"oneeeeeeeee…hundredandninetyninethousendsixhundredandthree green bottles, hanging on the wall, onehundredandninetyninethousendsixhundredandthree green bottles, hanging on a wall, and if one green bottleeee, should accidentally faaaallllll…
there'll be onehundredandninetyninethousendsixhundredaaaand two green bottles, hanging on the wall.
Oneeeeeeeeee…hundredandninetyninethousendsixhu – "
*clunk*
Kel and Joren craned over Rat's now prone form, lying on the grimy cobblestones of their cell. His face was lit by the dusty beams of light filtering from a filth-encrusted lantern, which was hung on a small hook on the wall opposite their cell.
"You've knocked him out" Kel muttered.
Joren rolled his eyes, but refrained from making a sarcastic comment about stating the obvious.
"He shouldn't have been singing. The only excuse for singing with a voice like that, is impending doom." He muttered grimly, leaning back against the wall off the cell, and staring into a murky corner, pointedly ending the first exchange made between the two of them since they had been taken into custody. After Joren had blacked out, Keita had managed to get away, but the other three had been dragged off to face the Captain of the Scanran watch, Captain Platellus. The interview had started off well:
~~~~~
"Are you feeling all right?" Joren came to his senses to find the Captain looming over him, his concerned face filling his vision, and jerked backwards reflexively.
"I'm afraid those idiots hit you rather hard." The Captain had continued, handing Joren a damp bag, which was filled with ice, a look of concern evident on his face. Joren accepted it without thinking, and then sat there with the dripping bag in his hand, trying to ignore the pain which was throbbing at the back of his head and on his right shoulder.
"For the back of your neck" The Captain pointed out helpfully. Joren glared, and pressed the ice pack against that spot, ignoring the rivulets of chilly water which began to course down his back, and the numbness growing in his fingers. His arm brushed the side of his head, and he winced; there was a large bump forming there. That was odd, he could normally hold his own in hand to hand fighting, he should have been able to take on those guards easily. But not this time…because something had distracted him…something. Joren creased his brow as he tried to remember.
"I'm terribly sorry about my men's behaviour though." The Captain said, making his way over to sit on a wooden bench at the side of his dingy office, and lowering himself slowly down next to Kel, who was sporting a beautiful black eye. "They're new you see, trying to impress their sergeants and all that. Jolly good chaps at heart."
Joren dimly registered at the back of his mind the fact that he could actually understand the words 'Jolly good chaps' in Scanran. He pushed the thought away and tried to focus, he could almost remember now what had distracted him. He had been running, he knew that, and he had come to one of those alleys.
"Just a little over eager sometimes." The Captain continued, smiling warmly at them and revealing a glinting golden tooth which showed in place of his small left incisor. "And I can see that they've maybe been a little too efficient with all of you, so I'll just need a few answers, and then I'll let you three trot off to your homes."
Joren stared at the man. He couldn't imagine the Tortallan Provost telling anyone whom he'd just arrested, that they could 'trot off to their homes'. The Provost didn't look much like this Captain either. The Provost was a sharp, grey haired man, who radiated efficiency. Captain Platellus was a portly, round faced man, whose jowls quivered when he spoke, but he seemed nice enough so far. Joren narrowed his eyes. He was always suspicious of 'nice', from high-ranking officials. You didn't get to the top of the ladder by handing out bags of ice and giving group therapy sessions. And you certainly didn't manage to grab a job which allows you to rake in enough money to buy a fur lined coat with what looked like griffin feathers stitched into the embroidery, as the Captain was wearing, when you have such little control over your men that you're left apologising for their actions afterwards.
Rat was sitting on the bottom bunk of the bed next to the one which Joren was occupying. He looked too dazed to say anything. Kel's face was blank as she gazed at the floor, her mind whirring furiously. Joren simply stared back at the Captain, vacantly.
"Right then." The Captain clapped his hands together, and rubbed them briskly. "You were actually trespassing over a private estate. The street where we arrested you was on the outskirts of the city, just a few roads away from the townhouse which Baron Cranmoor and his family occupy, and they own a little of the surrounding land. You must have accidentally slipped in through one of the back way alleys. If you had been coming directly from the city, you wouldn't have missed the sign." He smiled in a way which resembled Lord Burchad when he had just fired someone. Joren fought the urge to get up and run, knowing that the nausea rolling over him in waves would soon force him to lose consciousness again if he did.
