Page 84 of Mother of Death and Dawn

I turned to see a messy drawing etched into the dark stone, faintly, as if with a fingernail—three familiar shapes, in a familiar arrangement. I didn’t even remember drawing it, but then again, my hands so often just idled in that pattern.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I grumbled.

“It’s clearly a map,” one of the other guards said. “Some sort of islands.”

“None that I recognize,” another added.

“Copy it down before it rubs away,” the captain said, turning to leave. “And take him for a walk. Edges of the compound.”

A walk?

My first thought was that this must be some sort of metaphor. A walk to an executioner’s block, perhaps. But no. The walk was just a walk. My ankles and wrists were shackled, and I was brought outside into blinding late-afternoon sunshine.

It was immediately obvious that we were, as I suspected, still in Threll. The compound was made of polished cream-colored stone, surrounded by fern-dense forests. There were only a handful of small buildings here, encircled by high stone walls. My captor took me along the edges of the grounds.

It took me awhile to realize that we were walking in circles.

“What the hell is this for?” I asked my companion. “My mental health?”

He shot me a look that bordered on apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quietly. “I fought with you in the civil war. Best captain I’ve ever had.”

I did not remember this man at all.

“Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say. I knew it wasn’t his fault. He was a soldier, and orders were orders. “I can’t convince you to free me, can I?”

He gave me a half-smile, half-grimace, and I sighed. “I figured not.”

By the third lap, I came to a conclusion.

She’ll come,I’d heard the guards say. I was being used as bait. But for whom?

Time blurred. We walked and walked and walked. It was kind of them, at least, to give me such a comprehensive view of the layout of the compound.

Halfway through this never-ending journey, I felt a strange prickling beneath my skin, as if there was some invisible force in the air that called to me.

I stopped short, looking into the forest, seeing nothing but the wall and the greenery beyond it.

“Come on,” the guard muttered, and nudged me along.

Half an hour later, my guard was relieved. The person who replaced him was a middle-aged man who wore a different uniform, black instead of Order of Daybreak green. A Threllian.

He said nothing until our second lap, when we crossed the quiet side of the compound. Then, just as we passed behind a building, he leaned closer and whispered in Aran so heavily accented that I barely understood him.

“We have too few guards. West part empty at night. Your brother in southern building. Door will be open.”

Then he grabbed my hand, and the movement was so abrupt that I didn’t realize what he had given me until he had pulled us along, walking again as if nothing had happened. I closed my hand around that piece of metal, and then carefully slipped it up my sleeve.

A key.

The guard didn’t speak another word to me. I didn’t have the faintest clue why a Threllian guard would help me escape, but I was in no position to start questioning gifts.

I was taken back to my cell after the sun set, after hours of walking around the outside of the compound. I sat there in the darkness, staring at the door. The key, I quickly realized, was not for this door, which didn’t open at all from the inside. Was it for Brayan’s, then? For the gate?

Hours later, as I was sitting in pitch darkness, a faint click sounded. The door creaked open into an empty hallway.

Ascended above. This definitely had to be some sort of trap. This was too fucking easy.

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