CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY

Gantalla barely slept all night, frantic thoughts and frightful scenarios playing out in her mind over and over again. Finally, at nearly two o’clock in the morning, she fell into a fitful sleep, then woke late, cursing herself as she realised it was already eight o’clock. So much for slipping out early, before too many people were awake.

But the one good thing about sleeping in was that the nurses’ quarters were empty by the time she got out of bed. And that made the first part of her plan easier. She dressed in her new trousers, her old cotton shirt and her boots, then rolled her cloak into a tight ball and stuffed it into a leather shoulder bag, along with her skirt and extra blouse. She tossed her meagre bag of coin on top, and stopped by the kitchen for some food. The cook was out for the moment, so she grabbed a bread roll for breakfast, then stuffed three more into her bag, covering them with the edge of the skirt. There was some cold meat on a tray as well, left over from last night’s dinner, so she took a handful of slices and broke open her roll, shoving the meat into the middle. It was a long walk to Palashran, and there was no point starting out hungry, even if it was a sure bet that she’d be near starving by the end of it.

Then she let herself out of the rear door, weaving between the outhouse and the root cellar until she ended up on the street. She paused, looking back at the town square, with the large clock on the town hall and the bustle of people already milling about, getting ready for the day’s business. Would she miss any of this? The friends she’d made, the new experiences. Her first taste of apples, which had quickly become her favourite fruit. The dancing and drums at the festival, which had been spectacular, for all her distaste with the reason behind the celebration. The first few days she’d spent with Nalyx, his flirtatious charm equal parts endearing and infuriating.

Yes, she was going to miss parts of it, she admitted to herself. But her stay was over. No more delays. No more excuses. It was time to leave.

“Clear the road! Make way!” A sudden bellow broke the early morning quiet, and Gantalla glanced to the right, seeing a throng of people and horses making their way down the road towards the city centre. Captain Leefe was at the front, shouting for people to get out of the way, and Gantalla was surprised to see him back here again. She hadn’t expected him to leave the gate until it closed.

Enough, she scolded herself sharply. Whatever the captain was doing was none of her business. She needed to leave, and she’d been delayed far too many times already. She set a fast pace to the east, following the road that Elria had shown her all those weeks ago, that would lead her to the crossroads to Palashran.

But as she walked, the shouts got louder, and people began rushing in the opposite direction, towards the ongoing bellowing from Captain Leefe. Gantalla picked up a few muttered words from the crowd. Words like ‘demon’ and ‘cage’ and ‘execution’.

Gantalla froze, looking back down the road in terror. Nalyx had betrayed her after all. And no doubt Captain Leefe was coming to capture her. A wild instinct told her to run, but she found her feet glued to the floor, even as she realised it would be futile trying to escape. The warriors had horses, and they were far stronger and fitter than her. They’d outrun her before she even made it to the edge of town. Perhaps she could hide? She took a step back towards the hospital, before dismissing the idea. That was the first place they would look for her.

But before she could think of anywhere else to go, the rear gate to the hospital grounds burst open and Henrietta rushed through. She spotted Gantalla immediately. But the look on her face, far from the expected wide-eyed terror at Gantalla’s presence, was one of excitement.

“Gantalla! Have you heard! “ she cried as she rushed over to her. “They’ve caught a demon! Come and look. They’re putting the cage in the middle of the town square. Great gods, it’s been over a year since they captured a live one!”

“No, I don’t think I should…” Gantalla started to protest, as Henrietta grabbed her arm and started dragging her back towards the town. But then the woman’s words sunk in. They’d caught a demon? Caught, as in past tense? They already had it in a cage? She experienced a bizarre moment of conflict, relieved beyond measure that they weren’t coming after her, at the same time as feeling a sick dread. Another poor bastard from Chalandros, captured and tortured, and now being shown off in some twisted public display. Gods, she wanted nothing more than to be far away from this town.

“I have to go,” she told Henrietta urgently. “I have to go to…” She cut the words off before she could blurt out that she was going to Palashran. “…to the seamstress.”

“The seamstress can wait,” Henrietta said. “Besides, she’ll probably be out at the square herself in another few minutes. No one’s going to want to miss this.”

Gods above, what was she supposed to do now? Giving in once again to having her plans disrupted, Gantalla allowed herself to be led back to the square. The horses were closer now, and she could see a large cage mounted on the back of a wide trailer, a low figure hunched down in the bottom of it, covered in a dark cloak. The procession carried on right into the town square, where four of the men began sliding the cage towards the back of the trailer. It was about a metre and a half square, and two metres high, and it looked like it weighed a ton.

As they worked, Captain Leefe hopped up on a nearby table, holding up his hands for quiet as the crowd muttered and cursed all around him.