Kel stirred and raised her head hazily. She furrowed her brow and gazed straight ahead as if she too was trying to remember something. When no one said anything, the Captain spoke again, his kindly look never faltering.
"Would any of you like to tell me what you were doing there?" If any other man had said that, he would probably have sounded accusing, but not the Captain. He actually managed to say the words and look as if he were on their side.
Surprisingly, it was Rat who cleared his throat and spoke.
"We were being chased by big men with sharp swords." He croaked. The Captain cracked a smile.
"I can see why you'd want to get away from them." His tone was sympathetic.
Joren had by now stopped focusing on trying to remember what it was that had distracted him earlier. There was something not right here. Any official, especially one who had something to do with the city watch, shouldn't be this…this…understanding. They should completely refuse to listen to logic in any shape or form, and should insist upon clapping them in irons. And they have thin lips and a greedy smirk. And they should have a big red nose. And say 'ello 'ello a lot. (Watchmen are always like this) They shouldn't be…nice.
"Do you know whose men they were? The ones who were chasing you at the beginning I mean." The Captain inquired. "After all, we don't want them running lose and hurting anyone else."
Joren sat up straighter, and abandoned the pretence of deafness. He stared at the Captain. They hadn't even been asked to give proof yet. The Captain had simply taken them at their word. He had taken what they, a bunch of strangers, said, over what one of the most powerful men in the cities men had said. This couldn't be right.
"I didn't see their uniforms very well Sir. I think had some blue on them."
"Please, call me Scroggy. Scroggy Platellus." The Captain hurriedly responded. Rat gave the barest splutter, which turned quickly into a cough. The Captain offered him a canteen of water, which Rat, still coughing, declined with a polite wave of his hand.
Platellus turned his polite gaze on Kel.
"It's Kate, isn't it? Sorry, I'm not terribly good with names." His expression was so bashful, that Kel had to smile at him.
"So what did you see? Where were you in all of this?" Kel pulled the blanket which was draped around her shoulders tighter, before answering.
"I was on the rooftops, with the other two." She replied hesitantly.
"Other two?" The Captain pounced on the word like a starved stormwing on a corpse.
"Ye-I mean, no..I…erm. Yes."
The Captain nodded understandingly, and patted her soothingly on the shoulder.
"So the last one is still out there in the dark, probably worried sick about you three. And what happened then?"
Kel spoke slowly, but firmly. "I heard those men behind us first, I only saw them when we'd started running properly, and even then, I only noticed that their uniforms were blue and cream." The Captain nodded encouragingly. Kel continued, obviously having decided, like Rat, that it was probably best to go with the truth, well, to a certain extent at least.
"After we were forced to split up, Rat and myself managed to keep the horse. Unfortunately, we were riding through the slums, looking very conspicuous, when we got a chamber pot dumped on our heads."
Joren was torn between laughter, and scorn. In the end he decided to show neither, and feel both. A difficult feat, accomplished only because he was well practised at hiding his laughter and scorn. Being forced to watch mime artists at work does that to a person.
Kel ploughed on regardless.
"And then we rode through the market, and we accidentally rode through a butchers stall, and the chickens got a little upset, and they started fluttering all over the place, so we got covered in feathers. Obviously we didn't have time to change, so we left the horse, because we couldn't get him out, and started running."
Well, that explained the feathers Joren had seen earlier, and the blanket around Kel's shoulders now. Hold on… earlier? Joren pushed his mind. What was this image that he had blocked out? What had happened after he'd come to that alley? Then he remembered something else.
"What happened to Ella?" He said, without moving his gaze from the wall opposite his bed.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kel turn her head away. It was Rat who answered.
"We let her off before we got hit with the chamber pot. I don't think that the men were after her."
"And if they were?" Joren persisted. Rat hesitated again.
"If they were, then she had a better chance of getting away by getting lost in the crowd."
Kel took a sip from the mug in her hands. She seemed flushed. It was at this point that the Captain decided to get involved again. Surprisingly, he didn't ask any questions about Ella, probably assuming that she was the other person to whom Kel had referred, when she had lied about being on the rooftops with Rat.
