Someone I could not see made a sound of panic. I heard a scuff. Then, from nowhere, I saw the flash of a disembodied leg. Someone I could not see clearly strove to climb the smooth bars of the cell opposite Prilkop’s. He was a rippling shape of nothing, as when one looks through the rising heat of a fire. He went up swiftly, and I had a glimpse of his bare feet curling as if to grip the bars. An edge of a butterfly cloak flared and rolled for an instant.
‘There!’ a man’s voice shouted harshly, and the guards came at a run down the corridors. I stepped back for I heard the harsh clang of short staffs hitting the bars of the cells as they came. I heard exclamations from the other prisoners and then, as the guards reached my cell, the terrible thud of a stick on flesh and a sharp grunt of pain. Wolf Father snarled frenziedly. My leaping heart felt as if the wolf inside me were trying to batter his way out.
‘He’s here, he’s down!’ a guard shouted. For a moment, I saw a man on the floor outside my cell. Then he coiled his body and flipped up onto his feet. With the heel of his hand, he hit one guard on the jaw, clanging the man’s head against cell bars. Beloved spun, cloak swirling, and I saw only parts of him. An armless hand seized the other guard’s staff, and jammed it sharply up under the man’s jaw and he fell back with a gurgling cry.
If he’d had only two opponents, I think he would have escaped. But the guard behind him swung his short staff savagely. It connected, and Beloved fell. He rolled to his belly, to his knees, the cloak camouflaging him again. But they knew where he was. Swift blows rained down on someone I could not see as Capra shouted, ‘Enough! Enough! Do not kill him. I have questions for him! Many questions.’
I had retreated to the back wall of my cage. I could not get my breath. Capra came pushing through the guards who now stood like confused and excited hounds whipped back from a kill. She looked at the floor, nudged something with her foot. Then she raised her gaze to sweep from me to Prilkop’s cell. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed merrily. ‘What is this I see on the floor? A butterfly’s wing? There’s a dream I’ve read and even dreamed myself. Come, Prilkop. See your dreams fulfilled.’
She called to him but I was the one who flew across my cell to stare down in horror as she stooped and lifted the edge of what looked like a butterfly’s wing. As she peeled it back, it was my dream fulfilled. A pale man lay there. He was barefoot and dressed all in black beneath the cloak. A ring of keys had fallen from his hand. Blood was running from a split on his brow and from his nose. His eyes were half closed. He was motionless. Prilkop groaned deeply in despair. I had no breath to make any sound.
She stooped beside him and then looked up toward Prilkop’s cell. Her old woman’s voice had a musical lilt as she said, ‘I still dream best and truest of all. Here he is. The butterfly-man, the trapper trapped! Oh, come, do not hide how impressed you are!’ She shook her head coquettishly and added with false sadness, ‘Though I am grieved that you still have not learned who to be friends with. This was a bad decision, Prilkop. And I fear you must be taught, yet again, that it is painful to defy me.’
A man has two hands. One of the butterfly-man’s hands was outflung on the floor, the keys just fallen at his fingertips. It was the other hand, the one still covered by the cloak that darted into sight. I thought he had struck her with his clenched fist until he pulled back the bloodied knife and drove it again into her belly. Capra didn’t scream. She made a short sound of disbelief and then her guards moved in, kicking and clubbing until Beloved lay still and bloodied on the floor outside my cage.
I covered my ears, but that did not stop Wolf Father’s long howl from deafening me to all else.
The guards had dragged Capra back. She sat on the floor, both hands clutching her belly. Her blue robe was dark with blood, and scarlet trickled out between her fingers. ‘Idiots!’ She tried to shout but had no breath for it. ‘Carry me to the healers! Now! And take Beloved and Prilkop to the lower dungeons and throw them in. Put Beloved in Dwalia’s old cell! I will see to him myself! Ah!’ The last was a cry of pain as two of her guards attempted to obey her.
‘We will need the keys for the Lock of Four,’ one of the guards pointed out.
‘Use those on the floor.’
One of the guards stooped and picked them up. ‘Wrong keys,’ he said.
Capra said nothing. I think she had fainted. One of her guards spoke. ‘Jessim, go ask Fellowdy what we should do. Worum and I will take Capra to the healer. The rest of you, take the intruder to the lowest level. Toss him in and lock him up well. No more mistakes today.’ As they lifted Capra, the man added gloomily, ‘We shall all wear stripes for this!’
Neither Prilkop nor I spoke as they moved away. They dragged Beloved with them, his head lolling and bumping on the floor as he went. I heard the door slam and then someone said, ‘The gaoler’s dead. This fellow must have killed her for the keys. Bring the body.’
For a time longer, the quiet held, and then, like startled birds, the other prisoners began to whisper-shriek to one another, speculating, demanding answers, and weeping aloud.
‘Prilkop?’ I asked questioningly. ‘Do you know what will happen now? Do you have any dreams of this time?’
‘I do not.’
In my softest whisper, I said only for him, ‘I have keys. We could flee.’
‘There is no place to flee to, little one. They will have closed the doors and the gates.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘If I leave here again, it will be when my body flows out of the waste tank with the waste of the castle. The fishes will eat my flesh and my bones will turn into sand.’
‘Did you dream that?’ I asked in horror.
‘Some knowledge comes not from dreams but from life. There is only one exit from Clerres that is not guarded both day and night, and that is the one the dead take. Dwalia and I will share the same resting place, in an eel’s belly.’ He gulped. ‘I wish my journey there would be a short one, but I know it will not.’
He was doing a terrible kind of weeping. Afraid weeping. It made me cry, too.
‘Bee! Bee, bee, bee!’
Someone was shouting my name in a hoarse and scary voice.
‘What is that?’ Prilkop asked, startled out of his terror.
‘I don’t know. Ssh!’ Whoever it was, I did not want them to find me.