of the ramp. I looked up, to the university spires, seeking out the scriptorium quill, a view I had, just hours prior, looked at in panic, looking for my husband. Beyond the spires, I saw billowing smoke.
“Quickly, madam,” sighed the captain.
I looked at him and saw weariness in his face. He was tired. He stared back at me.
Remembering my entreaty to my fellow prisoners and in an effort to be gracious, I obeyed and leaned forward, clumsily stumbling up the ramp and into the wagon. It was not small, but it would be cramped with nine of us. The slats were too high to climb out and the sky above seemed like a cruel glimpse of escape. Looking back down, I saw Helena and Mischa approaching the ramp, Maureen close behind.
The streets of Eccleston are cobblestone. Once the hatch was closed and bolted with a hefty lock, the man with the shaved head climbed onto the small seat at the front and flicked the reins. All of us were thrown to a dirty floor, straw and dried mud sticking to our clothes. The ride through the city was bumpy, desolate and a confirmation of the nightmares we had imagined while sequestered in the priest’s office. Most private homes and businesses had been passed over, but the council buildings were all blackened skeletons of what they had once been. Every small office for a tax collector or sheriff was now a heap of what looked like used matchsticks. The Agnes chapels’ white stones had been darkened with ash and soot. And because fire is not an element that lends itself to the control of man, flames had licked their hungry way into a popular brewery, the city granaries and significant portions of the universities. The bodies of those who did not make it in time were in the streets. Every town square we passed through had a line of dead men laid out along the tiles, their throats slit from ear to ear.
“Magistrates,” said Helena. “Sheriffs. Tax officers. If this is what they did to the smaller offices, what did they do to The Council of Ten?”
The Council of Ten were the elected councilmen to represent the three boroughs and the seven mining districts outside the city. Most of them were endorsed by one of the wealthiest mining bloodlines. In Eccleston they were our kings, even if we had shed the old tradition of monarchy.
“I do not want to imagine,” I said, leaning into her on my right. Beside her was Maureen and in the corner of the wagon closer to the driver’s seat, on Maureen’s other side was Mischa. Mischa was asking Maureen if she was alright, when was the last time she had eaten. She was trying to keep Maureen talking and distracted. I often liked to think that together, added up, Mischa and I made up for Maureen not having a father. She certainly had the most loving mother I had ever known, far warmer and more understanding than my own mother, consumed with how our family looked to the rest of Perpatane society.
Behind us, the men were on foot and marching at a steady pace. I watched them as some of them watched us. I guessed we were their first prisoners of war. They did not know what to make of us yet. And we did not know what to make of them. We encountered other larger units of Tintarian soldiers, marching in formation, some as large as what must have been one hundred men. Unlike our captors, they wore chainmail under their armor, were all helmeted and about a third of them on horseback.
“These ones seem different than the rest,” said Quinn.
I looked up at her, on my left. She was a hand taller than I was and I was not a short woman. “I see that. Less armor. Do you think they’re not soldiers?”
“I wonder. The leader said, ‘we areprocurers.’”
