They had all night to absorb the news, and some of the day, it would seem. Cultists didn’t wake up at farmer hours. Men in mail had tramped back into the tents long after last light and then just stayed there. No one came by to check on them, and as the hours passed, they got bolder. Earnest threw himself bodily into the door after three hours without hearing or seeing anyone. Not that it did any good; the square-sectioned bars simply bruised him deeply.

  Circe offered to heal it immediately, but Effluvia said that they would probably need her in top healing form sooner than later. Earnest had backed her up, saying, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just a whiner.” But as the hours passed, Circe noted that she’d already be completely recovered from healing him if she had just gone on and done it. Effluvia admitted she didn’t like seeing him hugging his hurt shoulder anyway. Dalliance was disappointed to find out that Charity didn’t know any sort of prayer for freedom or lock-breaking, but then, he wasn’t really surprised. Not very many priests worked as locksmiths, after all.

  And so, time passed. When Dalliance had read about this sort of thing in chapbooks, he’d expected torture would be the main problem. But if torture was in the offing, no one had mentioned it yet. The problem was simply five people in a six-by-ten-foot room, with one corner already devoted to a great spreading morass and puddle of excrement, both yesteryear's and otherwise. That wasn’t a lot of room for five people. In fact, as their legs got shaky after standing in place for the first couple of hours, they resignedly discovered there simply wasn’t much room for five people at all.

  There was almost room for three people to lie down if everyone else stood in the "piss corner," but the news got worse. While the rest of the floor was not an ocean of excrement, that didn’t mean it was clean. The old, rotting straw could have had anything spilled on it. Earnest's possibly-joking suggestion was that it was vomit. Dalliance's personal suspicion was that it was blood. And, of course, nature called. Tempers flared, people huddled, and time passed.

  “I’m going out the ceiling,” Dalliance said finally.

  He had worked out how it might be done. If two pairs of people each took one of his shoes in hand and lifted, he might be high enough to grasp the lip of the hole in the roof. And then… well, that had been the problem. He couldn’t think of anything to do after that. It would just be, “Hello, let me out, I’ll run away.” Not that he had any opposition to the idea, but it didn’t seem likely to be a very popular request.

  But then, sometime around hour four, while carefully not looking as the girls did their business, Earnest spotted a keyring hanging on a peg just outside their cell.

  “Okay,” Dalliance said, the plan forming. “So I get out, I get the keys, then I unlock the door.”

  “And then we run away through the tents filled with people in armor?” It was a terrible plan. Earnest thought so too.

  “I’ll fry them with lightning,” Effluvia said, which would have been much more convincing if Dalliance hadn’t seen just how ineffective her lightning was against a metal shield. She could probably fry the villagers with lightning, he thought, as long as nobody held up a pitchfork or wore armor. No, he was being unfair.

  “It isn’t a terrible plan, and it has a possibility of working, right?” said Earnest. “So you do that. And what’s to stop them from stabbing our Earnest full of holes while you’re about it?” This was not a popular complaint.

  In the end, they had hoisted Dalliance up and dropped him, and then tried again, and then they waited in the now-dark for three more hours.

  The sun’s rays found them in an uneasy pile, sweat-slicked skin and tousled hair sticking to one another. The five had decided to sit as far from the piss corner as possible, no one wanting to lie down at all. Circe’s hair had even worked its way around one of Dalliance’s buttons, while Charity’s shoulder had been keeping him awake for an indeterminate period of time that felt like an eternity.

  The first words spoken that morning were only heard by Dalliance.

  “This just don’t sit well, Marge,” said a male voice. “They’re just kids. Look at ‘em, all sleeping together like a pile of puppies. I remember when mine were that age. Just back from the hunts, all long-legged and stubbly like a colt fresh off the straw. Not a thought between their ears, but that they want to be called ‘Master’ and ‘Miss’ on account of being all grown up now, by reason of making the Tier-Up.”

  “Sounds like halcyon days,” said the other voice, Marge, presumably. Dalliance couldn’t guess what it was short for. “But you know the risks as well as I do. Best steel your stomach now.”

  “She tells me now,” the man said crossly. “And it was a good breakfast.”

  Dalliance didn’t like the sound of that. Moving as delicately as he could manage, he worked a toe of his thin leather sandal beneath his friend’s shirt . . . and kicked Earnest viciously in the ribs.

  Earnest woke up instantly, his eyes opening wide in a look of injured innocence toward Dalliance's own, but a quick sideways jerk of the head brought him up to speed, and he closed his eyes again. Dalliance felt Charity’s arm behind his back tap him twice with a finger. She was awake.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  A key rattled in the door, and the chain came undone. Dalliance cast [Prediction].

