It was dark, so dark. In the darkness a single shaft of light stood out. It was close. It was weak, but still it was shining in the inky surroundings like a beacon casting its ray over the mountain valley. Slowly, carefully, Jay stretched out her hand to touch it. Pain was travelling up her arm, but all she wanted to do is to touch the gentle light. Her fingers went through the beam; it’s dull and weak shine illuminating her blood-stained fingers.
She opened her eyes wider, the room around her suddenly put into perspective. It was dark in here because no lamp was turned on, the night behind the windows let-in through badly-drawn curtains. And the shaft of light was coming through a narrow gap. Jay rose to her knees, lifting her body as if it was a mountain that crashed down on her. She crawled forward, looking for the gap that was letting the light in. She found it to be a crack in a door. A crack! So the door were open.
Open? She could barely believe that she would be free to leave the room. Somebody, somewhere must have been distracted, or didn’t care about their job, to forget to check if she was securely under the lock and key. Her heart beat faster. Ever since her capture it was the first time she saw an opportunity to escape. She pushed the door carefully, hoping it wouldn’t creak. It didn’t. The door opened silently and the way stood open to the corridor. There was no one on the other side.
It was not bright behind the door. Just a small arc lamp here and there, sprinkling the corridor in washed-out light. The walls were plain and white-washed. This wasn’t the main building; there was none of the lavish effort put into decorating the Ambassador’s residence. Where was she then? She tried to stand up, but immediately the pain gripped her. She bent herself in half and realized that crawling would be a much better solution. She crawled on all fours along corridor, not really knowing where she was or where she was going. Only concerned to make out of there, by all means necessary. She passed a few doors and she thought that she saw a staircase somewhere ahead, a wrought-iron balustrade partially hidden by a curve of the wall.
‘But why are we being moved again?’ she heard coming from somewhere ahead. She halted in her tracks. Voices floated from the staircase, the speakers obscured by the bend in the corridor.
‘Why? Why are you always asking why?’ This voice was high pitched and irritated.
‘But we were told to make sure the thief-girl stays put.’ the second voice was low and slow as if speaking was a chore to its owner.
‘And where is she going? You saw her. I’d be surprised if she can walk tomorrow.’
‘Uhhh…but then orders-‘
‘Now we’re getting new orders. The Princess wants more guards in front of her doors tonight and the Princess is getting more guards in front of her doors tonight. Besides, Graham is still going to be downstairs. And nothing passes next to him.’
‘True. Hey, you heard about this time he shot that rat off the cupboard in the kitchen? So he went-‘
‘Yeah, yeah you told me a hundred times before now we better get going before Captain Adhel starts asking why are we still here instead in front of Princess Osindra’s door.’
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, making the iron-wrought construction clang like a deck of an airship. Then the voices died in the distance. Jay relaxed a bit. At least they weren’t coming closer. She moved ahead to the staircase and peeked from between the iron shafts in the balustrade. Just as they have said there was a guard at the bottom of the stairs, his helmet giving a metallic sheen and the bolt in his crossbow was smouldering like an ember. Jay sighed quietly. There was no way she could move past him. There was only one direction- up.
She crawled up the stairs, the metal cold under her bare legs and hands. She climbed one flight and continued to the next one, until there was no more stairs. She was on the top floor. She paused briefly, trying her best not to pant. Just climbing the stairs drained her energy. She bit her lip trying to work through the various aches. She knew that she couldn’t stop for long. Sooner or later they will be back for her. They’ll come to take her to the Prince again to be stamped as his slave. She shivered at the very thought of meeting his navy-blue gaze again. She crawled forward, not knowing what she would find, if she would find anything at all that would allow her to escape. But she pressed on, haunted by the memory of his amused gaze as he did things to her and promised to do even more.
She came to an abrupt stop when she bumped into something. She saw red as she hit her head against a wooden object in the shadowed place where an arc light burned itself out and was never replaced. Something wooden and long, reaching upwards. A ladder? She looked up. It was a ladder with wide wooden steps, leading off into the half-light of the ceiling. Jay bit her lip again, and without a thought started to haul herself up. She didn’t care if there was something on the other end, as long as she kept moving.
There was something at the top of the ladder- a trapdoor. Without much enthusiasm, she pushed against it, expecting it to be shut tight. It appeared to be so, remaining still as she strained her aching arms. But then she felt it- the slightest of shudder between the frame and the door. Taking a deep breath, she pushed again, letting out a pitiful moan as her arms protested against the effort. She almost cried out when the cold air seeped inside. One more frantic push and the trapdoor stood open, letting in the cold and the thickly-veiled sky above. There it was! Now the way stood open to her, the first step to being free again!
She hauled herself up and crept onto the cold tiles of the flat roof, sparing the last effort to close the trapdoor behind her. She spent the next moment trying to breathe after the exertion before moving again. She approached the edge of the roof and looked beyond it, now recognizing where she was. Jay was on the roof of the service building. Its flat surface allowing her unrestrained view over the wall of the embassy grounds- the lights of the district shining in the foggy night like ships in a bay. From here the path would seem easy- just climb down into the gardens and sneak alongside the wall to the group of unkempt trees, climb the knotty trunks and abseil on the other side of the wall. It would be relatively easy, if only she had enough strength to do all the climbing and sneaking. She leaned over the edge and looked along the façade. It had enough features for nimble fingers and toes to find purchase.
