The troll dragged Alexandra through a long, dark tunnel to a metal gate that opened onto a brick causeway running along the edge of an underground river. It smelled of garbage and dead fish.
The troll did not speak. Alexandra wondered if Carlos Black never meant to send her to Eerie Island. If the troll ate her and threw her remains into these fetid, black waters, who would know? Would her aunt even care about her fate?
Feeling desperation, and stifling panic, Alexandra began composing verses in her head, knowing that doggerel verse while chained to a troll probably wouldn't help her. She looked about with her Witch's Sight. Maybe there was a crack in the world, something she could pry open. She saw nothing, until a pair of lights bobbed ahead of them in the darkness, like large, ghastly fireflies.
Will-o-wisps, Alexandra thought. Ignis fatuus — magical concentrations of ill will and bad fortune. Certainly appropriate for this place.
But as she stumbled closer, yanked by the troll and trying not to slip on the wet bricks, she saw that they were lanterns hung from poles attached to a boat. The boat was a small wooden dinghy with two occupants. As they came close enough for Alexandra to see the lantern light falling on their faces, she recognized the greenish, leathery countenances of goblins.
The troll said nothing to the goblins, merely tossed the end of the chain it was holding onto the boat. One of the goblins grabbed it and said, "Step aboard." He yanked on the chain almost before Alexandra could react, so she half-jumped, half-fell onto the boat and landed hard on her side, barely avoiding hitting her head.
"You didn't have to jerk me onto the boat like that," she said.
The goblin aimed a kick at her side, and the tiny, sharp toe of his boot jabbed her ribs hard enough to make her flip over with a gasp of pain. "Silence! Give us guff and we'll drag you in the water behind us. See if we don't!"
Alexandra pulled herself slowly into a sitting position and glared at the goblin.
While he held the end of the chain attached to her manacles, the other goblin untied the rope holding the boat to the side of the causeway and then grabbed a single oar and pushed off. A sluggish current took hold of the boat, and it drifted downstream, away from the troll and further into the darkness.
They floated for several minutes, with the goblin at the stern occasionally dipping the oar in the water. Light from the lanterns barely reached the sides of the underground river. Alexandra only knew they must be somewhere beneath Chicago, until she heard a distant horn, and felt a cold breeze blowing past her. The darkness became dim gray fog, with more light penetrating into the murk from some point ahead where the river must emerge from its underground channel.
Would this tiny boat take them all the way to Eerie Island? She thought the fabled wizard prison was far away on the Great Lakes. She wondered what would prevent her captors from simply dumping her over the side. She studied her manacled hands, which were shaking a little. She clenched her fists to stop the trembling.
They emerged from the blackness of the underground tunnel, but not from the fog. Around her, Alexandra could now hear the sounds of Muggle vessels blowing their horns, and from not far away, vehicular traffic. They had to be near Chicago's waterfront, yet in this dense fog, the goblin dinghy was invisible.
The goblin holding Alexandra's chain wrapped it around a small central mast, and said, "Any guff and overboard you go, you just see."
Alexandra said nothing. She was becoming chilly. Lake Michigan in November was cold, the bottom of the boat was damp, and while she'd put on a jacket before leaving her house, it wasn't her thick winter coat, nor was she wearing her magical waterproof boots.
The goblin unrolled a small sail from a bundle near the bow and attached it to the mast. Once raised, it was a puny thing that barely seemed to catch a breeze. Yet they continued moving across the water, now at a greater rate of speed, passing between the looming shadows of much larger ships in the fog. Soon they left those behind.
Cold seeped into her. The damp chill matched her mood, and her initial wild notions of using doggerel verse or improbable threats faded as she realized that she was truly bound and helpless. As Diana Grimm had said, no one was going to intervene on her behalf. She was all alone.
After an interminable hour on the boat, Alexandra felt a familiar presence. A layer of fog still covered the water and the sky was overcast, so seeing anything out in the surrounding grayness was impossible, and there had been no more ship sounds since Chicago. But now she was sure she could hear an occasional flapping overhead.
Oh no.
Seagulls occasionally swept past them, but some other bird was pacing the boat, and Alexandra felt joy and grief suffusing her: a desperate desire to see her loyal companion, and dread that the goblins or someone else might.
Go away, Charlie, she thought. Go away. You were supposed to fly to Roanoke. What are you doing here?
