The other girl came up the stairs with a heavily laden tray that gave out remarkably enticing smells. A fresh crusty loaf, still hot from the oven, one probably meant for the workers’ breakfast. A pot of jam, two bowls of savory soup thick with cillix and chunks of oadat. A pot of spiced cha filled the room with its fragrance. Tuli sniffed and was willing to forgive the girls all their unfortunate dramatizing and nosiness. She looked about for Ildas. He was curled into a ball, sulking in one of the corners of the fireplace. She left him there and joined Rane at the table. The girls finally left them alone.
Eyes warily on that door, Tuli swallowed a mouthful of soup, whispered, “Do you know them?”
“Yes.” More loudly, “Looks like the weather’s breaking.”
The door was eased open and a girl was back with a crock of hot water. She smiled shyly, put it down and scurried out.
“Makes riding a bit sticky,” Tuli said. She spooned up more soup, glared at the door. “Don’t like them popping in and out like that,” she whispered. “Ildas is upset a lot. You sure you know them?” She nodded at the door, took a hefty gulp of the cha.
“Knew their father better.” Rane wrinkled her nose at Tuli, shook her head. “We’ll know better in the morning,” she said more loudly.
“If it’s snowing, we’d better find a place to hole up.” Lowering her voice, Tuli went on, “Well, where is he?”
“Visiting a neighbor, his daughters said.”
All through the meal one or the other of the girls was bringing something or popping her head in to see if they wanted anything. After the first whispered exchanges Rane and Tuli kept to safe subjects like speculations about when the snow would start. The food was good, the cha was hot and strong, the heat in the room enough to tranquilize an angry sicamar. By the time she emptied her cup for the last time Tuli could hardly keep her eyes open. She knew she should get out of the chair and go lie down on the pallet but she didn’t feel like moving. She didn’t even know if she could move; the longer she sat, the more pervasive her lassitude grew.
A harsh croak, a rattle of dishes, a table leg jolting against hers. She found enough energy to turn her head.
Rane was struggling to get onto her feet, the tendons in her neck standing out like cables. Her pale blue eyes were white-ringed,, her lip bleeding where she’d bitten it. She shoved clumsily at the table, pushing it over with a rebounding crash that nonetheless sounded muted and distant to Tuli. Rane managed to stagger a few steps, then her legs collapsed under her. She struggled to crawl through the mess of broken china and food toward the door. Tuli watched, vaguely puzzled, then the meaning of it seeped through the fog in her head. Drugged. They’d been drugged. This was a trap. That was what Ildas had been yammering about outside. Fools to come into this, fools to eat the food, drink that cha, must have been in the cha, the spicing would cover whatever else had been added. She tried pushing up, fell out of the chair, made a few tentative movements of her arms and legs to crawl after Rane, but before she could get anywhere or concentrate her forces, she plunged deep into a warm fuzzy blackness.
Tuli wakes alone in a small and noisome room. There is a patch of half-dried vomit in one corner, the stones are slimy with stale urine and other liquids, beetles skitter about on floor and walls, whirr into flight whenever she moves, one is crawling on her leg. She is naked and cold, lying on a splintery wooden bench scarcely wider than she is. Her head throbs. There is blood on her thighs. Along with everything else, her period has come down. She feels bloated and miserable. Usually she doesn’t even notice it except for the rags she uses to catch the blood and has to wash out herself, maybe the drug was affecting that too. She wants to vomit but won’t let herself, vaguely aware that the food she’d eaten will eventually give her strength, and she knows she’s going to need strength in the days to come. She is no longer just a rebellious child to these folk. Not like before. She is Tesc’s daughter, though she can hope they don’t know that. At least they shouldn’t know that. But there is Rane, she is Rane’s companion. When she thinks about Rane, bile floods her mouth. She swallows and swallows but it does no good, she spits it out onto the floor and forces herself to lie still, her knees drawn up to comfort her stomach. Ildas nestles against her; his warmth helps. Rane. Maybe she’s already dead. She might have made them kill her.
Tuli dozes awhile, wakes with a worse headache, forces herself to think. Got to get out of here. Get Rane out if she’s still alive, but get out anyway whatever has happened to Rane. She’s counting on me to get word back to the Biserica about how things are on the Plain. I should have listened more. Maiden bless, why didn’t I listen? Never mind that, Tuli, think: How do you get out of here? How do you survive without telling them anything until you can get out of here? After a moment’s blankness, she adds grimly, how do I kill myself if I can’t get out?
She forces herself to sit up, crosses her legs so she doesn’t have to put her feet down on the filthy floor. She is cold enough to shiver now and then. Again Ildas helps, warming away the chill of the stone. The shutters on the single small window are winter-sealed; the air is stuffy and stinking but the icy winds are kept out and the sense of smell tires rapidly so the stench is bearable. She keeps her eyes traveling about the room, deeply uncomfortable with her nudity, growing more stubbornly angry as the morning drags past. No one comes. There is no water. No food. Though she doesn’t know if she could force anything down in that noisome filth. Ildas paces the walls then comes and curls up in her lap.
Early in the afternoon they come for her.
The air in the dim round room is heavy with the smoke of the drugged incense, the sweet familiar smell she remembers from the night she and Teras sneaked round the old Granary and heard Nilis betraying their father. It makes her wary. She tries to ignore the way her nakedness makes her feel, the helplessness, the vulnerability, the absurd urge to chatter about anything, everything, so that they will look at her face and not at her body, those men staring at her, their eyes, those leering, ugly eyes. Then Ildas curls about her shoulders, a circle of warmth and comfort and she is able to relax a little, to let the heat of her anger burn away the worst of the shame and wretchedness. She lifts her head, meets the Agli’s eyes, sees the speculation in them and knows she’s made a mistake. She should have come in sobbing hysterically, flinging herself about like the child she wants to seem. Maybe rage will do instead. She crosses her arm over her too-tender breasts and glares at the Agli, at the acolytes waiting with him, snatches her arm from the guard’s hand, letting rage take possession of her, the old rage that carried her out of herself-funny how she couldn’t invoke it now when she needed it yet once it came so easily she frightened herself. Faking that rage and calling on all the arrogance she hadn’t known she possessed, the fire of the fireborn running through her, energizing her, she curses the two acolytes and the Agli, curses the guards silent behind her, demands to be given her clothes (lets her voice break here, only half-pretense). And as they watch, doing nothing, the rage turns real. Before they can stop her, she flies at the Agli, fingers clawed, feels a strong satisfaction when she feels his skin tearing under her nails, sees the lines of blood blooming on his skin. Caught by surprise, the guards and the acolytes take a second to pull her off the Agli. She will pay for this, she knows, even through the red haze of rage and fierce joy, the payment will be high, but it is a distraction and will put off her questioning. She doesn’t exactly think this out, it leaps whole into her head. She struggles with the guards, kicking, scratching, trying to bite until one of them loses his temper and uses his fist on her.