9 It’s always darkest just before the dawn

The nearer the day of Le Bor’s and the Raiwanese’s escape approached, the more nervous I felt, and with good reason, for, if it went wrong and our complicity was discovered, we were all liable to severe punishment. I wished they would have run away after I had left, but that was unlikely: the last bar was already almost filed down on both sides, and in the end, everything worked according to Le Bor’s plan. The only obstacle that remained uncertain was Alvon. He had not yet been informed of anything.

One evening, Le Bor beckoned me to come closer and whispered to me:

“What are you waiting for to keep filing?”

I grimaced and said:

“You think it’s safe?”

The ruffian wrinkled his nose and then turned to Alvon.

“Say, Twenty. You still haven’t told us why you ended up here. Come on. I’m willing to pay half a goldy for a good answer.”

The Black Dagger was still eating his soup. He swallowed slowly. After a silence, he said:

“If you pay me eighty siatos, I’ll answer you.”

I winced in amazement at the answer. Le Bor arched an eyebrow.

“Eighty siatos, no more and no less? Holy Daglat! I think I can guess the cause of your trouble,” he laughed. “Up to your ears in debt, am I on the right track?” Alvon remained impassible. “Eighty siatos,” Le Bor repeated. I could already see how, in his mind, the possibilities of bribing were growing. “You know? I’m willing to give them to you. In exchange for your silence.”

And he smiled, perhaps because, precisely, Alvon was already very silent. Finally, the Black Dagger said in a neutral voice:

“You mean the window bars that the gwak is filing?”

I blinked. Le Bor laughed.

“You’re sharp!” he said approvingly. I perceived, however, a very slight tension in his voice. “Tell me, Twenty. How do you think I’m doing? Now that’s what you call an effortless escape, right? And the kid! He’s a real angel, he works without complaining, not like that slacker,” he accused Farigo. And he took me by the shoulders, shaking me paternally. I rolled my eyes, and as soon as he let go of me, I stepped aside and went to join Farigo. “For how many moons are you staying here?” Le Bor then asked.

Alvon was slow to respond, as if he needed time to process the question.

“Until I get out,” he said at last.

“Uh. Natural,” Le Bor smiled, mockingly.

There was silence. Then Alvon asked:

“Where are you going to get the eighty siatos from?”

Le Bor’s smile widened.

“Ah! My lady will take care of it. She’s a queen. She can make two-hundred goldies in an afternoon.”

Things came to pass, and in a few minutes, Alvon agreed to keep silent in exchange for eighty siatos. He asked to participate in the escape himself, and Le Bor became suspicious and told him that if he gave him the eighty siatos, why would he escape. Alvon told him that it was his business, but that he was compromising himself to help him effectively during the escape and that his help would far outweigh the eighty siatos. Le Bor was finally convinced, they shook hands, and after the lights went out, under Le Bor’s watchful eye, I climbed up and continued to file the bar.

The escape was planned for the night of Sacredday to Young Day. That is, in two days. And, as Le Bor, who was an expert in betting, used to say: either everything went well or everything went badly.

Everything was ready. We had just had dinner and were anxiously waiting for the lights to go out while playing a game of forks. To my regret, I had Cuckoo as a partner again. I warned him that, if we won, he could keep the money, but if we lost, he would pay the losses. We lost. And Cuckoo, of course, blamed me. When he had to find someone to blame, it was always me.

As I watched the coins disappear into Le Bor’s pockets, I was suddenly very aware of how little time I had left at Carnation. Strangely, I thought about the future and an idea came to me. Le Bor was already putting the cards away. After a hesitation which lasted no more than two seconds, I pulled him by the sleeve and whispered to him:

“Say, Bor. I was thinking.”

“No kidding.”

“Yes. Listen to this. You’re going to give Pockmark and Cuckoo twenty, aren’t you? Twenty, eighty. And… and, I did all the work. The bars, the rope, and… well, I did all that, so…”

Le Bor looked at me with an unsuppressed smile.

“So what, shyur? In exchange, I spent twenty goldies on karuja, remember?”

I turned pale. Wow, he sure had spent a lot of money. Suddenly, my request seemed ridiculous, and I gave up.

“Yeah. Dead round,” I sighed. I bit my lip and observed though, “But I did all the work.”

Although I spoke to Le Bor in a low voice, Cuckoo heard me and let out a sardonic laugh.

“That gwak’s such a rascal…”

“He’s absolutely right,” Le Bor retorted calmly.

