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DUN AND PADG, NOW DRESSED and anointed with odd, heady-smelling ointment, followed their guards down a short passage to a room they’d not been in before. In it, they were led to a stone table with stone benches either side.
“Sit.”
They did as they were told and waited at the benches. It seemed like time had slowed almost to a stop. Dun found himself experiencing everything with a complete intensity he’d not felt before. Everything seemed more real, every tiny detail stood out. At the same time, he knew they were racing toward their fate. Another guard came in along with a smell—food of some description, smelling relatively palatable. With a clatter, bowls were placed before Dun and Padg.
“Eat.”
The smell that wafted up was something that they had never experienced since being here. Food that you might want to eat immediately, rather than an offering that in some way was not quite right—an off smell here, an odd stale taste, a particularly slimy texture, or just plain cold. They’d had all of that in their short stay here, and that had made everything slightly longer. Was the food so much better for some people here then? Were they experiencing “under-class” food? Would Amber eat like this? Her family? Or was this grade of catering usually reserved for prisoners, the condemned? Dun shuddered. Surely a folk as sophisticated as the Stone-folk had worked out for themselves that how you treated misbehavior in a group said more about you than almost anything else. How could you ever hope to reform, or address, by treating misdemeanor with contempt? Dun didn’t suppose the Stone-folk much cared what anyone else thought. How could they? He caught himself. All this supposition was fruitless in their position anyway. And what made it all worse was that the particular contempt they were being treated with was political; Dun was sure. There was some metaphorical market stall they had upset here, and they were reaping the consequences. Some of it was to do with that gods-damned mural, but that had only been the tipping point in their visit here. Something else had altered the normal course of diplomacy amongst the peoples here. Normally, straying visitors would be returned with a reprimand and appeasement gifts would be necessary, but there had been none of that. Nothing in Dun’s careful preparation had warned him that the Stone-folk were so quick at wanting to execute people. Maybe not being returned was what it was about. Could it be that some of the tribes here were behaving so peculiarly, they didn’t want any outsiders to know? At any cost. He really needed some time alone with the others to start discussing that, but it seemed as if that was just not going to happen. Dun supposed that true to form for the Stone-folk, Tali would be being kept somewhere else and being fed, alone. He sighed and started to eat. At least it tasted as good as it smelled, and it was warm.
Dun drifted off into a reverie. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten food that’d been anything but a test of endurance. He started to feel drowsy. He felt warm and pleasant inside and was just hoping for a gentle sliding off to sleep when a horrifying thought occurred to him. Had the food been poisoned? Or if not poisoned, had they been sedated in some way, perhaps to make it easier to get them to go to their fate? Or worse still, to make it seem—to those chosen to attend such things—as if they were calmly accepting their lot. He felt sick and cold and panicky. He felt his heart start to thud louder in his chest. Long and slow, but louder. It was all he could hear in his ears.
Then there was an awful smell, a rotting, reeking, death and decaying stench. Through his slightly drifty state, he could hear the guards vomiting heartily. Then he felt his arm being forcibly grabbed and dragged off the stone bench, the rest of his drowsy body following behind.
“Come on!” a voice in his ear hissed.
His mind searched around for a personality to attach to the voice. Tali! This was their chance and she’d created it. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and congratulate her on how brilliant she was but he felt so drowsy. All he could do was let himself be dragged. Now his panic was easing off, he could hear Padg groaning not far from him. Tali reached around Dun to grab Padg too and pulled both of them, staggering toward the doorway. Dun found himself feeling light-headed and distant, but he was enjoying the odd feeling of not being entirely in control.
“Gods, I knew I’d used too much,” Tali said, grunting as she dragged them. “You two helping at this point would be really useful!”
“Sfargh,” Padg said.
Once in the corridor, Tali began pulling at right angles and dragged them toward where they now knew Tuf’s guard station to be. This bothered Dun. Oddly, less than he thought it should. They brushed past the stone table. There was a ceramic rolling noise, and then a small wet pottery smash onto the stone floor. Dun felt a small splash onto his foot.
A waft of another familiar, faintly sweet, powdery smell drifted toward him. Gods, his brain was slow. Who was it? Smell was normally his strongest sense.
“Quickly, down here!” a quiet, insistent voice called out. Amber, of course. Dun felt slow in every way, but gradually his brain was crawling out of whatever mud it had become mired in. Amber felt for Dun’s hand then dragged him off at a sharp angle, down a very narrow passage that he had not noticed before. Padg was behind him, being pushed by Tali, which seemed to be some kind of struggle. Amber squeezed past them to the entrance of the passage, then, after a brief scraping of stone, Dun’s air-sense told him the passage had been closed.
“Where is this, Amber?” Tali asked.
“An old, forgotten passage. My father was a mason. I learned a thing or two.”
“Didn’t you just!”
“I used to follow him everywhere. I wanted to be a mason. I couldn’t because...” She paused, then said, “I learned all the tools and strokes and used to love to rescribe all the old maps.”
Dun’s brain was rolling something around. Something Tali had said. Something about “Using too much”.
“Myooou”, Dun said.
“Pardon?” Tali said.
“Mmmm... youw.”
“Me?”
“You,” Dun said, gaining confidence.
“Yes?”
“You... poisoned... us,” Dun said.
“Only a little,” Tali said.
“Eh?”
“Only a little, and I didn’t mean to. The poisoning thing was only a by-product anyway. I was trying to mask the effects of the stench for you.”
“Y’ve hud meuh... muh... m-y fa... ther’s coo... cooking then?” Padg said.
“Oh, you’ve come round too now have you?” Tali said.
“You used a scent?” Dun asked.
“A vapor, more like. Some natural, some not.”
“How come it’s affected so wide an area?” Dun said.
“Ah, you apply the right vapor to the right vents and airflow does the rest. Amber helped with that.”
“Thank you, Amber,” Dun said. “We couldn’t have asked you to help us, and we can only guess what you’ve risked. Thank you.”
Amber made a humming noise.
“What now?” Padg said.
“Well,” Tali said, “we wait a little for the chaos to build then we use some more of the hunter’s balm to hide and we make a run for it.”
“Which way?” Dun said. “I’m not sure we could even get out the way we came in.”
“No,” Amber said. “It’s too far and too dangerous. We thought the easiest way is through the main upper stairway and out through the Grand Entrance.”
“Won’t that be busy?” Dun said.
“Ah, but busy helps us. We can sneak away undetected through a crowd. The hunter’s balm works very well that way,” said Tali.
“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” Padg said to her.
Tali grunted. Their conversation was broken by the noise of loud shouting and rushing feet coming from the main corridor.
“I think that might be our cue,” Dun said.
