"There is no excuse for stupid," Annabell echoed.
Pinching her arm, the man hauling her into the bakehouse answered as if she were talking to him. "Righteous? That's the name of this place? Ha. Low hanging fruit. Not a decent weapon or a fighter to wield it. It was harder to get here than it was to take it over."
There were men everywhere. She didn't recognize any of them.
"Answer me," the guy with her arm shook her like a rag doll.
"Righteous Way is the name of the town," she said.
"Great name for a town," another man added. They were all the same. Their faces were different shapes, but her captors were unified in the way they talked, the clothes they wore, their low-minded malice. She couldn't tell them apart.
Flung open wide, the bakehouse double doors took on a sense of ominous warning. Every building in Righteous was a portal to woe.
A woman in the back of the brick building pushed dough into the mouth of one of the smaller ovens. Half-dressed, she was intent on her work and close to the heat. Purple smudges marked her exposed arms and neck, the tops of her breasts, and a harried mask of exhaustion covered her face and puffy, bruised mouth. Annabell knew her name, but couldn't say it. The person in front of her was not the same wife and mother of three Annabell had known all her life.
At the front of the bakehouse, the dry storage trap door gaped open. Led to the edge, and given a push, Annabell could choose to climb down the flat slats of the angled ladder into the dark or fall in with no idea of where she might land.
She climbed.
"Woman of Woe," the dark hole of a room whispered.
"An unshuttered life leaves room for rats,"Mama said.
The fat-bottomed brown things, with their bulbous eyes and snake-like tails, Dorsus rats were the enemy of every 'humble' family. Sneaking in to thieve and pollute all the good put up in the times of plenty. Any noise in the dark caused a farm wife to think there might be rats digging in the stored food.
But rats didn't talk or whisper curses.
Another example of their strong community, the finished dry cellar under the bakehouse was a place for community food. Every family in Righteous of means gave a tithe to support it. Instead of food now, it was filled with people. With no light, her nose swelling and pain clouding her vision, Annabell couldn't be sure but it seemed there were only women and children here.
She stepped to the floor into the square of light provided by the trapdoor. She wanted to ask questions, wanted better answers than the obvious one screaming at her, as bodies shifted and moved. Someone moaned and another whimpered. But they held back their pain and protests, terrified of what existed in the world above them.
"They must have found everyone then if they found her," the dark murmured after a moment.
"No one is coming to help," another answered, hopeless.
"Did you at least do something? Did you try to get help?" The questioner stepped forward a little. It was Bess, Benjere's wife.
Seeing Benjere's body pinned to the wall in her mind's eyes, the mess and stain of it she'd not been able to clean away completely, Annabell shook her head. "Who is it? Who are these men?"
"My babies are dead. Benjere is dead. Everyone is dead—but you have been out there more than a week. I don't even know how long it has been. Two weeks? Three?"
A young voice answered Bess' question, "Forever, we were born here."
"It's mercenary men from the steel cities. Murderers. Raiders. Men who hit and take and care for nothing but themselves," a woman answered. The voice was familiar, but they were shut-up in the dark, and Annabell saw only shapes.
"Did you do something? Annabell, did you go for help? How were you captured?" Bess asked again.
"Raiders. It's raiders," a frightened voice warbled.
"Mercenaries."
"Lurann has been up there. My sister Brei went with her. Is Tressi still alive?"
"Did you see my Shenno?"
"Good wife Merry, did you see her?"
"I saw the good wife baking bread, no one else," Annabell answered, feeling small.