  Strangely, the man didn't seem to have any overtly hostile intentions, at least not in the short term covered by Dalliance's skill. The same could not be said for Earnest, who, after staggering to his feet, would attempt the same headlong tackle he’d used on the door earlier. It would have precisely the same result and be followed by a downward stroke from the medium-bladed imperial sword the woman was carrying, the sort he thought was called a spatha: like a gladius, but stretched to arm's length. The blade would enter just above Earnest's collarbone and drive deeply, and Earnest would presumably die.

  Effluvia would cast a spell as soon as the blade was drawn, which would arc uselessly and ground on the iron bars of the door, doing no one any good. Sometimes she would hit Charity as Charity dove to protect Earnest. Sometimes she wouldn't, and instead, Charity would touch the bars before being suffused with voltaic energy. In any case, Effluvia could not be allowed to cast, and Earnest could not be allowed to attack.

  Circe, at least, would stay back like a good healer ought to. But seeing her fiddling with her ring and following a hunch, Dalliance discovered that she planned to use the same enchantment as she had on the snake, which, when she considered using it on the woman, was extremely effective. Unfortunately, if she considered using it after the attack on Earnest, she would always target the man instead, to little effect. The man, Dalliance concluded, must be similar to his Da: high Grit, probably high Might.

  When the man finally decided to make a move, five minutes in the future, Dalliance found out why he had said what he did about needing a stout stomach. He simply clutched, grabbed, and released. Squashed hands, splintered ribs, and crushed skulls. His friends would be unrecognizable gore-messes, and then it would be the two of them, Circe and Dalliance, going to whatever fated end, stepping over the corpses of his friends.

  That won’t do.

  “Rise and shine, Duckies!” said the man in a good-natured bellow, shoving the door wide. The corner of the door caught Effie’s outstretched foot, knocking her foot and leg to the side, sprawling her onto her side in the muck. No wonder all of her lightning came up at an angle.

  Earnest started to stagger to his feet.

  Shit.

  Dalliance hooked both feet over his friend’s ankle, then shook his head at the silent accusation that followed.

  Earnest stood there, visibly uncertain, as the woman with the sword came up behind her friend. His stance relaxed.

  He figured it out for himself. Finally, some good news.

  “We’ll come quietly,” Dalliance said. Effluvia looked at him sharply, as well she should—the commons do not speak for the gentry. Nevertheless, she bore up well under the circumstances, standing with a sharp disdain for the offered hand from the jailor, cleaning her skirts with a crisp, snapping pair of swats. Charity disentangled herself from Dalliance’s arm with downcast eyes, for all that it wasn’t either of their fault—Earnest had been leaning on her shoulder.

  “Right you are, that’s the best news I’ve had all morning,” said the man. He had eggs in his beard, Dalliance saw, and a large sack slung over one shoulder. He recognized the lines of Charity's crossbow through the thin material.

  Circe pulled on his elbow to stand up, with both hands, and as he bent, said “I’ve got a plan,” in a soft voice that probably hadn’t carried to anyone.

  Yes, he thought with annoyance. I noticed.

  “Can't do anything while she's got that sword, someone'll get killed,” he murmured back, mostly mouthing the words as he performatively helped her up and brushed the rotted straw off her lower arms. The familiarity felt forced, even after the night they’d had, and his shoulders were stiff, but she needed to hear it.

  She smiled at him with a pretty wink, and he felt a sudden headache bloom into existence as his stress redoubled, and the prediction faded. Was that a yes? Or . . . ?

  A hand on his shoulder. It felt remarkably like Da’s. “Let’s go, lad.”

  And they were among the tents, which were full of sleepy men with their armor laid out near them, or cooking sausages, and washing their hair, and . . . the girls looked away sharply from one of the rough-looking men, who had the grace to look deeply embarrassed himself and sidle behind a tent from the group. “Sorry about that,” said the man leading them. The woman behind them, with the sword, had no such grace about her.

  He attempted to use [Prediction] twice more, with no results but the feeling of his head being squeezed. He wasn’t out of . . . yes, he was, he hadn’t slept the previous night, he realized. Shit. Not out-out, but running on his last few points.

  They continued past the tents, turned up toward the chapel, and that’s when Effluvia lost patience with Dalliance’s ploy. “Into the woods! NOW!” she hissed, throwing a coruscating shower of sparks and hissing, snapping voltaic magics into the form of the lead guard, who locked up and fell over, thrashing. She didn’t let up, tugging the bag out from under his twitching form.

  Shouts of alarm rang out from the camp, and the woman behind them . . . was folded over, backwards, and Circe was just finishing drawing the woman’s sword, passing it to Dalliance like he knew what to do with a sword.

  “Go go go GO!” hissed Effie, and as one, the group scattered towards the bridge, over the water, into the woods, towards home.

  And rapid footprints followed them.