She came to grey, pre-dawn clouds billowing above her. She moved her head to take account of her surroundings. Jay was lying on a wide palette bed, built from scrap lumber. It had four posters with thick and heavy oilskin fabric now pulled away to let the air and the light inside the sleeping space. Close to the bed was a tall brazier, made out of a boiler most likely ripped from a defunct steam engine. Its innards were buzzing and crackling with fire, radiating warmth that was reaching Jay’s face. There were more things around Jay, tall storage boxes and barrels, tables and workshop benches, piles of rust-coloured junk and cabinets with heavy locks hanging from their doors. All of this was situated on a long cliff-shelf, composed into the sharp, angular rocks and crevices of the cliff’s face. Beyond the cliff, the sea glimmered with oily sheen and the slowly fading lights of Arklington shone alongside the coast and the bank of the river, dwarfed by the height and the distance. From somewhere to the side there was clinking of glass and whoosh of a working alcohol burner. Jay moved her head to see Lethe at one of the benches. It was clearly an alchemical station, laden with glass retorts, vials and flasks. Some liquids were bubbling in beakers and sliding down the cooling spirals, others were boiling over a blue flame and slowly changing colours. Lethe was presiding over the processes, keeping his eye on the simmering ingredients. From time to time he’d consult a tome that was sitting open on the side of the bench, flipping the pages and mumbling to himself.
She noticed that she was no longer wearing the destroyed and blood-stained chemise, instead having been dressed in one of Lethe’s long shirts that was almost reaching her knees. The cuts on her skin were treated with some ointment smelling of aloe and mint. She was warm under the thick blankets, almost cosy but for her completely parched mouth, reminding her that she had nothing to drink ever since before they went on the ill-fated embassy job. Luckily there was a pitcher to the side of the bed. Jay reached towards it. It turned out to be filled with cider and Jay started to gulp it down greedily. After she was done with the pitcher, she closed her eyes again, leaned back on the pillow, panting slightly.
‘Awake so soon?’
Jay opened her eyes. Lethe was standing over her, a vial in his hand and a watchful gaze concentrated on Jay.
‘Hmm…how long was I asleep?’
‘Not long, it’s nearly morning so a few hours I’d say.’
Jay shifted on the bed.
‘This place…it’s the Tobin Quarry.’ She said. She recognized immediately the white sandstone that was once excavated here, known well in the world for its white beauty. But the operation ceased years ago when it became clear that each chunk of stone taken from this place made the cliffs more and more unstable. Now only the seagulls nested here, their eggs safe from man and beast alike.
‘Yeah, I found this shelf a while back and thought it would be an awesome place to live.’
So this was the place he called his home. Jay gazed over the rugged line of the rock that made for the ‘roof’ of Lethe’s hideout. The white sandstone was lined with stripes of metal inscribed into runes, presumably keeping the worst of the rain and wind out.
Lethe plopped down next to her and reached out under her chin, taking stock of her bruised and swollen face.
‘Who fucked you up this badly? The guards?’
Jay pulled her knees up to her chest under the blanket. Deep inside her there was still this pain smouldering slowly, a memory of Aimar’s brutality.
‘No’ she said, her throat constricting, cutting her voice down to a whisper. ‘It was him…, Aimar…t-the Prince. He…’
‘The Prince? The ambassador to the Abrecari?’
Jay nodded, not wanting to say another word.
‘You better drink this’ Lethe put in her hand the vial he was holding.
She downed the contents of the vial in one go, glad for the distraction. As soon as she did, a bitter taste stormed into her mouth, twisting her face and churning her stomach. She leaned out of the bed, feeling the bile rising up her throat.
‘No, nonono, no.’ Lethe placed his arm across her shoulders and pressed his palm across her face, immobilizing her, making Jay to swallow back. ‘You need to keep it down for the poison to work.’
Jay forced herself to stay perfectly still, swallowing back the wave of nausea and waited for her stomach to stop wrenching itself into knots. She took a deep breath and relaxed her muscles, slowly feeling the burning dissipating.
‘You poisoned me?’ she gasped as soon as Lethe withdrew his hands.
He looked at her and then sat back.
‘No. Not you’ he said. ‘But if you feel like keeping whatever his highness Prince Aimar pumped into you, then be my guest. Puke your guts out for all I care.’
If she could roll herself into a tighter ball than she already was, she would have at this point. All through the pain and suffering Aimar inflicted on her, that one thought was not something that came to her, even if it might have been obvious. That there might have been even more consequences after the cuts on her body and the abrasions between her legs would have been healed. Her mind recoiled from the thought that she would have been forced to carry a child conceived against her will.
‘Thank you Lethe’ she said quietly.
‘But’ she said when another thought struck her. ‘You didn’t give me one of those after we…’
‘After we fucked?’ he said and shrugged. ‘Don’t worry; you wouldn’t catch a kid from me, Jay.’
Why exactly he was so sure of it, Jay didn’t know. But at this point she didn’t feel like continuing the conversation.
‘H-he wanted to make me scream’ she said after the silence was too much for Jay to bear. Lethe said nothing in return, letting her take a few more breaths. Jay felt like her throat, still constricting under the memories, started to loosen a bit as she pushed the words forward. ‘He wanted me to scream. He used a whip and then…then…I wanted to scream, Lethe. I wanted. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t …scream-‘
She grabbed Lethe’s sleeve, feeling her fingers clutching the fabric like claws. As she spoke the words pushed onto one another until there were no more words. Jay opened her mouth and finally let out not a stream of words but a piercing scream. Another scream joined the first one, echoing across the cliffs, rousing the dozing seagulls. The high-pitched cries of the alarmed birds joined Jay’s howls. She screamed as if she never knew how to do it before, wailing from the depths of her chest. She couldn’t stop, putting all the breath that she had into the cries until there was no more air in her lungs and the pre-dawn grew dark in front of her eyes.