"How did all three of you manage to fit on one horse?" The Captain injected.
. There was a silence.
"Pardon?" That was Rat.
"I mean" The Captain continued, his permanent look of enthusiasm and eagerness shining forth. "If you were galloping through the slums, at quite a speed from the way you describe it, how did both yourself, Kel here, and this Ella, manage to fit onto one horse?"
Another silence.
Joren gave a pointed yawn, hoping to speed things up, so that he could lie down again, or get out of the dingy office. His head was pounding, and his thoughts were drifting. Why did a Captain have beds in his office anyway? And why wouldn't that fly on the wall opposite him stop its incessant buzzing? He must have been glaring at it for the last five minutes. Things usually stopped when he glared at them.
His head dropped into his hands, and he pressed his temples, in an effort to stop the pounding still coming from the back of his head. The bag of ice slid slowly down the back of his shirt, leaving a large, cold trail of water down Joren's back. Joren ignored it.
"It was a very big horse." Came the croak from Rat.
Even to Joren's slightly fuzzy conscious thinking, Rat's answer sounded pathetic, but the Captain merely nodded, and withdrew his arm from Kel's shoulders, resting one hand on her blanketed arm instead
"So when you were running, you weren't actually purposely wanting to enter Lord Cranmoor's estate?" The Captain said.
He received a nod of affirmation from Kel.
"And it was merely your escape route. Well, I don't blame you. So that's what I'll tell the 'powers that be', all right."
His tone was light. Joren could hear the inverted commas around 'powers that be', as the Captain spoke, and regarded this as evidence to the sorry state of affairs in the Scanran watch. Being able to speak in a tone which indicates inverted commas is just wrong. He would have to remember to include that in his next report to Sir Myles, except that the fly still wouldn't stop buzzing. It was getting louder now.
Kel and Rat nodded at the Captains words. Rat was looking grateful. The captain continued to beam.
"So I'll just go and have a word with them, and bring you three some more cocoa, and then we can let you all go home."
"That would be very kind." Rat said, looking weary.
The Captain stood up and drew himself to full height, still smiling. Then his expression changed and the smile twisted, turning into a leer.
"You must think I'm a complete idiot" he snarled.
They blinked at him.
"The cheek of it!" he continued, his face still contorted in rage, "Three people, arrested by my own self, fed and kept warm on my pay, telling me a pack of lies!"
He strode out of the room and summoned the guards, without giving any of them a chance to protest.
The last thing that Joren remembered thinking as they were forced bodily into a cell situated a few floors below ground, was 'I knew it.' He felt a strange sort of detached smugness, as his head hit the rank cobblestones of the cell.
~~~~~
Joren shook his head, letting the memory go, and bringing himself back to the cell where he now sitting, still staring into a corner. He couldn't be blamed for knocking Rat out. He had awoken, feeling much better, although still slightly nauseous, to be confronted with Rat's singing. It would have been horrible enough for anyone. And then he had remembered. Remembered what it was that had distracted him enough when they'd been arrested, that he'd forgotten everything else, and stood staring like a dummy whilst he was knocked out and carted off.
Something dripped in the cell next to theirs.
Kel cleared her throat.
"So, how are we going to get out of here?"
"I don't know", Joren continued to look pointedly into the corner.
Another silence.
"Are you feeling better?"
"Much."
Another drip. Something scampered past their cell. Joren caught a glimpse of a large, worm like tail. Rats. At least the unconscious cretin in the corner was amongst his own kind, he mused.
Kel, famous for her determination, tried again.
"I wanted to ask you about…you know. What me and Rat were doing, when we were, arrested."
Joren slowly turned his head to look at her. Her face was impassive as she gazed at the floor, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
"What about it?", he asked slowly. His tone was as emotionless as her face, but the tension in the room was palpable.
"Please, don't mention it to anyone." She continued to keep her gaze on the floor as she spoke. Joren raised an eyebrow, and allowed an amused smile to tug the corners of his lips.
"And why should I do that?" he drawled, stretching out so that he was sitting more comfortably with his legs spread in front of him. Kel's looked up at him, her face still devoid of any expression. "It's not like anyone cares about your little liaisons Mindelan." Joren smiled at her, a charming, disarming, slightly bitter grin.