She couldn't reach the raven with her senses, but she knew Charlie was out there. Her familiar knew very well what she wanted — and was refusing.
It was cold and a wind was blowing across the lake. The goblin at the mast angled the sail. Alexandra realized Charlie was fighting against the wind to keep up, and through the connection they shared, she knew the raven was tiring. There was nowhere around here to rest —
A black shape materialized out of the mist, flapping loudly. Alexandra could see the wand and scrolled parchment still attached to her familiar's leg. Charlie landed on top of the boat's mast and sat there, regarding Alexandra and the two goblins with an imperious air, as if the boat had been conjured as the raven's personal conveyance across the water.
"Yikyak zataq!" yelled one of the goblins, and threw something. Alexandra couldn't tell whether it was a bread roll or a stone or some random piece of wood clattering about on the bottom of the boat, but it missed Charlie by a wide margin, and the raven barely stirred.
"Get out of here, Charlie!" Alexandra yelled.
"Alexandra," Charlie said.
"You idiot," she half-whispered, half-sobbed.
The second goblin approached the mast, holding the long oar.
"Charlie, fly away!" Alexandra screamed.
"Never, never!" Charlie said.
The goblin swung the oar, trying to reach the bird at the top of the mast. It smashed against the wooden pole and Charlie flapped out of the oar's reach.
Alexandra rolled onto her side, and with her manacled hands placed against the floor of the boat, she kicked with both legs together, sweeping the goblin's legs out from under him. He dropped the oar, which fell with a clatter and almost hit Alexandra in the head before bouncing off the goblin's shoulder hard enough to make him yelp in pain.
Charlie — fly, she thought, making it a command, with all the force of her will behind it.
"Fly, fly," Charlie said mournfully, and flapped off into the mist.
Alexandra's relief was brief — the heavy oar came down on her head, and she saw stars.
"Give us guff, you little witch!" said the goblin with the oar.
Dazed, Alexandra didn't realize she was being lifted by the two goblins until she went over the side of the boat. The splash was an icy shock that paralyzed her. The water was only a few degrees above freezing and for a moment she lost all thoughts and sensations.
She sank beneath the surface and almost gulped water, before she kicked out with the same instincts that had saved her when she jumped into Old Larkin Pond the previous year. She was helped by the chain attached to her manacles, which the two goblins were using to pull her back to the surface. But when she grabbed the side of the boat and tried to haul herself back aboard, one of the goblins placed a rough, scaly hand on her face and pushed her back down. She was so dizzy and cold, she didn't have the strength to resist him.
"Warned you about giving us guff," the goblin said. "Now you can swim the rest of the way." The two goblins laughed.
"I'll f-f-freeze to d-death," Alexandra said, teeth chattering. The cold was terrible. Weakly, she tried to pull herself up again, and one of the goblins brought a fist down on the top of her head, exactly where the oar had hit her earlier. The pain exploding against her skull made her forget the cold, and she fell back into the water and almost lost her grip on the boat entirely.
After a minute, she realized that she couldn't actually swim, because the goblins had cinched the chain up so that even if she let go, she would hang by her wrists with her head just out of the water. But the cold water clamped its icy jaws around her and was beginning to numb her to all other thoughts and sensations.
"You… you're going to k-kill me," she said. Already the thought of closing her eyes and slipping away was tempting. A flicker of outrage kept her from giving up entirely — these goblins were worse than the hill dwarves, and even more sadistic than the Generous Ones!
"You're a witch," said one of the goblins, with a touch of bitterness. "You're harder to kill than that." But they hauled her back aboard and let her curl up, wet and freezing, at the bottom of the boat.
She managed to half-open her eyes, and through narrow slits where icicles threatened to form on her lids, she shot the goblin a venomous, hateful stare.
"I'll…" She shivered violently. Anger felt good. To her surprise, it warmed her. She clamped her jaws shut to keep her teeth from chattering, and through her clenched teeth she said, "I'll m-m-make you reg-g-gret t-this."
The goblins, surprisingly, did not jeer or insult her in response, but grew quiet. Then the one who'd hit her with the oar said, "They all say that. But we're protected."
The other one said, "Wizard justice consigned you to us. The blame is not ours."
Alexandra shook her head and mumbled, "T-t-they all s-s-say that-t-t."