I looked at him, surprised.

“Am I?”

“You are, Four-Hundred: I’ll give you ten goldies if you do me one last favour.” And as I looked at him, puzzled, he drew his lips to my ear and whispered very low, “When you go out, go to The Joyful Spirit, in the Cat Quarter, and ask to see Caldisona. She will give you the money.”

I looked at him in amazement. Why was he talking to me in such a way that the others couldn’t hear us? Besides, it didn’t sound so much like a favor as it did like directions on how to collect my reward. I shrugged and nodded.

“It runs.”

Le Bor smiled.

“Perfect.”

He leaned against the wall with his arms folded, and I saw him look intently at the window and the small rectangular opening. Outside, it was pouring rain.

“You’ll get soaked,” I observed after a silence.

“Bah, the worst night for the watchman is the best for the escapee,” Le Bor replied in a whisper. He smiled. Mentally, I bet a fivenail that he was thinking of his lady.

The lights went out, and we lay down in silence. When the jailer came by at eleven o’clock no one was sleeping in the cell. He walked away. And as soon as his footsteps ceased to be heard, Le Bor, the Raiwanese, Alvon, and I rose to our feet. We knew what we had to do. The Raiwanese removed the grate; Alvon cast a silence spell to absorb the noise; and I helped to secure the rope. When the escape route was ready, Le Bor shook hands with Cuckoo, ruffled my hair, and climbed up, helped by the Raiwanese. He disappeared down the rope. Then it was Alvon who helped the strong elf through the small window. It was not easy, but he did it, and when the rope slackened, instead of going straight up, he turned to me, took me by the shoulder, and whispered:

“When you get out, tell Korther that Yerris is not guilty.”

It was the first time he explicitly showed that he recognized me, and to tell the truth, my first reaction was to feel ashamed for being so submissive to Le Bor because of the karuja. But, hey, to hell with shame. After putting aside questions of dignity, I absorbed the meaning of Alvon’s words, but by the time I wanted to ask him to explain, he had already climbed to the window, and I saw him disappear as I scratched my neck. Well… it runs, Yerris wasn’t guilty, and I was happy about that, but… guilty of what?

I sighed, climbed up, and finding that the rope was already free, untied it as they had asked me to do; I landed on the ground again, and Cuckoo passed me a bottle, which contained something which would put us into a deep lethargy. We would tell the guards that it was Le Bor who had given it to us at dinner, which was true, and I wondered where he had got it. We would sleep like bears through the morning, and the loudest cry would not wake us. I took a sip, gave the bottle to Farigo, who gave it back to Cuckoo. I lay down and waited for the effects. I waited for more than an hour. They did not come. For a moment, I thought that Cuckoo had deceived me. But no: I saw that he, Pockmark, and Farigo were fast asleep. I even pulled his ears to make sure. Nothing. My cellmates were all asleep. And I was not. Was it because I was a sokwata? I did not know, but I was in trouble. I lay down again, nervously, and tried to sleep. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep at all.

Later, the night watchman came by again. His footsteps came closer and closer, and the light of his lantern grew brighter and brighter. I had my back to him, and fortunately so, for when he uttered a shout I opened my eyes wide. The alarm sounded, and in a few minutes, the whole prison was turned upside down; shrill whistling sounds were heard outside, and guards entered the cell with dogs. They found that all were asleep, except me. They took me by the arm and shouted at me. I pretended to be absolutely stunned. It was no use. They shook me. A dog snarled and came up to me, and… my head was suddenly filled with hellish barks. I lost my mind. I dashed, and ran into a wall, and stammered something in Caeldric, and I think I was asking my master for help, for he appeared and said to me with sweetness and wisdom:

“Courage and bravery, son.”

He gave me a rabbit bone, and I bit it, but I don’t know what I actually bit. Anyway, the guards were furious. If they did not get the escapees back, they might be punished with prison for negligence. Since I was the only one awake, they turned on me. They took me to a cell on the ground floor and interrogated me. They insisted on knowing where the bottle with the soporific came from, and I told them:

“Dunno. Le Bor. It’s Le Bor. It’s Le Bor…” I repeated.

Now that I was surrounded by agitation, I realized that the soporific may not have put me to sleep, but it had affected me all the same. I felt like I was in another world, and the harmonies didn’t help. With each passing second, everything became clearer, the valley sky, the trees, the yarack and the squirrels. The guards stopped shaking me and threatening me when a large dark elf entered the room. He growled something and grabbed my chin, crushing my cheeks. It was the prison warden. His yellow eyes shot through me like daggers.

