Kerry lay on the floor, listening. She had no idea what time of day it was, or how long she had been in the cell. There were no windows, and no natural light came through the gaps in the door. There was no sound.
Before he left, Umar had replaced the small burning dishes above the candle sconces, and refilled them with several small blocks of brown resin. The cell instantly filled with smoke again, and Kerry fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. When she awoke, she found a bowl of food and a cup of water on the stool beside her. She was able to sit up and eat and drink and use the bucket, but the effort left her exhausted, and she fell back to sleep. The next time she woke, the bowl was gone and her latrine bucket had been emptied, and the room was once again heavy with smoke.
Her mind had screamed at her to get up.
She had forced herself to sit up, but as she tried to swing her legs off the bed, her arms folded under her, and she fell to the floor. She was too weak to move.
She drifted. The dirt floor was cool under her cheek. There was a faint breeze from under the door, not much, but enough to waft the smoke up and away from her mouth. She felt her head clear, slowly, as though she had opened her skull and was removing wadding from around her brain, piece by tiny piece. She felt her senses return, and when the pain in her elbow had sharpened to a point, she rolled over onto her back, flexing her arm, wiggling her toes, and feeling the almost unnatural sensation of the breath in her lungs and throat, and the blood pumping in her limbs. She looked around the room, took in the bed, the stool, the lidded bucket, and the sconces. She took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet. She took the burning disks from the sconces and tipped the twists of resin, hissing, into the latrine bucket. Then she lay down on the floor again, and watched the thin cloud of smoke as it slowly dissipated.
She listened. Her ears sang with the silence. Her cell could not be the only one. No one ever built a single cell. She wondered who else had been locked away. She imagined herself in the middle of a row of small boxes, each with their mean cot and latrine bucket. She wondered if the others would be drugged. She wondered about Tanny, and she shivered at the thought of the brutal tool that Umar had shown her. The evil bastard.
She heard the faraway sound of a door opening, somewhere outside. She eased herself slowly up onto the bed, lay on her back, and closed her eyes.
She concentrated, listening to the sound of someone approaching. But not straightaway. More doors opened, one after the other, and she realized she was right, that she was in one of a row of rooms. A single person was making their way down the passage, entering each room in turn, doing something that didn’t take long, and then moving on to the next room. Not delivering food, or attending to the latrines: the movements were too quick, and there was no noise other than the shuffling of feet on the bare ground.
She counted seven doors, and then it was her turn. She slowed her breathing. She felt the air on her face as the cell door swung open. The person stopped. She felt them watching her. And then the door closed and the footsteps continued down the passageway, shuffling along, opening doors, performing the small task and moving on. Twelve cells in all, she counted, and then the person opened another door and she was left with the silence.
Her mind raced. Whatever task the person had performed in all the other rooms had not been done in hers. Was it the drugs? Had the person realized there was no smoke in her room? Why stand and watch her, and then leave? She strained her ears, wondering what she should do next. There were no locks on any of the doors, as far as she could tell, presumably because all the occupants of the other cells were drugged, and could not leave. But even if she was able to get out of her cell, which way should she go?
First, a reconnaissance. She had heard enough of Justy and Lars’ stories to know that a mission’s success was usually dependent on the amount and quality of scouting done beforehand. She would just go into the passage and try the doors, to see whether they were even locked.
She was on the point of swinging her legs out of the low cot when she heard one of the passage doors open. Then the sound of footsteps on the packed floor outside, moving towards her. A man, judging by the rapid, heavy sound of the boot heels on the floor. She shut her eyes and lay flat on her back.
Her door opened. And closed again, and the man was on top of her, dragging the thin pillow from under her head and pressing it over her face.
“Quiet now, missy!” Half hiss, half whisper, his breath heavy with the smell of raw liquor. She struggled, but his body was heavy on her, crushing her. She could feel the hard boards of the bed under her shoulder blades through the straw. She screamed, but the pillow muffled her voice.
He thrust at her, and pressed his hand hard over her face. “No one can hear you!” he sang in a half whisper. “They’re all sleeping.”
She was finding it hard to breathe. Panic bubbled in her chest. She squirmed under him, but his thighs and chest trapped her. He grunted, and reached down, lifting his groin off hers, just enough so that he could get his hand down and loosen his breeches. She got an arm loose and punched him in the side of his head. He cursed, and pushed down hard on the pillow with one hand, lifting himself off her, then drove his fist into her solar plexus.
It was as though someone had reached into her chest and squeezed her lungs together. She felt like a fish, gulping for air. He hiccupped with laughter, and pulled himself out of his breeches, and she felt him, stiff against her thigh. She had the sensation of being transported to the corner of the ceiling, where she huddled in the shadows, watching as he dragged her skirts up and began to paw at her underdrawers, as her arms flailed weakly at his shoulders, dragging at the pillow, trying to pull it away from her face, desperate to breathe.