Alexandra had been cold before. She had jumped into Old Larkin Pond when it was frozen over. She had been to the Lands Beyond. And she'd been tied up and abused by hill dwarves. But sitting in the bottom of the goblins' dinghy, soaked to the bone, chained and beaten, was a new and different kind of torment.
She suffered, on the trip across the lake, until she became nearly mindless with the cold. Her body began shaking so violently that the goblins finally threw a blanket over her, which did little to warm her but at least kept the icy wind off her.
To her surprise, she did not freeze to death. Her awareness faded in and out, as all she could concentrate on was the horrid, life-draining cold. After a while, memories of warmth and muscles that didn't shiver uncontrollably felt like a distant dream.
But the goblins must have been right — despite the chill that penetrated her body right into her bones, Alexandra neither died nor became delirious. At no point did she forget where she was or why she was there, or who had done this to her. Her anger and hatred burned, sometimes bright and sometimes more dimly.
She shivered, in her wet clothes, until at last a large, dark shape materialized out of the mist. It grew larger and larger, a shadow drawing the water and mist toward it, until it was identifiable as an edifice looming up in the middle of the great lake. Alexandra forced herself to sit up and try to take in her surroundings. The effort of will it took to move was nearly the greatest of her life.
The island itself, at least what she could see of it, must have been tiny. The stone foundation built on a tiny plot of wet rock dominated it entirely, stretching from one edge of the waterline to the other. It resembled a grim, blocky castle with barred windows. The goblins pointed the dinghy toward a small dock.
The boat bumped into a short wooden pier. The impact was slight, but jarring enough to shake Alexandra, shivering and tired as she was. One of the goblins jerked on her chain and said, "Stand up."
Slowly, Alexandra dragged herself to her feet. With her wet clothing still clinging to her frozen skin, she shivered so hard she didn't trust herself to speak. But she stared at the goblin with a look of such intense ferocity that it backed away and muttered in Gobbledegook, tugging less violently on the chain attached to her manacles as it stepped toward the front of the boat.
Alexandra knew that without magic, she would probably have died of hypothermia. She shouldn't still be conscious. She felt half-dead, and continued to nurture the flame of her rage to keep herself from collapsing, or sinking into a gray fog of despair. She stared at the back of the goblin, and her lips moved in soundless incantations as she wished hexes on her tormentor. She imagined a black, smoking hole of charred skin and leather blossoming on the back of the goblin's neck. Then the skin of the back of its head sloughing off in poisonous green strips. Then hundreds of biting insects swarming and stinging inside its clothes.
She knew spells that could do all those things, but chained and wandless, wishing did not invoke them. The other goblin stood by alertly, holding the oar as if ready to knock her back into the water. Alexandra kept her eyes fixed on the back of his companion's head, hoping that at least her stare might cause an itch or something.
Something stirred in the back of her mind. It was nothing she could see with Witch's Sight, but this place was definitely more than just a stone keep.
They stepped up onto the damp planks of the pier. At the end of the pier a spiked portcullis rose as they approached, making the sort of grinding, clanking sound Alexandra associated with old movies about castles and dungeons. On the other side of the portcullis was a short, dark tunnel. Beyond that Alexandra could see a patch of gray light, and a dark figure waiting there.
She half-walked, half-stumbled forward, trying to keep the goblin from yanking on the chain, as every time he did, the manacles rubbed against her wrists, cold and hard against skin already chilled, soaked, and reddened.
They walked beneath the iron spikes of the portcullis, down the dripping stone tunnel, and into an open air courtyard that was nothing more than a tiny square of paved stone on the other side of the entrance. Stone walls rose high above them on all sides, and there were two other exits besides the tunnel they'd entered through.
The dark figure turned out to be an enormous beast with the body of a lion, large black wings folded against its furry haunches, and a man-like face staring down at Alexandra and her goblin escorts from within a coarse, reddish mane. Its head was eight feet off the ground. The creature was nearly the size of an elephant.
The goblins came to a halt before it. Alexandra looked up into the broad, human face with considerably less interest than she would have under other circumstances. Its paws were large enough to take her head off with one swipe, but she was feeling something deeper, something beneath her feet, something in the air — no, in the ground…
"What is your name?" the beast asked, in a deep, surprisingly pleasant voice.