He was watching her closely, and saw her jaw muscles tighten slightly, forcing him to fight the urge to smirk.
"It wasn't a liaison." She said quietly. "Or even a proper kiss. We were trying to blend in."
Joren snorted.
"Perhaps it was the feathers which gave you away then?" He asked, sarcasm flowing steadily in his voice. "Two people trying to imitate farmyard animals in heat, would look slightly out of the ordinary, don't you think?"
This time she blushed, whether in anger or embarrassment, he couldn't tell. He continued without giving her a chance to speak.
"Or perhaps you were just standing there, and you thought." He stopped to suck in an angry breath, "you thought, we're covered in feathers and crap and looking really, really out of place. Oh well, maybe if we just kiss so hard that we suck each others brains out, no one will notice."
"It wasn't that at all." Kel said angrily. Even angry, she only looked mildly irritated.
"Oh no, what was it then?" Joren asked, looking her in the eye. His smile was long gone, and he was breathing hard. Strange how being angry made you do that. Joren couldn't remember having been truly angry for years. Not since his sister's death.
"We were stuck there, you're right, looking like we'd been tumbling in several dustbins, standing in a lane with a load of couples who were kissing, who didn't really look much better than we did. What would you have done?" Kel spat at him.
"Run." Joren said shortly. "I'd have run all the way back to the palace, and then when the watchmen came, I'd have denied, denied, denied.
"Why didn't you then?" Kel's question cut through him like a knife. This would have been an opportune moment for Rat to wake up, and distract Kel, and Joren fervently wished that he would, but he didn't.
The problem with the question was that it was the same one which Joren had been asking himself. He knew the answer of course, but how was he to tell her that seeing them together had shocked him? That he prided himself on his ability to observe and analyse people, so that he could predict their behaviour, and finding Kel and Rat kissing, was not something he had anticipated. He had been shocked. Rat and Kel? The possibility had never occurred to him. He hadn't seen any hints previously which indicated that they were paying more attention to each other than normal, and, well, it just didn't seem right.
"I hadn't anticipated seeing you and Rat like that." He said, finally, in a cold tone of voice. "And I was slightly shocked." She raised her eyebrows, but he said nothing. He didn't have the energy to jeer at her.
It was at this moment that Rat chose to join the rest of the world. He groaned, and tried to sit up. Kel slid over to him.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" Kel asked Rat, holing her index finger up in front of his dazed face.
"Un." He replied blearily.
"Now?" She asked, putting her middle finger up to join the first one.
"Two."
"Now?" She asked with three fingers up
"Free."
"Now?" With four fingers.
"um…many?" Rat hazarded a guess, and pulled himself up straighter.
"Go to sleep." Kel sighed, pushing him down. "Your brain's jarred."
And he did just that.
Kel moved back over to her corner, and turned to Joren, who was leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed.
There was a pause.
"So, what do we do now?" Kel asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.
"I said earlier, I don't know." Joren answered, through gritted teeth.
There came a low chuckle from the gloomy shadows outside their dank cell.
"You, my friends, do nothing." The Captain walked forwards, the dingy light casting almost eerie shadows across the Captain's plump face. "I will be delivering you to the Lord Cranmoor shortly, for him to do with you what he will. He seems to have been expecting you. He certainly went to a lot of trouble, making sure that his men chased you all that way, and then getting me to pick you up." The Captain's face held a podgy sneer.
Joren looked up now, hit with a sudden realisation of what had happened to them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kel's head spring up with the same horrified, and angered expression.
"It was a trap." She breathed.
The Captain regarded her as if she were something unpleasant which he had found on the bottom of his shoe.
"It was indeed. Took you long enough to figure it out." He said.
"Those men chasing us, they were Cranmoor's men. They just wanted to get us onto his land so that we could be legally arrested for trespassing." Kel continued. The Captain nodded happily.
"Baron Cranmoor's a big man, he'll pay me well for this." The Captain's smile looked almost predatory in the dull light. Kel looked away in disgust.
"What an interesting insight into the Scanran justice system." Joren muttered. "Next time I get arrested in this country, I'll remember to bring a big bag of money with me for bribes and I'll be out in an hour."
