“I have the things you asked me for.”
“I asked you for things?”
“Yes, yesterday.”
“What things?”
Siba pressed herself closer against the bars, her voice a dull whisper. “The prayer beads.”
Felitïa took a step back. “Oh, right.” She paused. “Why did I ask for those?”
“You said they’d help you concentrate.”
“Right, of course. Makes sense. How’d you get them here? I thought you said they search you whenever you come here.”
“They do. I took a chance because you were so insistent, and I got lucky.”
That seemed odd. Felitïa wasn’t sure she believed that. Then again, she wasn’t sure she believed anything these days. For all she knew, she was hallucinating Siba. An imaginary Siba could certainly sneak prayer beads past the guards since the prayer beads would be imaginary, too.
She had a penchant for thinking the obvious these days.
Siba pulled the beads out from the folds of her gown and held them to the bars, covering them from the guards’ view with her other hand.
Felitïa stared at them. A necklace of one hundred eight small beads of varying shades of purple, plus a large, pale magenta bead with a white, silk tassel attached to it. Exactly as she remembered. Though she had never spent a lot of time looking at them, so her memory was certainly not perfect. Could they be fakes? She reached out and took the beads, clutched them to her.
Siba smiled and stepped back from the bars.
“Where did you hide them?” Felitïa asked.
Siba put a finger to her lips and nodded her head ever so slightly in the direction of the jailer and guards. “I’d better get going. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Right, of course. Thank you for coming, and thank you for...you know.” Felitïa didn’t bother watching Siba go. She just turned away from the bars and returned to her hard seat. Siba was gone by the time she looked back.
Alone again.
Siba and the guards were the only real people she saw these days—and she could never be sure they were real either.
But the hard, lumpy beads still pressed against the skin of her clenched hands. That pointed to Siba’s visit just now being real. She opened her hands and looked down. The necklace was all clumped up, but it was still there.
One thing she’d discovered over the last couple days that she could mostly rely on was, consistency indicated realness. Hallucinations might change in some way that didn’t make sense, sometimes subtly, other times more obviously. It was a lot like dreaming, where weird things could happen, but she might not notice they were weird right away. She had to concentrate on something to notice the weirdness.
The beads were behaving consistently. She could feel them every moment they sat in her hands. Their appearance never changed, apart from the occasional slight sparkle when one or more of the beads caught the dim torchlight from the hallway.
They seemed real.
Except for the oddness of Siba managing to smuggle them in here. Everything Siba had told Felitïa about the searches she was subjected to in order to come here made it sound extremely unlikely she would have been able to hide a whole necklace of beads.
Maybe the people doing the searches were getting lazier over time. Siba had passed enough searches that her searchers assumed she would always pass. That was possible.
Or maybe Siba really had just been lucky.
It didn’t matter right now. If the beads were real, maybe they could help Felitïa focus.
They were her last hope.
She spread out the necklace in her lap and adjusted the positions of the beads so there was a single gap between the large one and the smaller one on one side of it, and no gap between any other beads. She then took hold of it with one hand again, keeping her hand in her lap and folding her outer skirt over it so, if the jailer or a guard passed by the door, the necklace would not be obvious.
Then she closed her eyes and meditated. She didn’t bother bringing up the Room. For now, she focused on meditation and concentration exercises like Elderaan had originally taught her.
As she went through each part of the meditation, she slid a bead over. Images flitted through her head. Each time, she ignored them, went on with the meditation, and slid another bead over the gap. In time, she made it all the way round the necklace and back to the larger bead. And she kept going.
It was hard to say if the beads were making any real difference, or she was just naturally in a better place at the moment. Either way, she maintained her focus. It didn’t waver in what must have been a half hour. Maybe an hour? Whatever it was, it was longer than she’d managed in however long she’d been locked up here.
“What are you smiling at?”
Felitïa opened her eyes a crack.
The jailer was standing outside the door, hands clutching the bars. “Well?”
“I’m just in a good mood, I guess.”
He barked a laugh. “Like there’s anything for you to be in a good mood about.”
“We all have to make do with what we’ve got.”
He barked another laugh and wandered off.
Felitïa allowed herself another smile, then closed her eyes again.
It was time to try the Room again.
She hadn’t brought up the Room in days now—at least, she was fairly certain it had been days—not since she’d discovered those tiny indicators of mentalism magic along the grey walls. She hadn’t dared. The pain had been… She couldn’t describe it. Not adequately. The pain had been intense. Very intense. But that didn’t even begin to describe it.
It had knocked her out. That had been the only good thing about it. It meant she actually slept for a little while. She had no idea how long. A few minutes? An hour? More? Whatever the case, it had been something. It had almost made the pain worth it.
She wasn’t going through it again this time though, as tempting as the certainty of a bit of sleep was.
The Room sprang up without resistance, which was a good sign. The tiny points along the grey walls—each indicating a mentalism effect—were plainly visible. They practically glowed this time.
She ignored them.
She wanted to see if the presence was back.
She identified the jailer’s presence, as well as two other presences she didn’t recognise. Probably guards. One could be another prisoner, though she didn’t recall any other prisoners at the moment. In her current state, though, it was entirely possible she simply hadn’t noticed.
The important thing was these other presences were not the same person she had briefly detected last time—the one that had taken off as soon as she’d found it. If that presence was back, whoever it was would be more careful this time. They’d be better hidden. As such, Felitïa didn’t expect what she’d done last time to work again, but it was worth a try.
She drew everything in the Room together into a single point, and looked at it all at once.
Nothing new presented itself. The presence from before wasn’t there.
While it wasn’t surprising, it was disappointing.