“Behold, a live demon,” he announced, sounding inordinately proud of the achievement. “We found it wandering in the forest last night, not too far from the gate. Crafty little bitch, thought she could get away. But don’t worry,” he said, grinning at the gathered crowd. “My men are the finest soldiers in the world. No demon is slipping through our net.” It was a blatant display of showboating, arrogance and pride at its finest.

“It’s a female,” he went on. “Don’t worry, this one’s mostly harmless. I wouldn’t risk bringing anything truly dangerous this far into town. But at the same time, I wouldn’t recommend anyone gets too close. You never know what fiendish tricks these beasts are going to come up with. But look your fill, see how ugly these foul creatures are. And let that remind you what your warriors are fighting for. Your safety. The peace and prosperity of this fine city. Let’s never forget how important it is to support our warriors, as they keep you safe from vermin like this as it tries to infect our world!” The crowd broke into rowdy applause, all too eager to swallow the captain’s brazen propaganda.

The men manhandling the cage finally got it off the cart, and it settled onto the ground with a rattling clang.

“You have one full day to look your fill,” Leefe went on, “and tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, we’ll hold a public execution. And let that be a reminder that no demon shall ever pass through the gate alive. No demon shall ever infect this town with their evil. And the people of this city – the people of this world – have nothing to fear for as long as our fine warriors defend the Gate of Chalandros!”

A loud cheer rose up, the captain lapping up the praise until he finally stepped down from his perch on the table.

The crowd surged forward, everyone eager to get a glimpse of the sorry figure in the cage. But Gantalla just felt sick. She’d been so wrong to think she could ever make a life for herself in this town. And if she needed any more reason to leave, then the bloodthirsty baying of the crowd was more than enough.

“Let’s go take a look,” Henrietta said, pulling her forward. “I want to see what sort it is. They’re all different colours, you know. Red, and blue, and green. Such unnatural things.”

Gantalla stepped forward, Henrietta still tugging at her arm, and she resolved to take one quick look at this ‘demon’. There was nothing she could do to help the poor bastard, but at least she could remember this as her parting impression of this town, of the cruelty of the humans, so that she never, ever forgot who she was, or how fragile her place in this world was. She’d thought to make friends with Henrietta, shocked by her open cruelty now. Nalyx, too, had proven to be a bad choice in attempting to make friends, and she would do well to remember that when she arrived in Palashran. She should hold herself at a distance, being polite, but never getting too close. After all, she could never know when even a close friend would turn around and stab her in the back.

The rows of people in front of her parted, those at the front making way for more people to get a look at the captive, and Gantalla focused her eyes on the cage. A green hand with long, black claws poked out from beneath the woman’s cloak, and Gantalla’s heart sank as she realised that this must also be a hadathmet. Great gods, she could only hope it wasn’t someone she knew. She’d known dozens of the women in her old city, and there had been at least twenty women working in the palace. She knew several who had started the journey to the gate before she had, and if this was one that she recognised, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

As she watched, the woman in the cage straightened a fraction, peering up at the crowds of people leering at her. Insults were flung her way, promises of a slow, painful death, and the woman shuddered. Then she tilted her head up, and Gantalla caught a faint look of pride on her face, a split second before recognition hit her.

Gantalla felt her entire body go numb. No. It couldn’t be. The gods couldn’t possibly be that cruel…

Alithmain. The woman in the cage was her sister.

She looked again, unable to believe her eyes. But Alithmain had been so insistent about staying in Chalandros. She’d tried for weeks to dissuade Gantalla from leaving. She’d said again and again that the mages were going to fix all the problems in Chalandros, even long after the mages themselves had said such a thing was impossible.

What was she doing here?

“Don’t worry,” Henrietta said, catching her wide-eyed shock. “It’s perfectly safe. The bars are made of solid steel. There isn’t a demon in the world that could break out of the cage.”

“Uh… no, I suppose not,” Gantalla croaked out. “It’s just… I’ve never seen one in person before.”

“I remember the first time I laid eyes on one,” Henrietta said. “I was only about eight years old at the time. I was absolutely terrified. It makes me glad all over again that we’ve got the warriors to defend us.”

Gantalla nodded. “Indeed. Exactly right. Couldn’t agree more.”

Alithmain glanced briefly about the crowd, her eyes landing on Gantalla for one short moment, before she returned to staring at the ground. Gantalla felt a stab of disappointment, even as she knew she was being ridiculous. There was no way Alithmain would recognise her, not with her disguised as a human the way she was. She felt a strong urge to go to her and tell her who she was. But such a move would be pure suicide. To get close enough to the cage to speak to her would draw too much attention to herself, and then she had no guarantee that Alithmain wouldn’t blurt out some foolish words about knowing her. Perhaps even that she was her sister. In her fear and anger, she could do almost anything, without thinking about the consequences.

