"Until it dies, I suppose," Coryla said, "or we leave its world."
She shrugged. "Or until it catches us and you die, of course."
"Of course," Corylus said. By squinting when he looked back along their course, he could see the eel as a long shadow rippling in the water.
The sun was past zenith. It would go below the horizon in five or six hours.
For now, the ship flew on.
Water trickled down a back corner of Hedia's cell. It wasn't because the walls sweated like those of the cells under the Circus during the winter: this stream was guided by a channel. When it reached the floor, it ran down a channel cast into a tile with a beveled hole in the middle.
A greater flow echoed hollowly in the sewer beneath the cells. Though the floor was probably nearly transparent like the rest of the building, there wasn't enough light below for Hedia to see through it.
She walked to the grating on the corridor side. Two Servitors stood against the far wall, watching her. Each held an orichalc spear; a dagger of the same gleaming metal was thrust beneath a sash of coarse fabric.
"I need food!" she said, not shouting but in a commanding voice. The glass men didn't move any more than she expected them to.
She rattled the grill. It was steel, or at any rate some gray metal. The hinge pins were discolored, but there was no rust despite the damp conditions. The bars were too thick for her to cut through in less than a month even if she'd had a saw.
Which she certainly did not. There was nothing with her in the cell except the garment which the Council of Minoi had given her after their decision. She had taken it off and used the wetted cloth to rub herself clean as soon as she had taken stock of the situation. She didn't need clothing, and she would feel much better to be rid of the filth and dried blood in which she was covered.
"Your masters don't want me to starve to death!" Hedia said. "If you don't bring me food, that's what will happen. What will they do to you then?"
The Servitors were as still as statues. She wasn't sure that they could understand speech anyway-or even hear.
A steel grating of about the size of the cell's floor covered a section of the corridor roof. It stood out as ridged black against the faint blue glow of the crystal in the walls, floors, and the rest of the ceiling. Air rose through it with a low-pitched whistle, drawing cooler air along the corridor.
A human servant shuffled down the corridor, carrying a nearly empty sack made from rope netting. He was a stooped old man with his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him.
"Good sir!" Hedia called, pressing herself against the bars. "Come here! I will make it worth your while."
He ignored her as completely as the Servitors had done. Stopping, he rummaged in his bag and brought out a lump the size of two clenched fists. He offered it to a Servitor, who took it in his glass hand.
The human continued onward without ever having looked toward Hedia. The Servitor crossed the corridor and thrust the doughlike lump through the bars. They were set closely, but Hedia could have reached between them.
She didn't bother, since she knew from experience that she couldn't have overpowered a glass man. Even if she had, it wouldn't get her out of this cell.
She grinned. It would be satisfying, though. Throttling anything would feel good right at the moment.
Hedia bit into the lump as she walked to the back of her cell. It reminded her of overcooked octopus: bland, resilient, and tough. She chewed mechanically, wondering what it had been originally.
The cooks of noble households in Carce prided themselves on disguising the ingredients of their dishes, fashioning "roast boar" from mackerel and "rack of lamb" from peacocks' tongues. She doubted whether even the most experienced of them could create something quite so namelessly nasty as this, however.
Because she didn't have a cup, she held her lips to the groove in the wall and sucked the trickle which followed it. It was good water, at least.
She resumed eating. The situation was unpleasant, but the fact that she didn't like the food wasn't close to the top of the list of things she didn't like. If the guards had been human, she might have complained; though without expecting anything to change. Railing at the Servitors was as pointless as screaming at her bronze mirror.
A clang like a cartload of armor overturning sounded in the corridor. Holding the lump of food in one hand and her garment in the other, Hedia walked in a dignified fashion to the grilled doorway. Walking was about the only dignified thing she could do under the circumstances, and she didn't imagine that her moving faster would change anything that was going on outside her cell.
The Servitors had leaped into action. They stood beneath the grate in the corridor ceiling, pointing their spears toward the dark bulk that had crashed down hard enough to dimple it. Had a block fallen from the top of the airshaft?
Fingers from above thrust into the grating. It rocked, then lifted slightly. Hedia touched her own bars. If the grating was the same metal, it had to weigh five or six times as much as she did.
A guard thrust upward, nicking the steel. His orichalc point missed the gripping fingers.
The square grate lifted a hand's breadth higher, then shot down into the corridor. One guard dodged in time, but it struck the other squarely and slammed him back against Hedia's cell. His spear flipped into the air like a spun coin, bounced from the corridor ceiling, and landed ringing on the floor. The grating toppled to lie on the point and half the shaft.
Lann hung within the air shaft, his broad palms pressed against opposite walls. He had lifted-and thrown-the grate with his feet. Weight alone held it on studs cast into the sides of the bottom course of crystal blocks.
The ape's tattooed human face scanned the situation below; then he leaped onto the standing guard, catching his spear-shaft in his toes. They hit the floor together with Lann on the bottom.
Hedia pushed the rolled-up garment between the bars with her right hand and caught the end with the other hand, lacing it back through the next opening to the left. The guard had fallen with his back against the cell. He started to get up.
Hedia looped the garment around his glass neck and crossed the portions on her side around one another. She didn't have time to knot the ends, but even so the fabric took the strain instead of her hands and arms. The Servitor half-rose, then recoiled into the bars with a clang almost as loud as that of the grating hitting the floor.
Lann used his hands and feet together to fling the other Servitor against the wall of the corridor. The glass head shattered to dust; the Servitor's torso and limbs crumbled into gravel-sized chunks a moment later.
The remaining guard jerked forward again. The steel bar flexed noticeably outward, but to Hedia's amazement the makeshift noose didn't break: the fabric had made her itch, but it was clearly stronger even than silk.
The Servitor turned and reached through the bars. Hedia jumped back, avoiding a grip that she knew could squeeze her bones to powder. The glass hands pulled the loop open, now that she was no longer able to keep the ends tight.
Lann grabbed the Servitor by the ankles. The glass man reached for Lann's wrists instead of holding onto the bars. Lann swung him sideways like a huge club. His head hit the opposite wall and powdered like that of his fellow guard.
Hedia stared at the ape-man, scarcely able to believe what she had just seen happen. How strong are you? she thought. But unless he could tear apart steel bars as thick as her two thumbs together, killing the guards wouldn't change her situation.
Lann gripped the spear of the guard he had just killed and jerked it from under the grate. He thrust the point into the door's lower hinge. Gripping the shaft in his hands and the bars with his toes, he pulled. The slender orichalc blade didn't bend, but the hinge pin snapped and the lower corner of the door twisted noticeably inward.