“Four-Hundred. You are accused of aiding the escape of three fellow prisoners. If you talk, you won’t be charged. But until you do talk, you little louse, you’ll stay in this hole on bread and water, got it?”

I gave him a faded look and did not answer him. At last, they left me alone. I do not know how I fell asleep, but I did. When I awoke, I supposed it must be daylight already, for there was a faint light creeping under the door. A bowl of water and a loaf of bread had been brought to me. I ate my breakfast, took out a half a karuja ball from my pocket, put it in my mouth, and leaned against a wall. There were no benches in the cell, and no windows. Fortunately, there were no rats either.

On the other hand, there were many stars.

Since the hobby of counting them was a bit limited, I amused myself by giving them each a story. That one over there had been a florist who had sold a lot of carnations—no, not carnations, roses—on the corner of Moon Square. That other one, shaky and uncertain, had been that of a hatter with kind and honest thoughts. There was not a star of a thief in that sky, not a star of a jailer, a nail-pincher, or a body snatcher. There were only the good stars: the others were extinguished forever. Mine would be extinguished forever.

Curled up against the wall, I cried bitterly. I didn’t know why I felt so sad. After all, Le Bor had escaped, hadn’t he? It was because of the prison warden, I thought. His look… that stern yellow look… seemed to be telling me: you’re not getting out of prison except in a coffin. And the thought of staying there much longer made me sad, because I missed my cronies, and Yal, and Yerris… I breathed in, and in the privacy of my personal cell, I let my tears flow.

At one point, a blond guard named Rik opened a small flap in the door, glanced at me, and left the peephole open, I don’t know whether to be able to keep an eye on me or to allow me to have some light and not be in complete darkness. Three or four days must have passed, because I ran out of karuja. The rest of my supplies were hidden in the other cell. When I began to feel the pain increasing, I dragged myself to the door, hung on to the bars of the peephole, pulled myself up, and called:

“Rik!”

The blond guard, who was sitting in a chair, drawing, jumped to his feet, startled.

“What’s the matter, boy? Hey! Don’t hang yourself like that, you’ll hurt yourself.”

I slid to the ground, stepped back, and as Rik’s face appeared behind the peephole, I prayed to all the spirits in the world and let out:

“Rik. Could you bring me the karuja I have in the other cell? Please,” I begged him.

Rik’s face darkened.

“Hell no, boy.”

He was about to move away from the peephole, and I hastened to insist:

“Please. I swear, in return, I’ll do anything you want.”

“You swore the same thing to Le Bor, didn’t you?” Rik replied with a slight sarcasm.

I was at a loss for words, and he gave me a sympathetic and reproving look before walking away. I heard him sit down in the chair. Blasthell. I hung on the peephole again. Rik was still drawing. I let myself fall back and suddenly felt a convulsion in my whole body. Fear gripped me. The thought of having to go through what I’d already been through once frightened me.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please, please…”

I repeated my plea countless times, but Rik didn’t listen to me. No doubt he thought he was doing me a favour by helping me detox from karuja. What the hell! He would only manage to kill me by doing so.

When his turn came to an end, Rik left his chair and walked over to the peephole to say:

“Good night, boy.”

Unlike the other times, I did not answer. He must have thought I was angry with him. I was not: I was just biting my bowl to keep from screaming. My eyes were burning, I was hungry, I was exhausted, and my body ached as if some demon was hammering at my every nerve.

It was a nightmarish night. In the morning, Rik arrived and said:

“Good morning, boy!”

I didn’t answer him either, and this time, the guard got worried. He asked me something, and huddled against the cell wall, I did not answer. I was trembling, and not only from the cold, for it seemed as if Death itself would tear at my soul before It welcomed me into its Spirit Realm. Everything was shaking in front of me. Rik called for a companion, entered the cell with him, shook me up, and I moved a little.

“Hey, kid, you okay?”

My lips dry, I opened my mouth, drew in a breath of air, opened bulging eyes, and managed to stammer out:

“Death…”

Rik’s eyes widened.

“What on earth are you saying?”

I couldn’t answer and breathed in, suffocated with pain. Rik’s companion pouted, and in the hardened, dark tone of one accustomed to such scenes, he clarified my stammer:

“Rik? I think he’s dying.”