Lemle couldn’t sleep, but that was not unusual. The jail cells were so crowded with men caught up in the Marauders’ dragnets that no one could find a place to stretch out, and the air hung fetid with waste and body odors.
Noises reverberated against the stone walls. The prisoners would cough, mutter, or moan, while the guards would laugh amongst themselves or purposefully make a clatter to destroy desperate dreams of open air and freedom. Lemle found that he missed the quiet woodland sounds of crickets and birdsong that had surrounded Rooks’s shack as much as he missed the sunlight that he used to take for granted.
As near as Lemle could count, he had been held in captivity for two moons. When Rooks had died last winter and Stahlia and Percie had returned from their safe—if stilted—refuge in Naven Manor for the funeral, Lemle had told Percia he wanted to move to Cascada and pursue his dream of becoming an engraver. Stahlia had loaned him the money for his voyage, and Lordling Marcot had kindly arranged a position for him at the Type and Ink Press in a commercial neighborhood of Cascada.
Lem recalled how excited he had been by his job and the sights and crowds of the capital city. He’d felt as if a new world had opened to him and he was finally about to live on his own terms. He’d gazed at the men on the streets and wondered if an unrecognized future love was right that moment passing by.
He’d been such a naive fool.
Lemle had only been working at the press for a fortnight when the shop was raided by guards in red sashes. They had grabbed the owner and thrust a handful of leaflets in his face.
“Did you print this? Did your shop print this?” their leader demanded.
Lemle’s new master had denied it ever more vehemently during the repeated questioning, but the soldiers didn’t believe him. Picking up one of the leaflets from the ground, which was a cartoon of Lord Matwyck as a bloated pig, Lemle didn’t believe him either, because he recognized the paper stock the Type and Ink used, and the page had a small tear at the corner characteristic of one of their hand presses.
The men started beating the owner. They held back Lemle and the three other apprentices either with rough handholds or pointed weapons. Then the brutes stuffed his master’s mouth with leaflets and held his nose while he choked, thrashing on the floor, clawing on their hands, and his face took on a purplish color.
After this display of sadism the guards gathered up the four stunned workers and carted them off to jail.
“I’ve only been here a fortnight!” Lemle protested. “I had nothing to do with this leaflet!”
“Shut up,” said a guard, and he punched Lem in the stomach for emphasis.
When they reached the holding cells on the edge of Cascada, Lemle tried again, shouting to the jailers, “Just let me send a message. I’m sure my patron will want you to release me.”
A uniformed man delivered a volley of blows to his belly and finished him off with a kick to his privates. Lemle shuddered, remembering the agony.
When Lemle came out of his shattering pain on the cell floor, a group of wiser prisoners set him straight.
“Look, boy, it don’t matter if you are guilty or innocent. Most of us are innocent, or at least innocent of what they say we done.”
“Look, boy, no friend nor family nor patron can help you here. No one can get word to wives or fathers. Once Matwyck’s Marauders have you, your only choices are imprisonment or death. If you wise up, you might yet live awhile.”
Death might come any number of ways, Lemle learned, as he wised up over the next weeks. Guards randomly selected men for the public executions that were held to frighten the populace. Or if you caused him too much aggravation a jailer might just bash in your head. Or a desperate fellow prisoner might strangle you for your rations. You could also die of the flux or any one of a score of other illnesses.
Anonymity and mistrust added to the prisoners’ miseries. Lemle didn’t know whether the fellow printers he’d been arrested with were already dead or whether they, like him, had just been shifted to another holding place. The population of the cells shuffled almost daily with new prisoners coming in and others being taken away. Lem shrank from trying to form a bond with another prisoner, because the pal you made today might be gone tomorrow, or might sell you out to the guards for extra rations.
Tonight Lemle gave up trying to sleep and sat up. The old man sitting on the bench in the corner nodded at him. Lemle had noticed the elderly prisoner when he’d been brought to this cell a couple of weeks ago. The man’s lank hair floated all the way down his back, indicating he’d been in captivity a long time. He looked frail, but the jailers didn’t mistreat him; in fact, Lemle observed that when passing out food they often gave him a large portion and served him first.
Smiling encouragement, the old man patted the bench next to him and beckoned Lemle. Lemle was so disconsolate that he snatched at any offer of companionship, so he threaded his way over his other dozing cellmates, trying very hard not to step on anyone, getting cursed at when he didn’t succeed.
The ancient prisoner slid over to make room for Lemle on the bench.
“You’re not from Cascada, are you?” he whispered.
