Chapter 6

Cathryn hugged her knees as she sat in the middle of her cramped cell. A frilly fungus was growing in one of the corners by the ceiling, and the walls were covered in sticky yellowy-green mucus. The floor wasn’t much better, being ingrained with dirt, but at least it was dry – in places. Water dripped from a crack in the ceiling, causing puddles of freezing water to congregate. The narrow cot was pressed against the wall, the only covering a thin and ripped blanket on the hard wooden slats, and at the end of the bed was a tin plate with a hunk of dry bread and a slice of mouldy cheese on it, accompanied by water with a peculiar smell. She sniffed again at the water. The chemical smell of the disinfectant masked a more acrid scent hovering over the surface of the liquid.

A loud rapping on her door made her lift her head off her knees and look at the door with dull disinterest. She tried to swallow and felt her fuzzy and dry tongue rasp against the roof of her mouth as her throat contracted. A guard poked his head around the door, and, staring at a point about three feet above her head, began to speak.
“Cathryn Tuyere, you are needed in court three for your first hearing. Stand.” She stood, not seeing that she had an alternative. The guard stepped into the cell, and bound her wrists and ankles as they had each and every time they had taken her from her cell in the week of her incarceration. Gilhœd had lived up to its reputation of having terrible prisons. Cathryn was in the city jail, on the edge of the city, but mostly in the slums. The cells spread in an underground network beneath the hovels which spread for two miles south of the citadel.

Most of the cities in Vranak were constructed around a central fortified citadel, in which the Lord or Lady of the province had their castle, their nobles had their homes, and visiting dignitaries stayed in the high-class inns. There were plenty of empty rooms lining the walls of the citadels in case of an invasion of the city; the citadels were made to hold the entire population of the city within the fortress walls, but this capability had rarely been exploited.

Cathryn stepped forwards, swaying from side to side, and leant into the guard as he grasped her elbow and frogmarched her from the cell. As they exited the cell, another guard grasped her other elbow, and a further six arranged themselves around the trio. They moved as a solid block down the stone corridor, the soldiers’ hobnailed boots making a cacophony of echoes as the hard noise reflected off the walls and low ceiling.

Together, they clattered quickly down the hall. Cathryn tried to remember the path they took: fifth left, third right, first right, second left...she soon lost track, and focussed on lifting her feet rather than be dragged along the passage like a limp ragdoll. It was obvious to her, and to her guards, that she wasn’t in a good way; they weren’t allowed to show empathy to their charges, but when they arrived at the third courtroom, one muttered inaudibly to the guard on the door, before handing her over and watching her being dragged inside.

Within the room, eighteen guards were stationed three metres apart around the edge; a central plinth bearing a large and ornate throne rose six feet into the air. Assassin vines wound round the doorway, twining at the apex of the arch, and vegetated the columns studded throughout the huge space. Thick tendrils waved, suspended in midair, coiling and writhing as Cathryn and her guards passed underneath. In places the vines were 20 feet high, and had a diameter of five inches.

Cathryn was dropped onto a low, crude wooden chair, facing the throne and placed in front of one of the columns, thick with vine. Her wrists were shackled to rings on the column, her ankles chained to the chair, and guards took up position on either side of her, staring resolutely ahead. One shifted slightly, the links in his mail shirt chinking against each other and scraping against his sword belt. An eerie silence ruled the courtroom. Not a muscle moved; each slight creak from the assassin vines’ movements seemed three times as loud as it should be. Hobnailed boots clattered down the corridor outside, coming to a riotous halt just outside the door. The three-inch thick oak door was pushed open silently on oiled hinges, and a crimson-clad figure strode in, closely followed by hunched men in black robes and four Drow. Cathryn winced as she noticed them; she had had several skirmishes with the dark elves in the past, and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. A column of twelve further soldiers marched smartly into the courtroom, and took up positions around the throne as the red-robed man leapt lightly up the steps to the seat and settled, curled loosely. A slender band on gold encircled his portentous brow; his shoulder-length hair curled dark but streaked with grey framing cold, dark eyes and a strong hooked nose. He laughed delightedly at her weakness, cold flames of mirth lighting his black eyes.
“Oh, look, guards, Drow and magicians alike! The little murderess is sick and weary! What little fun she is going to give Lord Cruthen in her present state. Magi! Heal her.” Two of the hunched men shuffled forwards, their over-long robes dragging across the floor with a sinister rustle. Cathryn’s guards moved aside, allowing the magicians to stand on either side of her. They placed their hands over her head and began to chant quietly. She shivered as her skin prickled and wormed its way back into place, covering the lacerations from the manacles and whipping she had endured; she stifled a cough as the poisonous spores from the frilly fungus worked their way out of her lungs. Every hardship she had endured over the week of her imprisonment was revoked in a matter of minutes, and the magicians shuffled back to their spaces in Cruthen’s entourage.

In the week since his duel with Luke in Elshaw, Cruthen had taken hold of Gilhœd in order to prevent the King’s newly recruited soldiers from joining the rest of his formidable force in Navidon, a barrack city several leagues south west, on the eastern bank of the River Æolara. This he had accomplished by way of blackmailing the residing Lord into abdicating and then taking the province for himself. He had instated his own guards and group of loyal magicians and nobles who took up residency in the villages spread throughout the province.

Cathryn sat silently on her wonky chair, shivering slightly as slender tendrils from the assassin vines wrapped themselves in her short hair. Her guards inched away from the column as the thicker vines began to wave at them.
“Guards! Be still, or else face Lord Cruthen’s wrath!” Cruthen had developed a habit of referring to himself in the third person since rising to power. This annoyed his nobles, his subjects and his army, but he paid little attention to their irritation.