She spread the Room back out again, and began to look around. She needed to come up with another method to prod the other presence out.
That was assuming it was even here right now.
It was unlikely whoever it was would be in her head all the time. There was every chance the presence wasn’t here right now. But she had to try. If she did it often enough, eventually one of those tries would overlap a time the presence was here. She just had to make certain she found it when it was.
She made it sound so easy.
Zandrue was looking better. Her wounds from before were healing nicely.
But good gods! Rudiger was a mess. There were scrapes and bruises all over his legs and arms, and several larger bruises on his chest and back. Two long gashes ran down his right leg, and Felitïa got the impression the leg was broken, though she couldn’t say for sure why she thought that. Rudiger continued to stand straight and tall in the queue.
Borisin wasn’t in good shape either. There was a puncture wound in his side, almost as big as Felitïa’s fist. Whatever had made it had missed any vital organs, but it was still a horrible wound. The horse had numerous other scrapes and cuts as well.
Just what had those two gotten themselves into?
Felitïa quickly scanned the rest of the queue. Nin-Akna looked exhausted, but otherwise everyone else looked reasonably fine.
It also didn’t look like the invading presence was anywhere in the line-up. Not that she’d expected to find it there again.
She tried again to think about where she might hide, or how she might try to avoid detection. She would know that the other person could recognise her presence now, so she would try to find a way to deal with that.
By disguising her presence to look like a different one!
She focused her attention on the additional presences in the Room—the ones that might have just been guards or prisoners. But maybe it wasn’t one of those options. What if the person attacking her mind had just decided to hide in plain sight?
Who are you? she asked one of them.
The presence didn’t respond.
She reached out and grabbed the presence.
She hadn’t actually realised she could do that. After all, presences didn’t have forms to grab. And she didn’t have a form to grab with. Still, it seemed to work.
Who are you?
It still didn’t respond. Maybe it actually was what it seemed—just the presence of someone in her vicinity, another guard or prisoner. It always felt like nothing was as it seemed these days, but she knew that wasn’t literally true. There were real things.
A few of them.
She tried shaking the presence. In truth, it was more her imagining shaking it. As such, nothing noticeable happened.
Who are you?
She let go of the presence and grabbed the other one, trying out the same routine with it. Nothing happened.
Who are you? she yelled at both the presences. She then yelled the same thing at the jailer’s presence, just in case. There was no reply.
Gods, what was the point? Even if any of these presences were the invader, the individual wasn’t likely to respond. They’d just remain silent and observing.
She folded away the Room, opened her eyes and threw the prayer beads at the wall. They clattered against it and fell to the floor. It was less dramatic than she would have liked. The necklace didn’t break open, and send the beads scattering about the cell. It just landed on the floor and sat there, the beads glowing gently.
Felitïa sighed. She wished she had something else to throw. Something that would make more noise, or shatter satisfyingly.
Wait, they were glowing?
It was probably just another hallucination. Amethysts didn’t glow like that. Not normal ones, at any rate.
No, it was just her gods-damned head inventing another gods-damned hallucination because she couldn’t fucking sleep!
She was useless. Utterly useless! She couldn’t do anything other than sit here in this damn cell, waiting for Danel Belone to finally find time to kill her. Or maybe he was just waiting for her body to die from exhaustion so he could deny killing her to her father. That was probably the case.
What had happened to the feared Will-Breaker? What had happened to all the things she was supposed to do that frightened her enemies so? No, she was destined to die in this cell, put here by a brat of a child. No one was even likely to know.
She stood up and kicked the prayer beads. The necklace flew right through the bars of her cell and landed on the floor in the hall.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The jailer stormed up to her door, and looked down at the necklace. “What the hell?” He bent over, and poked at the necklace, then picked it up. He held it out accusingly. “What is this? Where did you get it?”
Felitïa trembled. “Do you...do you see it...glowing?”
“They told me you could use weird mind-affecting magic. Well, let me tell you, no glowing necklace is going to make me take my eyes off you, understand? I don’t care what phantoms you conjure up.”
Felitïa half closed her eyes, titled her head, and twitched her finger.
The jailer collapsed.
It worked! It actually worked!
The jailer hit his head on the bars as he fell, and he groggily tried to shake off the sleep effect she’d used on him.
Felitïa rushed forward and took the necklace from him before he could fully recover. Then she backed away and put him to sleep again. This time, he slumped into a gentle sleep on the floor.
She could barely believe it. Two spells in quick succession, and she hadn’t cast a spell in...gods knew how long. Too long. How had she done it?
No, it didn’t matter right now. The important thing was, the jailer had seen the prayer beads glowing. It wasn’t a hallucination! Not unless the jailer was a hallucination as well.
“Hey! What’s going on here?” A guard arrived at the cell door, his hand reaching for his sword.
Felitïa put him to sleep as well.
Three times in a row! Somehow, despite her exhaustion, she had managed to focus herself to cast spells. Gods, this felt good.
She held the necklace up. The beads were still glowing, but they were dimming.
Fingers trembling, she fumbled at the clasp, undid it, then put the necklace around her neck. It took her several tries to close the clasp again, but once she’d managed it, she walked back to the door. She reached through the bars. The keys at the jailer’s belt were just within reach.
She had to fiddle quite a bit to get them free. She was still trembling. The jailer started to stir during that time, but she put him right back to sleep again.
Four times!
Keys in hand, she tried each one until she found the one that opened her cell.
There was no reaction from anyone else. No other guard came running, and a quick glance in the other cells showed there were no other prisoners.
She unfolded the Room in her head while she headed towards the exit. There was still an unaccounted for presence there, but it winked out almost immediately.
Go ahead and run, she said. I’m coming for you.