“Well, that was quite the start to the day,” she said to Henrietta, eager to think up some excuse to get away from here. Thankfully, Henrietta was ready to make her own excuses.

“I have to get back to the hospital,” she said. “But I just had to duck out to have a quick look first. But I’ll see you this evening. Take your time to have another look, if you want.” She waved a hand at the cage. “Not every day we get to see this sort of thing.” She weaved her way off through the crowd, leaving Gantalla staring dumbly at the cage.

Feeling light-headed, she managed to stumble away, moving further from the crowd and towards the rear of the square. She found a low brick wall to sit on, and belatedly realised it was the same wall she’d sat on that first night when she’d helped Nalyx eat his dinner. Was it really only three weeks ago? It seemed like far longer…

“Gantalla?” Gantalla looked up at the sound of her name, then cursed blackly as she dropped her head into her hands. She just couldn’t catch a break today, could she? Nalyx was standing a short distance away, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped as he looked awkward and uncomfortable. “Sorry, I… You probably don’t want to see me,” Nalyx said. “I know yesterday I was… Well, I didn’t… I know it didn’t go well.”

“I thought you never wanted to see me again.” This time, she wasn’t even going to attempt to be polite. And if he decided to out her anyway and see her executed along with Alithmain, then so be it. None of her plans had worked out since she’d set foot in this gods-damned world, and there was no reason for that to change now.

Nalyx let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Um… I know what I said. And I did a lot of thinking last night. Actually, I wasn’t even expecting you to still be here. I thought maybe you’d leave town. Not that I think you should,” he added hastily. “I just thought…”

“I was going to. But then Captain Leefe came back, and now there’s a demon in a cage in the middle of the town square.” She let out a high-pitched chuckle, feeling an almost hysterical need to laugh.

“This must be hard for you,” Nalyx said, glancing back over at Alithmain. He looked around, checking that no one was nearby, then took a seat on the wall beside her, keeping his voice low. “I didn’t really get a good look at you yesterday. Or, really, I was just in too much shock to notice. But she looks a bit like you did. Is she one of your people?”

Fuck Nalyx and his patronising sympathy. “She,” Gantalla hissed at him, feeling tears gathering in her eyes, “is my sister.”

His face went white. “She’s…? Oh gods, tell me you’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” She was a mess of rage, fear and grief, barely holding herself together.

“No. I mean… no. You mean, your actual sister?”

“She’s my father’s oldest child. If our world hadn’t started collapsing in on itself, she would have become queen of the hadathmet.”

“Queen? You mean… she’s a princess? Wait, if she’s your sister, wouldn’t that make you a princess as well?”

“Do you actually have anything useful to say?” Gantalla snapped at him. It was hardly the right moment to begin detailing her genealogy.

“Nalyx, there you are,” a booming voice interrupted them, and Gantalla hastily wiped the tears from her eyes as Captain Leefe came striding over to them. If he noticed anything amiss, she could just say she’d been having another argument with Nalyx. No doubt rumours of their spat the day before would soon start circulating the town, whether or not they included the detail that Gantalla was actually a demon. There were plenty of people who’d noticed when she’d done nothing more interesting than have dinner with him, and this was far juicier gossip than that.

“I have some good news for you,” the captain said to Nalyx. “A peace offering, if you like. I know you were upset about not being allowed to go back to the gate. But maybe this will make up for it a little.”

“What did you have in mind?” Nalyx said, standing up. Gantalla didn’t bother rising, not caring if the captain thought she was rude.

“Tomorrow’s execution. The town’s already buzzing with the news. It should be quite the spectacle. And I’d like you to strike the killing blow.”

Nalyx hesitated for only a moment. “Yes, sir. It would be an honour.”

“I dare say the townsfolk will be quite impressed. Maybe even some of the serving women,” Leefe added, with a wink. “You can still put the evenings to good use, even if you’re not on the battlefield.”

“Thank you for thinking of me. I’ll, um… I’ll look forward to it.”

“Excellent. And how are you going, Gantalla?” the captain said next. “Plans underway for your wedding?”

“Um… yes, of course,” Gantalla said. “Getting right on top of it. Just taking a little detour to see the demon.” By the gods, she was getting far too much practice at spouting lies out of her ass.

“Quite a sight, isn’t she?” Leefe said. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. No doubt I’ll see you at the execution tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of the day.”

The captain walked away, and Gantalla waited until he was out of earshot before turning back to Nalyx. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Yes, sir, it would be an honour,” she mimicked him. “Yes, I’ll just happily agree to murder Gantalla’s sister, because I’m a right flaming asshole.”