The guards stepped back to their original places, but recoiled slightly as finger-width vines began to entwine themselves in their helms and sword belts.

“So, so, so, so, so. little Cathryn Tuyere. Attempted murderess, one-time daughter of a Lord. And what happened to your precious daddy, Cathie? Did he die?”
“You don’t scare me, Cruthen De Malva. I grew up spending summers with you while you were a teenager in our castle; I know who you are and what you were and what you’ve become, but I also know how to bring you back down. I know you loved the daughter of a common mercenary. I know she married a humble miller and had a family with him. I know you’re jealous and scorned and hurt – hurt! By a woman! The mighty Cruthen, Lord Cruthen, crushed by a lily-skinned woman. Miranda’s dead, Cruthen. There’s nothing more you can do now. But of course! You hate all women because of one woman’s mistake. Well trust me on this, oh pious Lord. Killing me will only hurt another woman, no man will hate you for killing me, no man will do through what you went through; a woman will. I do not care for men, they have fleeting fancies and roving eyes. A woman’s love is more stable and long-lasting than a man’s.”
“Oh, Cathie, how you amuse me.” Cruthen’s eyes narrowed and he leant forwards in his throne. “Your Ailona’s here, with us. Do you want to see her? Bring in the other little slut!” The door swung open, and two guards staggered in, dragging the limp form of a woman with long blonde hair.
“Ailona!” Cathryn screamed and tried to stand, but the guards, manacles and assassin vines all conspired against her, and she was forced to remain seated. At the sound of her voice, the woman’s head lifted, and her blue eyes searched for the source of the sound. They landed on Cathryn and widened, filling with tears, and then she was dragged away to the base of the plinth. Cruthen descended from his ornate chair and squatted beside Ailona. He spoke in a menacing, carrying whisper, “Cathryn, unless you want your precious Ailona killed here, now, right before you, you will acquiesce and co-operate with me. You will be tried for attempted murder, you will be found guilty, but I will grant you bail. You will go back to wherever you came from with Ailona, and you will not go near that man again, understood? You will stay away from that accursed village and you will have nothing whatsoever to do with the family called Miller.”
“Why does it matter so much to you, Cruthen? I knew you had become as bitter and withered as the fruit from these vines and as twisted as the mind of a...a mulk, but I didn’t know you had changed to this extreme level.”
“Lord Cruthen is nothing like those foul-humoured birds!”
“Not to look at, no. But you are of the same temperament and you too feed off the misery of others.”
“Begone from the presence of Lord Cruthen, you tainted woman! Guards, put them together in a cell. They can reconcile their differences there.” Cathryn’s guards hacked themselves free of the assassin vine intertwined with their uniforms, and unlocked Cathryn’s manacles, pulling her free of the insidious tendrils; Ailona was lifted onto the back of another and carried from the room.

The guards returned Cathryn to her original cell, where she found Ailona lying on the bare boards. She settled beside her, fingers resting on the back of her hand.

She sat thus for several hours, waiting for Ailona to wake. As she waited, she looked around her cell. The frilly fungus in the corner had grown in the week she had been there. The puddles were wider, and the crack in the ceiling bigger. The walls had a thicker layer of mucus on them, but the floor was cleaner as most of the dirt had been transferred onto Cathryn’s clothing. The narrow cot was the same as it had been, where Cathryn had forsaken the splintering boards for the unforgiving stone floor.

Ailona finally awoke in the early hours of the next morning. She looked at Cathryn and frowned.
“What happened to you? You never came home.”
“Well I got to the village, and I cornered someone to help me, but he was of limited use – he did get me a room at the same inn as Aelfred though, so he wasn’t entirely useless. I went to try and poison my father’s murderer, but tripped on a floorboard in the dark, spilt cyanide all over his arm and dropped my dagger, all of which woke him up. So I jumped out of the window and got caught by the enforcement squad. They sent me up here with a contingent for Kædrid’s army, and I’ve been here ever since. That was my first hearing. But what happened to you?”
“I waited for you,”
They were both mute.
Allie, Cathryn thought.
Cathie, Ailona thought.
Before they had become lovers, when they were only a little closer than friends, both had thought that holding each other was vitally important; like realigning two halves of the same person and knitting together a wound neither knew they had. Afterwards, this had not changed.
Now, Ailona put steady arms around her waist while Cathryn’s held on to her upper arms and back. It did not have the normal anaesthetic effect. Ailona shifted a little, wondering at why she felt uncomfortable still. Feeling the thin, worn material of the shirt Cathryn wore, and the pronounced curve of her hip through that against her arm, she realized what it. It felt odd, her love wearing no more, no heavy jacket for travel, no protection against those who might do her harm. It was difficult to imagine Cathryn being without something on her back, which Ailona navigated with little difficulty when they embraced. For once she felt vulnerable, and Allie sought to rectify that. Cathie hated being assailable in any way.
For now, at least, I can do something about it, Ailona thought.
I... Cathryn thought, as she tightened her hold, but in a moment it was lost like so much vapour.
They kissed. And the world was contained in the corner of a cell. They breathed together, and felt no pain.
“Some word...” Ailona said, “Some letter...none came.” Ailona leant away, her arms tight around Cathryn’s waist. “And the day you were due home came and went, and I got suspicious. Then I heard a group of soldiers and a cart had been dispatched from Elshaw for Gilhœd, I thought you might be involved somehow, so I came here as fast as I could and then was captured yesterday by a handful of soldiers and was brought before Cruthen today.”
“I’m so sorry, Allie. I swear, it won’t happen again.”
“I don’t care very much, as long as you’re safe.”