Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 by Chaz Brenchley Page B

but nothing else had changed ...
    Were they alone? She wondered, briefly. There was no sign or sound of Morakh in the dim light and the dead air of this chamber, but he could be still when he chose, he could be sitting directly behind her ...
    She was proud of herself for not jerking round to see, for sitting up slowly and turning her head as though there were no hurry in the world. There was certainly no Morakh. Now that her eyes were adjusting, she could make out the low shape of a door in the wall at her back, but nothing else. She had been right, then, this was a cell and she was a prisoner; and her guard shared the cell with her, its glossy, ill-formed body cramped and awkward in this enclosed space. It had crouched as best it could into a corner but still took up half the floor, more. It made no sound, no creak of shifting chitin, no scrape of claw on stone, no stir of breath; its hot gaze never moved from Julianne.
    She wasn't afraid of it, no. She was just slow, that was all, still disorientated, uncertain of her strength and its uses; no other reason why it seemed so hard to move herself, to stand and walk those few short paces to the door. Of course she didn't think the 'ifrit would pounce as soon as she twitched a muscle, of course she knew it wasn't going to eat her ...
    She'd seen a man, a known thief downed by a trained hound once in Marasson. She'd seen, felt, smelled his terror at the steady rumble of its growling, the bared fangs an inch from his throat and held back only by its obedience. Many times she'd seen the palace cats and the mice they played with, how often there'd been no pleasure in the game because the little things wouldn't scamper but only stood immobile, fixed with fear. But she was not a mouse, far from it; and this spirit-creature might desire her death — if spirit could know desire - but it would not kill her now. Orders or instinct or plotting restrained it. She was captive, bait perhaps, a ransom-prize but no worse than that. Not a victim, not a corpse.
    Not yet a corpse, and moving would not make her so. And so at last she stood, deliberately with her back to the 'ifrit to show how very much she scorned it, how little she was afraid. Those messages might be too subtle for the thing to read, but not for her; right now she mattered more.
    She stood - a little dizzy, a little off-balance, her body still seeming not to fit too well - and shuffled her way to the door. It was locked or barred, of course, she was a prisoner. The 'ifrit too, then: but the 'ifrit apparently had no reason to leave, so long as she was there.
    Questing fingers and eyes that squinted in the gloom could find no handle and no hinge, only the heavy wooden planking and the iron studs th at held it all together. Patientl y she picked at each with her nails, hoping to find one loose enough to draw out, a spike to make a weapon that might dim those fierce eyes that watched her as she picked. They were an 'ifrit's only weakness unless you had a blade blessed by a priest, which she did not. Or unless you were a djinni with a sea at your command, which she was not. She wasn't sure that a door-nail would be enough to kill the creature, and was fairly sure that it would kill her first in any case; still, she thought she might like the chance to try. If things turned out that way, if there came no sign of friends, husbands, rescue ...
    No surprise, though, that none of the nails would come to the picking of her own. It was a well-made door: solid timber neither green nor ancient, no hint of worm or rot that her fingers could discover and no sign of any give when she leaned all her weight against it.
    She didn't pound her fists or kick it, nothing so petulant; she'd found what she expected and felt almost satisfied by that, almost pleased that her enemies hadn't let her down. She liked a puzzle, a challenge, something worthy of her father ’ s daughter. Which was why she wouldn't simply sit and wait for rescue after all;