Jack became aware of the pain before he properly woke. As he rose out of the depths of his unconscious mind, the dull ache grew stronger and stronger, until he could feel he was lying on a hard surface. His eyes flicked open, and he got his first look at the room.
It was a small chamber constructed entirely of stone: underground, it seemed, by the way the barred window was crammed in the very top corner. The only light—that of the fog-masked moon and flickering street lamps—filtered through these bars, and from this Jack could just about make out the scene.
Sardâr lay on a bench opposite him, unconscious, whilst Bál slumped on the floor rubbing his truncheon wounds. Ruth, the only one who looked unharmed, was standing, apparently unable to keep still. Seeing he was awake, she flurried over to him.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said as he prepared to hoist himself up. She smiled and stroked his hair lightly.
Despite the situation, he was struck again by how beautiful she was: her skin the tone and texture of warm chocolate, her eyes like large onyx jewels set in milky oases. The pain seemed to have made everything a little more poetic. He felt the almost euphoric urge to slide his fingers around the base of her neck and press his lips to hers.
The face of an irate dwarf plugged the empty space in Jack’s vision, somewhat ruining the moment. “Have you learnt any healing alchemy yet?” Bál said.
“No,” Jack replied, trying to restrain his annoyance, “but I guess I can give it a go.” Trying to stave off the pain a little longer, he placed his right hand on the dwarf’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He knew healing alchemy was tied to Light, and so he focused on accumulating the powers of the different elements around him: the street lamps for fire, the dampness for water and air, the stone benches for earth. He channeled all of this into the Seventh Shard. Seeing it shining even through his eyelids, he allowed it to flow down his right arm into the dwarf.
He opened his eyes.
Bál felt his bruises again. They seemed to have faded considerably.
“Great, now try you,” Ruth said.
Jack looked down at his limp left arm. He thought he’d probably pass out again if he tried to move it. It looked broken in two places, judging by the way he seemed to have mutated additional joints on the bicep and below the wrist. A month ago, he reflected, this would have been monumental. Now, though, it seemed an expectable part of the whole sorcerer-fighting experience.
He placed his good hand on the bad arm and closed his eyes again, summoning the same elements as before and channeling them through the Shard. It was much harder this time, not only because his energy was diminished but also because broken bones were a much bigger deal than bruising.
He opened his eyes. The breaks seemed to be gone—his left arm was smooth—but something was wrong. He swung his legs down from the bench to sit up straight. There was only a slight twinge of pain, but he could feel the healed arm was now several inches shorter than the other one.
“How does it feel?” Ruth asked sympathetically, clearly having noticed the difference.
“It’s okay. It’ll have to do until Sardâr can take a proper look at it. Is he okay?”
“I hope so. He’s breathing, but that dark fire stuff can’t have done any good.”
Jack got up and checked the elf’s breathing. His face was pale and plastered with sweat, and he winced even in sleep.
“So this is prison, then? How long have we been here?”
“I don’t think this is actual prison. I think it’s just a jail cell. And I’m not sure how long we’ve been here. A few hours, maybe?” Ruth, sitting with her knees to her chest, looked anxious. Jack remembered she’d been imprisoned in Nexus: their current predicament couldn’t be doing much to assuage her panic.
“So how do we get out, then?” Bál demanded.
Jack had to suppress another flare of annoyance. They were all in this cell. Just because Bál, a member of a royal family, had enjoyed free rein all his life didn’t make this experience any worse for him than for anyone else.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “We can’t do much until Sardâr wakes up. I don’t really want to try any alchemy on him. I’m not sure exactly what’s wrong with him. Ruth, don’t you have that egg for The Golden Turtle? Can’t you call up the crew?”
Ruth shook her head sadly and produced a mangled mechanism from her pocket. “It shattered in the fall. Ishmael gave that to me too.”
They passed the next few hours in uneasy silence. Jack put an arm around Ruth, and she rested her head on his lap. The cell stank—an unpleasant combination of urine and stale food that, contrary to expectations, seemed to become more noticeable the longer they stayed. Sardâr didn’t move at all. Though very uncomfortable against the stone, Jack eventually followed the other two into sleep.
After some imperceptible amount of time, Ruth shook him awake. She was sitting bolt upright, pointing at the barred window.
Blinking to adjust to the darkness of the cell, he tried to see what she was gesturing at. Something obscured the streetlight: a crouching figure, rattling the bars.
Bál awoke with a start and, as if by instinct, reached for his axe.
Jack stood and, motioning the others to stay back, crept towards the window. “Hello?”
The figure drew out what looked like a glowing green wire from somewhere. There was a noise like a buzz saw, and the remnants of the bars jangled on the cell floor.
“Quickly,” hissed a Cockney voice, “someone will’ve heard that.” A rope was slung down to him.
Jack glanced into the cell, held up an index finger to Ruth and Bál, and proceeded to ascend the rope. It was a mark of his recent burst of fitness that he was able to do this with an injured arm: being bellowed at for his inability to climb a rope had been a recurrent feature of PE classes.
He pulled himself through the window, trying not to scrape the remaining edges of bars, and hauled himself to his feet. They were in a side alley, and the first vestiges of daylight were breaking over the soot-encrusted sky.
Jack looked at his rescuer and started. It was the boy from the factory. “Dannie! What are you doing here? I mean, it’s great, but how—?”
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk in a minute,” the boy replied, “but let’s just get your friends out first. Oh, and there’s something you should probably know.” Dannie pulled off his flat cap, and a tightly concealed bundle of dirty-blonde hair was let loose. “It’s actually Danielle, but the name Dannie’s fine.”
Jack stared at her blankly for a moment. “Erm, okay then. Let’s help the others up.”
Getting Ruth and Bál out was easy, particularly once the dwarf got over the initial surprise of being rescued by a factory colleague… who’d turned out to be a girl.
Sardâr was more difficult. Whatever was wrong with him, he wouldn’t wake up, so they had to find a way to maneuver him out of a window that was practically on the ceiling. In the end, they managed it by Bál supporting the elf’s weight whilst Jack levitated him out alchemically. It looked a little like an alien abduction.
“Right, so where are we going? Back to The Kestrel’s Quill?”
Ruth shook her head. “No point. The Cult will have left the city by now. And there’s the small problem of us now being bankrupt escaped convicts. I think we should head back to The Golden Turtle.”
They made their way down to the river as quickly and quietly as they could, a job made much harder because they had to carry Sardâr like a corpse. To any passersby, Jack thought they must have looked very suspicious.
The rising sun shimmered through the clouds of smoke and reflected off the rain-smeared rooftops as the river came in sight. The early risers were already up, including a newspaper vendor. Ruth peered round the corner of an alley to see her own face—badly rendered and made to look older and nastier—glaring at her from the front of a newspaper.
It was next to similar portraits of Jack, Bál, and Sardâr under a thickly printed headline:
She waited until the vendor was distracted selling a paper, then signalled for the other three to follow her across the road. Jack and Bál hobbled along with a limp, Sardâr clutched between them.
“I guess we won’t be coming back here anytime soon,” Jack said as they reached the riverbank.
“What a tragedy,” Bál replied darkly.
The Golden Turtle was exactly where they had left it—or, rather, the rail surrounding the top hatch was still floating unnoticed several feet from the bank. Ruth dived in, followed by Dannie and then Jack and Bál, who dragged Sardâr through the water as if they were towing a kayak.
Ruth scrambled onto the railing and pulled open the hatch. Dannie hopped in after her. Bál lowered Sardâr to them and climbed down. Jack took one last look at the filthy city rising from the riverbank and followed Bál, not at all regretting their departure from Albion.