She was barely aware of the door to the cell slamming open, but she felt the man stop, and the pressure on the pillow over her face was lifted. She pushed it away from her mouth and sucked the air in.
“You heard Absalom.” A hoarse, loud whisper, a woman’s voice. “This one is not to be touched. Now get out, or I will cut off your pizzle, and feed it to the gulls.”
The weight came off her, as the man climbed off the bed. A woman stood there, a long knife in her hand. She pushed Kerry back down as the man hurried out of the door, hunched over with his back to her, fumbling with the ties to his breeches.
The woman wore a long, saffron-colored robe. She leaned close, and Kerry smelled a dark scent, musky and floral at the same time. “Let him run,” the woman whispered. “If he is drunk enough to come in here, he is drunk enough to kill you if you try to fight him, no matter what Absalom says.”
Kerry felt the energy go out of her. She slumped back on the bed, blinking back the tears pricking at her eyes. The woman went to close the door. Her eyes were dark in the wan candlelight, and made darker still by rings of heavy makeup. Her lips were stained a shade darker than her skin. She tugged the skirts of Kerry’s dress down, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I saw you took the charas out of the burners.”
“Charas?”
“It is a drug. He makes us put it in all the rooms.”
So this woman was the person she had heard working her way down the line of cells earlier.
“Who else is here?”
“Women. Young women.” The woman hesitated. “Girls.”
“The woman who came with me? Where is she?”
“The dark one? Absalom has her in another place.”
“Has he hurt her?”
The woman glanced at the door. “She is unharmed. But he will destroy her if you do not do as he tells you.”
Kerry thought of the breast-ripper. She felt something nameless rise in her, roll on the surface, and submerge again.
The woman’s fingers were warm on her cheek. “Such smooth skin. You remind me of my daughter. Have you seen her, I wonder?”
Kerry felt her chest tighten. “Your daughter?”
“Rumi. She ran away. Four days ago.”
Kerry opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again at the sight of the fear in the woman’s eyes. She knew that look. She had seen it in the looking glass enough times. The terror of the unknown, not for oneself, but for one’s child.
“What do you know?” the woman whispered.
“What was she wearing, when she ran away?”
“Red shoes. Her favorites.” She smiled, and then the smile disappeared. “A golden robe. He made her wear it.”
She stared into Kerry’s face, her eyes darkening slowly, like a dying fire. And then, “She is dead, isn’t she? I can see it.”
Kerry wanted the bed beneath her to give way, and the earth to swallow her up. The woman’s face seemed to collapse, melting like the candles in the sconces on the wall, until she looked a decade older, her eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “How?” she whispered.
“A knife.” Kerry’s throat was tight. It was hard to speak. She touched her belly. “Here.”
The woman closed her eyes. “She was with child.”
Kerry said nothing.
A whisper. “Where? Where did she die?”
“On Chapel Street. In a lane by one of the warehouses.”
The woman was still holding the knife. Her knuckles were white around the handle. She looked down at the blade, as though seeing it for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” Kerry said.
And suddenly the tip of the knife was an inch from her right eye. She froze.
“My Rumi is dead, stabbed like a pig in an alley, and you are sorry?”
It was an effort to look past the knife, and into the woman’s eyes. But it was like looking into two holes, dug deep into the earth.
“I couldn’t save her.”
The woman’s eyes were wide. “She was alive?”
“Only for a moment. She had lost too much blood.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No. I held her, and she died.”
The woman dropped the knife, and put her face in her hands. She quivered, like a tree in a storm. Kerry sat up and put her arm around the woman’s shoulders.
“We’ve been trying to find you. To tell you.”
“Where is she?” The woman’s voice was muffled.
“In the Almshouse. She’s being cared for.”
“I must have her. I must wash her, and say prayers, and bury her in the correct way.”
“I can take you to her.”
The woman shook her head. “We cannot leave. If he catches you, he will kill you. And if he does not catch you, he will kill your friend.”
She sat up, and wiped the tears from her face with the edge of her robe. She smiled, weakly. “I am sorry about the knife.”
“There’s no need to apologize.”
The dark eyes searched Kerry’s face. “You know what it is to lose a child, I think.”
Kerry nodded. “A long time ago.”
“She must have been very young.”
“He. His name was Daniel.”
The woman took a deep breath, and when she exhaled, her eyes were full of tears again. “I am sorry for it.”
Kerry nodded.
The woman took her hand and squeezed it between her palms. “My name is Sahar.”