She closed her eyes. She will fall. The lack of strength in her arms was obvious. She barely could feel her own fingers, as stiff and painful as everything else in her body. Her legs were shaking and in no way able to hold her weight. She had no strength to stand, let alone to balance all of her weight on the tips of her toes. She will fall. But she couldn’t stay on the roof forever, neither could she go down. For a second she wondered if the fall will kill her or just leave her broken and helpless. But in the end she knew that it didn’t matter. Whatever it was waiting for her at the bottom of that building was better than the alternative. Better than Prince Aimar.
She felt her fingers grasping the casing of the roof in iron grip. Breathing deeply, she tried to release it, knowing that there was no more time to be hesitant. But before she was able to let go of the cold stone, she felt a hand clasping over her fingers.
‘Eh, I probably wouldn’t do that’ a voice spoke into her ear, a gravelly voice that couldn’t be mistaken. She opened her eyes, hoping with all her might she is not hallucinating, just to see the thick, green-skinned and black-nailed fingers over her own hand. Only then she had enough strength to turn her head and look into burning yellow eyes so close to her.
‘Lethe…’ she croaked, her throat hoarse and tight. ‘You…came back?’
‘Yeah, yeah I’ve done lots stupid shit in my life, don’t you judge me.’
‘But how? How are you here?’ the embassy was a fortress after all. It took them so long, so many preparations. How could he be here and now?
‘How?’ Ask her. Maybe you could dig something out of her. I couldn’t.’
Lethe, moved to the side. On the stone casing of the roof there was a figure crouching like a misshapen gargoyle. It was huddled in some torn fabric and unmoving, just a hairless head poking out above the cloak and a gaze as yellow as Lethe’s. The Kou stared blankly at Jay for a longer moment then shimmied closer, close enough to touch.
Jay was dumbfounded. Why was a Kou here? And one that seemed to wear much more clothes that any she had seen before. It not only had a short cloak but also a long, although dirty and tattered, long shirt underneath it. The Kou settled in front of Jay and only then she realized that this was the Kou she had freed all those weeks back while burgling a house. The cloak around her arms was Jay’s own, now worse for wear.
For a moment the female Kou crouched next to Jay, her face wearing the flat expression so typical to her race. Then very slowly, she took Jay’s hand, pressed it to her own chest and then released her grip. Right after she took the cloak off her shoulders and wrapped it around Jay, hiding the stained chemise underneath it. Immediately Jay felt the warmth passing from the fabric, warmed from the Kou’s body, to her back and shoulders.
‘Alright, enough of this mushy reunion crap. How about we get the fuck out of here? Pira! Where’s the way out?’
The female Kou slowly looked at Lethe then around the roof, her expression unchanged.
‘Her name is Pira?’ asked Jay, wondering if the evident lack speech didn’t leave Kou with some secret way of communicating, bared to everybody else.
Lethe shrugged.
‘Well you got to call the dog something, yeah? Can’t call her ‘woman’ all the time. Name as good as any.’
In the meantime Pira shuffled away from Jay. Slowly and deliberately she poked around the roof tiles, looking for something among the grates and vents. Sometimes she would stop and fiddle with a loose tile or a lock on a grate other times she would stop and sniff around a chimney. Lethe grunted with impatience but kept silent.
‘What is she looking for?’ Jay watched Pira not really understanding what she’s looking for.
‘Eh, Kou are like rats and like the fucking vermin can get into anything. And it turns out that this entire building was rebuilt couple of times too. It’s like a cheese with too many holes and these guys seem to know them all. Just watch.’
Finally Pira stopped at a single spot. She dug her thick fingers under the tiles and pulled. Something gave way with a screech. Pira lifted it overhead and Jay could now see that it was a piece of flat metal, rusted through. There was a narrow hole underneath.
‘That’s our cue. Let’s go.’
Jay tried to put herself on her feet, but was only partially successful. She stumbled and would have fallen if Lethe wasn’t there to prop her up. He slung her arm around his shoulders and half-walked, half-dragged her along the roof to the opening. It was dark inside. It stank of standing water and garbage but if it was a way to freedom Jay was not about to complain. It was narrow too. She could barely squeeze her shoulders past the iron casing. She had to push herself to go down even that there was no footholds of any kind, each move causing more pain to flow through her mistreated body. Finally it ended and Jay was now standing in a conduit although ‘standing’ would be an overstatement. She was more or less squeezed into one.
Lethe descended from above, cramming himself next to Jay.
‘Pira?’ he called.
A touch of a warm hand came from the darkness ahead, startling Jay. The fingers grabbed Jay’s cloak, pulling her forward. There was more squeezing through tight places, twisting tunnels only fit for rats and whatever else could reign into those spaces that were filled with slimy water and noxious fumes. But at the very last they emerged, crawling through a sub-basement window that once was barred but the sharp tooth of time eroded the iron bars into nothing.
Jay was barely conscious by then, defeated by tiredness and pain. She barely noticed when Pira gave them both a last look and then disappeared into the crevices of the buildings. Jay didn’t even manage to thank the Kou woman before she was gone.
Jay remembered little from the rest of the journey, just pain and darkness, the stench of stale air, the coldness of stone and metal, the constant strain as she struggled to put one foot ahead of the other. She was pushed. She was pulled. She was dragged and carried for what it seemed like forever, forever that was lost to her mind.
