“We won't get anything out of him in this state,” Garmand said, staring at Luc's limp body hanging between the guards.
“We can try.” Juni gave a grin. “Let's go, boys.”
The guards dragged Luc out, struggling with the weight and size of him.
Ava watched with a growing sense of sickness in the pit of her stomach as he disappeared out of her cell.
They had come for him far sooner than she'd thought.
She was still in the corner, holding herself tightly with arms around her waist.
Juni and Garmand paused in the doorway as they made their way out, and she saw the leer in Juni's expression before he stepped out.
Alarm flared up in her. He was growing bolder.
She stayed where she was when the door closed, waiting until the only sounds beyond the door was the soft shuffle of Banyon's feet, and eventually, even that faded.
She walked carefully across the cell and leaned against the door, looking out and listening, because surely Banyon would be back with food for her.
She had to go now.
Before they found the stitches. She wanted to help Luc, and she would try. But if she couldn't, she still had to go.
There would be no fourth chance for her.
She had been told that and she believed it.
They would throw her off the tower, or hold her under the water of the moat.
Whatever left no weapon's mark.
So she would go the very first chance she got.
A long time passed.
She was unable to tell anymore how many hours, but it was midday or even later when she was roused from her position sitting against the door by the sound of Banyon's limping gait.
She shook herself out of her half-doze, adrenalin suddenly spiking now the moment had arrived.
She lifted into a crouch and moved away from the door before standing, then backed up a little to the middle of the cell so she could get the momentum she needed.
Then she ran toward the wall beside the door. She propelled herself upward, using the protruding stone at knee height to lift her, and grabbed the thin strip of sheet that was hidden just behind the lintel.
She couldn't help the thump as she landed back on the ground, but Banyon was slightly deaf now, and she had been counting on him not hearing it.
She heard her warden sniff and then cough as he approached the door, heard the rattle of the tray on the small table just outside the door and then the clang of the keys.
She looked up at the stone perched above. She had the ripped and scraped fingers to prove she had eased it out of the wall behind her bed by hand over a period of two weeks.
If it landed on his head, as she planned, it could kill him.
She had to put that aside, because he was killing her. Feeding her poison. And any moment now, Juni and Garmand would find the stitches.
She stepped to the left a little as he opened the door, so she would be in his line of sight. The end of the sheet strip was in her hand, hopefully out of his view.
“Where did they take the prisoner?” she asked as he peered at her, keys still jingling.
“Question room.” He said it as if she should know what he was talking about.
“The question room?” She shook her head. “Where's that?”
“You don't know?” He paused.
“Never heard of it before now. Never been there.”
Banyon stared at her through rheumy eyes. “Hope you never do. You don't need anyone to tell you the way. You can hear the screams easy enough. And you wouldn't want to clean up in there when they're done, believe me.” He shivered. “Sometimes, even when no one was down there, you could hear screams and cries for help.”
He said it grimly, as if he didn't approve, but he worked here, and he kept her prisoner, and he gave her poisoned food. He didn't disapprove enough.
When he pulled the door open wider, she waited a beat for him to turn and lift the tray and then stepped back as if to give him room to enter.
He shuffled closer, directly below the lintel, and she took a small step toward him, willing him to edge that little bit closer to her, tray extended.
She yanked the cotton strip the way she'd practiced many times, with her bedding on the ground below the door to protect the stone and keep its fall silent.
It struck Banyon at an angle on the side of his head, above his ear, with a sickening thud. He crumpled to the ground in silence, although the tray he was carrying landed with a clatter.
Ava turned, her gorge rising, her breath coming in fast pants.
She forced herself to turn back and look.
Her gaoler lay sprawled across the doorway. She steeled herself. She had her needle worked back into her hair. She also had a few short strands of thread she'd worked out of Luc’s bandages in her pocket, along with a few leftover pieces of fabric. There was nothing else for her here.
She stepped over him into the annex, avoiding the pool of water from the fallen jug, and then froze, turned back, and crouched beside him.
He was still breathing, but in shallow, quick inhales and exhales. His keys were clipped to his belt and after a moment of trying to work them loose, she undid the belt itself and pulled them off.
She also forced herself to check his pockets for anything useful, and found a small knife with a blade that folded on a hinge into a handle made of bone.
She slipped it into her pocket with the threads and fabric.
She had thought through her plan over many weeks, and she looked around and then found the bucket and mop that Banyon kept in the corner.
Her tunic and trousers were already dirty and creased—they hadn't allowed her to bring anything but the clothes on her back with her when they'd put her down here—and now she snatched up the thin cloth she'd seen Banyon use to wipe the table outside her door and pulled it over her short hair like a scarf.
With mop and bucket in hand, she stepped out into the stairwell she'd only come down once before, and tried to get her bearings.
The stairs were built in long, oblong stretches, the treads shallow.
The dungeon was at the very bottom of them—the only way out was up.
She started to climb, trying to keep her steps light and silent, as much to hear someone coming as to disguise her own presence.
When she reached the first turn in the stairs, she found they continued up, but there was also a passage that stretched out in front of her.
There was no screaming that she could hear, to her relief, but she remembered what Banyon had said about the noise. She knew Herron would not have a room where there was a possibility of screaming being heard in the main part of the castle. That would be a little too revealing. Questions might be asked.
And Herron was seldom ever questioning someone he had permission to.
If she had been put on the lowest level, then the question room could well be just one floor above.
She hesitated for a moment, the keys she had taken from Banyon a heavy weight in her pocket. Her fingers tightened on the mop.
She smiled suddenly to herself. Who was she fooling?
She was going to look for him.
She would take the warlord with her, if she could.
Chapter 3
He hurt.
Luc cracked his eyes open a little, keeping his head down, and tested the strength of the ropes tying him to the chair.
They rubbed against his already raw skin and he felt a trickle of blood run down his wrist.