“No, I just came here recently, from Androvale,” answered Lemle.
“Androvale. Major city, Gulltown. Principle crops: apples and hardwoods,” muttered the old man.
“That’s right,” said Lemle. “Have you ever been there?”
“Been there? No. But I could tell you were country-bred by how much you tossed about. Rural folks have a hard time adjusting.”
“Where are you from?”
“I believe this is my nineteenth jail,” his seatmate answered, ignoring his life beforehand.
“Nineteenth! How do you stand it? How long have you been captive? How do you keep from going mad?” Lemle kept his voice low and cast his eye on men lying nearby; he really didn’t want to disturb anyone from their escape in sleep.
“How do I stand it? The trick is to find little boons. For instance, this place is better than the one that had mold and much better than solitary confinement. I get to talk to people here, such as a smart young man like you.”
“Focusing on tiny benefits has kept you going?”
“I refuse to go mad, and I refuse to die. I just won’t give them the satisfaction.”
“How long have you been imprisoned?” Lemle repeated.
“What year is it?”
“Year Fifteen of the Regency.”
“Really, is it now?” The old man grinned. “Then I’ve been held for fifteen years. How are things in the outside world?”
“Not great,” said Lemle glumly, seeing in his mind an image of the owner of the Type and Ink choking to death. “You’ve been held since the beginning? That’s forever.”
“You are a young man; you should hold on to hope of outliving this regime. I am an old man, and I refuse to give up. What’s your name?”
“I’m Lemle of Wyndton. What’ll bring about this miraculous turn for the better? What’ll save you and me and all the other wretches?” Lemle gestured out at the sea of misery that surrounded them.
His cellmate patted Lemle’s knee and whispered in his ear, “The queen’s return.”
“Pah! What makes you think she’s coming? She might be living a life of ease in Lortherrod, she may have abandoned us, or she could be dead by now. Or she might try to return and not be able to overthrow them.”
“No. She’s too strong for that.”
Lemle snorted at this rosy vision. “You’re living in a fantasy, sir. Or, no offense, but you have lost your senses.” He closed his eyes, feeling weary and wondering if he could nod off sitting up on the bench. But he didn’t want to desert the first person who had treated him kindly in days. “You didn’t give me your name.”
“No, I have faith,” said the stranger, picking up lost threads of the conversation. “You see, I knew her when she was a child. A strong and smart child. I had the privilege of serving as her tutor. I am Master Ryton.”
“So what?” Lemle wasn’t usually rude to his elders, but the man’s persistent optimism grated on him. “I’m sure that hundreds of people knew her. That doesn’t mean you can see the future.”
Stubbornly, the elderly man batted away Lemle’s doubts with frail hands.
Lemle insisted, whispering, “And even if she comes, is she bringing an army with her? Do you think this lot”—he nodded his head toward the coarse jailers down the hallway, drinking and playing cards—“is going to roll over for one queen?”
“‘One day the drought shall be broken,’” muttered the old man, reciting a line from the famous poem about the queen’s eventual return.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that too. ‘And the wondrous Waters will course clean’ and all.”
“Really?” The old prisoner was astonished. “You know those lines?”
“You’ve been in jail too long. Everybody knows the whole ‘Dusty Throne’; that’s gone around for ages.”
“Truly?” asked the old prisoner.
“Of course.” Lemle scratched his neck, wondering if there were fleas here. “You’ll hear it in every tavern in the land and ofttimes in a Church of the Waters. Or at least you used to, until reciting it became a crime.”
“Has it now?” Master Ryton broke into a self-satisfied smile. “I didn’t know. You see, I wrote it in jail five. Jail five had rats—I had to stay up nights to fight them off—but there I was blessed with paper and ink.”
He marveled, “How did my composition travel? Mayhap a jailer picked it up.… But you are from Androvale, you say. My verse traveled that far!”
Despite his depression, Lemle was impressed to meet the poet of the now-famous rhyme. He was about to say so when a jowly passing guard called out, “Hey fellas, come look at this. The loon’s found himself a young beau.”
Only one of the jailers was interested enough to stir himself. He came to the bars of the cell and leered at Ryton and Lemle, then made a rude joke to his fellow that had the two guffawing.
“Isn’t that pretty boy on our list for the gibbet?” one jailer said to his chum.
“Yep, but all executions have been halted this week. Orders from above ’cause of the wedding. The old loon can enjoy his pet for a short while.”
And the jailers puckered up their lips and made kissing noises.