King of Thorns

I had to get out. And that’s the trouble with dungeon cells. Somebody took trouble to make sure you’re not going anywhere, and no amount of wanting will change that.

I stood and went to the door. With Lord Jost and his lantern gone there was almost no light, but something filtered down, perhaps a whisper of the sun dazzling in the courtyards above if day had swung around, perhaps an echo of torchlight farther down the corridors they’d dragged me along. In any event it proved enough for night-tutored eyes to find edges and the occasional detail. I examined the little window in the door. I could fit an arm through it if it weren’t for the bars. The wood was three fingers thick, hardwood. It would take a week of whittling with my dagger to make much of a hole.

Something scurried behind me. A rat. I can tell rat noises in the dark. I threw my dagger. It used to be a game amongst the Brothers. Nail a rat in the dark. Grumlow proved a master of that particular game. We would often wake to find a rat skewered to the sod by one of his blades. Sometimes uncomfortably close to my head.

“Got you.”

Being as there was no morning to wait for, I hunted my victim down by hand and retrieved my knife.

I went back to the window and its bars. I pushed against them, trying to imagine how they would be fixed to the wood. There was no give in them. It’s funny how often our lives shrink down to a single obdurate piece of metal. A knife edge, a manacle, a nail. Gorgoth might have reached out and twisted those bars off in that blunt hand of his. Not me. I pulled and pushed until my hand bled. Nothing.

I sat back down. I thought, thought, and then thought some more. In the end I went to the window and started hollering for them to let me out.

It took a while. Long enough for my throat to grow raw and my voice to crack, but in the end a glow approached. The swinging glow of a lantern.

“You get one chance to shut your mouth, boy. After that—”

“You’re going to shut it for me?” I asked, pressed close to the door.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to open the door. I heard about you and Master Shimon. I wouldn’t open that door for a gold coin. No. You shut your mouth or you’ll discover you’ve taken your last drink of water on God’s earth.”

“Hey, don’t be like that. I’m sorry.” I reached up and dropped my watch so that it fell into the basket made by the window cage. “Look, take this, it’s worth a hundred coins. Just bring me something good to eat would you?”

I crouched low. Listening. Listening.

The gaoler stepped in to take the bait and bang, I slid my arm out through the feeding slot at the base of the door, skinning my elbow, and caught him behind his ankle. A sharp yank and he fell. I took a firmer grip hauling his foot toward the slot, but he didn’t struggle.

“Damn.”

The bastard had hit his head and knocked himself senseless. I’d been planning to reduce the number of his toes with my knife until he offered me his key. It’s hard to intimidate an unconscious man.

I picked up my dead rat. Still warm.

There are quite a few uses for a dead rat. I’ll go into them at another time. The use I had in mind proved difficult. It turned out to be harder to make a dead rat scurry again than it did to set Brother Row diving in the mud. It’s hard to understand a rat, to wear its skin. I almost gave up but when I focused on hunger, it twitched in my hands. It turns out that being dead doesn’t stop a rat thinking about its next meal. Before too long I had the creature marching to my tune, and I pushed it out through the food slot.

In the light of the gaoler’s lantern, which helpfully he had hung on a hook before reaching for my watch, I sent the rat out searching.

I sat in the small blob of rat brain telling it to gnaw on the thong holding the ring of keys to the gaoler’s belt. When the key ring came loose I had the rat drag it to me. In a truly secure cell you wouldn’t be able to unlock from the inside, but all systems have their flaws. I let the rat die again and stepped out into the corridor, a free man after my long hours of incarceration!

My stomach clenched but it didn’t feel as if I was dying; a touch lightheaded, a touch unclean, but necromancy will do some of that for you in any case. If I had been poisoned then whoever did it had done a bad job.