“What the fuck was I supposed to say?” he snapped at her. “Of course I don’t want to do it, but he’s the captain.”

“You could have said no.”

“Just like you said no to marrying Hallix? Not so fucking easy, is it? I mean, you’re not actually going through with that one, are you?”

“What I’m trying to do is leave town. But every time I set so much as a foot on the right road, someone drags me back here to partake in the latest shitshow. And now I can’t even…” Her throat closed up, tears spilling once more from her eyes. “…because my sister’s in the… and I can’t just… Fuck!”

“I’m not going to kill her,” Nalyx said. “I meant what I said yesterday. I don’t think you’re a demon. And if you’re not, then she’s not either.”

Gantalla shrugged helplessly. “If you don’t kill her, someone else will. Gods, I can’t just…” A harsh sob escaped her. “I can’t just leave her there. What am I supposed to do?”

Nalyx muttered a curse to himself, sitting down on the wall again. He stared out across the square, eyes fixed on the people milling about the cage. Long minutes passed before he spoke again. “Okay, what we do next is… we need to come up with a plan to rescue her.”

“How?” Gantalla scoffed at him. “She’s in a locked cage, surrounded by hundreds of people. And even if we did get her out of the cage, I can hardly just hide a green-skinned demon under my bed for the next month.”

“Yes, but… What if she wasn’t a demon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve got that crystal thingy that makes you look human. I mean, it is the black necklace, right? Or is it some other magic thing that I’m missing?”

“Yes, it’s the obsidian gem. But I’ve only got the one. And it was enchanted by a witch on the other side of the gate. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you can buy from a street vendor.”

Nalyx sat quietly, but from the way his eyes were darting about, she could tell he was thinking deeply about something. “Okay, so maybe this sounds crazy, but hear me out. The chances of you being the first person to ever make it through the gate are pretty slim, am I right?”

Gantalla nodded, catching onto the obvious point he was making. Gods above, she should have thought of that earlier. “Yes! I mean no! I mean… The witch. She said her sister was already living in town. And she said there were people here who send messages back through the gate, to help the people there make it across.” She stopped suddenly, instantly horrified at her own words. “You’re not supposed to know that,” she said, far too late to undo the damage she’d just done. Spilling the secrets of the gate to a warrior? Flaming hell, how stupid was she?

“Yeah, I think we’re well past the point where we need to worry about how many secrets I know,” Nalyx said. “You’ve turned my entire world upside down in the past twenty-four hours, and I have no idea what to do with that, but I’m not about to start outing you all to the other warriors.”

“Fair enough.” Maybe it was foolish to trust him, but there wasn’t much else she could do anymore.

“So can you find this witch’s sister?”

“No,” Gantalla said, her brief moment of enthusiasm fading. “She’d be disguised as a human. I only know her name, but in a city this big, it could take weeks to track her down just from her name alone.”

“But there must be other people in town. Your people, I mean. So… maybe you can just track down someone who has a similar sort of necklace?”

“You want me to just wander around town looking for people wearing a black necklace?”

“Unless you have a better idea?”

Sadly, she didn’t. “But even if I can find a necklace for my sister, then what? She’s still locked in a cage.”

“Every lock has a key. And this particular key is currently in the possession of one Captain of the Guard.”

“Which helps us how, exactly?”

“Easy. I sneak into his room later tonight and steal it.”

“The rooms that conveniently don’t have locks on them,” Gantalla said.

“Exactly. Because no one would ever believe that someone would try to steal from one of the warriors.”

“What if he’s in his room at the time?”

“I’ll find some sort of distraction for him.”

Gantalla gave him a sceptical look. “That’s rather vague for a rescue plan.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No, but… Okay, fine,” she said with a sigh. “So I’ll try and find a gem, and you try and steal a key, and then…”

“And then we meet back here. We wait until nightfall, when the town’s quiet. Then we sneak over to the cage, free your sister, you turn her into a human, and you both hightail it out of town.”

“That’s got to be the worst plan I’ve ever heard. But before you say anything, no, I don’t have a better idea. Okay, fine.” She stood up. “I guess I’ll go start wandering around, staring at people’s jewellery.”

“Wait, before you go…” He rummaged about in his pocket, then pulled out a small leather pouch. “Take this. It’s money. Obsidian’s plenty expensive in this world, and I doubt anyone’s going to give it to you for free.”

Gantalla took the pouch, stuffing it down into the side of her bag. But then she turned back to Nalyx, looking him over quizzically. “Why are you helping me?” she dared to ask.

Nalyx didn’t hesitate even a moment. “Because you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. And I couldn’t live with myself if I just stood by and did nothing.”

Gantalla felt herself blush. “Well… Thank you. For everything. Now I’d better get to work. I’ll catch up with you later.”