The Captain turned to sneer at him. "We've all got to eat, the same as you nobles." He said. "Except commoners like myself haven't been brought up with silver spoons in our mouths." He got no response, so he spoke again. "And I thought you were Scanran. Most nobles know how our system works." He sniffed and Kel stiffened. Captain Platellus obviously didn't know that they were Tortallan, so maybe this Baron Cranmoor didn't know either. Maybe he had another reason for wanting to arrest them.
"Why are you down here then?" Joren drawled, indicating the grimy room and clammy cell with a sweep of his arm.
The Captain straightened, brushing some invisible lint off the shoulder of his griffin-feather-trimmed coat.
"I'm just here to see that all's well, check that no bars have rusted, check that you lot have got enough food to keep you going for a day."
"To gloat you mean." Everyone turned to look at Rat, who had spoken. The noise had woken him up, and he seemed very different from the dazed, confused Rat of a few hours ago. His face was bright beneath the muck, and he had propped himself against the wall. His face was leaning on his fist, and his elbow on his left knee. He kept his defiant gaze trained on Platellus. The Captain grinned.
"Well, partly." He admitted, "But...I was also wondering."
"What?" Joren spoke curtly. The captain inched closer to the bars, and leant forward eagerly. When he spoke, it was with an air of secrecy.
"I was wondering…what exactly you'd all done to get the Cranmoors after you? They come from a powerful tribe, and…well, they're second only to the King's family. You must have done something really big for them to go to all this trouble."
He was practically pushing his face through the bars now, his face contorted with an expression of greedy eagerness for gossip. There was a pause.
"We don't know what we've done." Kel replied blankly. The Captains face fell. He stepped back looking angry, and opened his mouth to speak, when-
*clunk*
The Captain crumpled on the floor, revealing a tall, smiling figure who had been standing behind him. The atmosphere immediately grew lighter.
That's the third time today, Joren thought. It could be a new trend.
"Keita." Rat breathed, edging towards the bars.
"I hope you've come to get us out of here." Kel said, grinning.
"Of course." Keita smiled back, already producing a slender leather packet which she handed to Rat, who grabbed it lovingly. "But, we may have a few problems."
Her gaze was dark as she turned to look at Joren.
"What sort of problems?" he asked, his voice low. Keita winced, and looked back at Rat, who had produced several rods of metal, in various shapes and sizes, from the packet, and was selecting a few.
"You'll see." She said.
*****
Yup, there's been another plot change. A plot to me is like the pieces of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. I jam a pieces together aimlessly, and hack bits off to make them fit.
I don't work well with plots, as you can see.
When I was reading back over my story, I realised how utterly ridiculous some of it is, and how half of it really doesn't even fit together. So I've decided that I'm just going to have a little random fun, and hope that the plotline which I'd worked out will hold up.
I've been told by a reliable source that this chapter is very complicated. If you can't understand it, review and tell me, as an extra warning for me not to get my plot lines tangled up in the future.
Let me rest in peace/Ellie : For heavens sake woman, will you STOP sending me pointless reviews. You can take the piss out of me at school. Do not defile the good art of reviewing, and pollute the pretty reviews section.
CrystalLili: Two whole reviews. I feel loved. I hope I explained in this chapter about why Joren didn't recognise her. She was covered in crap and feathers at the time, so the dress was probably a bit dead. Thanks for both reviews, they really helped me with this chapter. The advice was great.
Drowning Rooster: Um, thank you for the review and the compliment. I've read one book by l j smith. Do you recommend them?
Nawat Crow: UPDAAAATTTEEEE!! Whew, got that out of my system. Pretty reviews as always!! Thank you!!
Erialis: thank you for the review.
Rubber Duck: Thanks for the positive vibes!
Sabrina: Well, Kel knows now that Joren is Ralph, but I didn't go into her feelings too much in this chapter. Thanks for the review!
la dame noire: Well, a little bit of grovelling goes a long way, my mum always says.
Pietersite: Look!! I updated!! Now you have to!!! And you're forgiven. J
I promised to dedicate this chapter to Ellie, Megsee, jESSIE, Relle, M.K and Sammydoo, because this story is as plotless as they are! Also to Pietersite for her pretty glares.