literature

A House of Angels: Chapter #11

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The town jail was a surprisingly large building, easily larger than the inn, though not quite as big as the mansion where the not-messengers lived. At least, it did not appear so from the outside, when the two women were marched up to it and manhandled inside.


The cells were small, cramped .... and scrupulously clean.
Lelen spent a minute or two verifying this, running her finger along the windowsill and under the wooden benches that were the only available furniture. She did not come up with even a speck of dust.
The straw on the floor was fresh. No little multi-legged things called the thin camelhair pillows on the benches home. There was no smell of stale urine and feces in the building.

"Well, that killed all of five minutes," Lelen said as she parked herself on one of the benches.

Cassandra did not reply. She was lying on the other bench, eyes closed and perfectly relaxed. She might even be sleeping.

"What was the point of this?" Lelen complained. "You said you wanted to stir up trouble, to sow some chaos. And then you just surrendered when that jumped-up little twit 'arrested' us. You could have hammered him into the ground like a tentpeg! So why didn't you?"

Cassandra did not reply. She remained where she was, chest rising and falling in the steady rhtyhm of one sleeping the sleep of the just.

"You don't fool me, you know," Lelen said. "I know you're awake. Go on, say something! You should be more upset about this. I know how much you loathe being in a dungeon -- and this isn't even a very good dungeon! Look at this place; just an empty corridor outside, no equipment to make us sweat, no neighbours to talk to about our situation...."

Cassandra did not reply. She just turned, the way a sleeping person will turn to give an irritating noise their back.

"This is preposterous," Lelen huffed.
She got up from her bench, marched over to the door and went on one knee. A few moments' examination told her the door-lock was very old and very crude. She inserted the index and middle fingers of her left hand up her right sleeve, and retrieved .... an ordinary hairpin.
She never wore hairpins herself, but she still carried a few of them on her person, safe enough from the kind of casual frisking she had undergone at the hands of the Sheriff's deputies. A few minutes' patient fiddling, and the old lock clicked and clacked open.
"You'd better stop pretending to be asleep," Lelen told Cassandra as she walked out into the corridor. "I'm bored, bored, bored! No telling what I'll do if you don't come and stop me."


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Lelen marched off, her heels audibly striking the floor even with the layer or straw. By the time it had faded away in the distance, Pithamarda was already sitting on Cassandra's shoulder.

The Parasite Imp had not needed to wake its mistress; she was already sitting up, listening to the sound of Lelen's heels. Now, when silence ruled, she rose and walked out into the corridor.

"I feel I should mention," Pithamarda said as its mistress set off, "that she went the other way. And she seemed more erratic than normal; finding and stopping her might be more important than breaking out."

"I am not breaking out," Cassandra said as she walked down the prison corridor.
None of the other cells were occupied, but the dark woman kept glancing left and right, almost as though she were hunting for something.
"I am going further inside."

"And the woman?" Pithamarda asked.

"I," the dark woman replied, "am breaking further inside."

"Ah," the Parasite Imp murmured. "And the woman is going to cause a disturbance somewhere else."
Its demeanour brightened.
"Why, she might even be killed by the guards while you attend to your business."

"No such luck," the dark woman replied.
And we're back!

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