Alexandra was silent a moment, not out of obstinance, but because it took her that long to think, and decide on a response. Demands, questions, even pleas, ran through her mind, and the thought of defiance did too, as pointless as it seemed, but she answered, "A-Alex-andra Q-Q-Quick-k-k."
"Not Alexandra Octavia Thorn, the daughter of Abraham Everard Thorn?" asked the beast.
"Yes," Alexandra said. "T-That's the n-name I was b-b-born with. But I ans-s-swer to A-Alexandra Q-Quick."
The great shaggy head nodded. "So be it. Do you wish to go home, Alexandra Quick?"
Alexandra blinked and stared into the creature's eyes. The name finally came to her — sphinx. The creature was a sphinx. She'd heard of them, of course, but they were one of those beasts she'd never quite been sure about. So many magical beasts she'd read about as a child turned out not to actually exist, while others were nothing like those in the books she'd read. The sphinx, however, appeared quite real.
Was it taunting her? What sort of trick question was that? The thought of going home made Alexandra's heart beat faster and a different kind of heat fill her chest and her throat, and for a moment her vision blurred. If this was a joke, it was a cruel one. But she said, "Yes-s."
The sphinx grinned. Inside its almost-human mouth, it had rows of sharp teeth and a pair of leonine fangs. "If you can answer a riddle, I will let you leave with these goblins, and they will take you back to Chicago."
Alexandra blinked again, and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hands. The chains slapped against her. It was so cold, even here, sheltered from the wind. She was still wet, freezing, and shivering. She managed to say, without stammering, "What's the catch?"
The sphinx's grin broadened. "If you fail to answer the riddle, I will eat you."
Thinking was hard, and thinking fast was harder. This wasn't a fair contest. She was hardly at her sharpest and most alert. The evil creature probably had nothing better to do all day than think up impossible riddles. But what the hell? Imprisoned until she was twenty-one — the seven years she'd been given to live by the Generous Ones would elapse by then anyway. Maybe this was her best chance to escape, one way or the other.
Somewhere in the back of her head a voice was screaming "No!" at her, advising her that this was a bad idea, but she said, "All right."
The two goblins stepped away, the one dropping the chain so it lay loosely on the stone pavement.
The sphinx sat up straighter, and its face assumed an expression of stern majesty. "What does a man have in his pants that you can also find on a pool table?"
Alexandra scrunched up her brow. A tiny blush of color appeared on her frozen cheeks. She half-opened her mouth. "Wha— s-s-seriously?"
"I am very serious," the sphinx said.
She shook her head, and glanced at the goblins, who were looking at each other expressionlessly. She looked back at the sphinx.
"Do you know the answer or not?" demanded the sphinx.
Alexandra sighed. "Balls," she said, in a small voice.
"HAH!" the sphinx roared. It slapped a massive paw on the stones and bellowed laughter. "No, you wicked child! POCKETS!"
The goblins began laughing as well.
Alexandra was more indignant than afraid. Her cheeks burned hotter. Of course she should have realized the real answer wouldn't be the obvious one. But who expected dirty riddles from a sphinx? If she weren't barely able to stand for the shivering cold, she would have gotten it immediately and the sphinx would never have tricked her so easily.
The sphinx stopped laughing and grew still, except for its tail. The goblins continued laughing.
"Are you g-g-going to e-eat me n-now?" Alexandra asked.
The sphinx laughed again. "Of course not. Let me tell you a secret, little girl: your kind doesn't actually taste very good. And I'd have to ask you to take your clothes off first, and that would be a violation of the International Prisons, Châteaus, Towers, and Dungeons Guild's Code of Ethical Conduct."
"Wow," Alexandra said. "So m-making me s-s-strip would be agains-s-st the r-rules, but b-b-beat-ting me, d-d-dunking me in a lake, l-letting me f-f-freeze for hours, and t-then t-t-threatening t-t-to eat-t-t me is-sn't?"
The sphinx turned its head. Its unblinking expression made the goblins shrink back against the dank stone behind them.
"She struggled," said one of the goblins.
"She tried to escape," said the other.
"I d-d-did not," Alexandra said.
"Their word against yours. You're a prisoner, therefore assumed to be a liar," said the sphinx.
Alexandra clenched her fists, or tried to. Her fingers were still too stiff. "Would-d you r-really have l-let me go if-if I'd ans-swered the riddle c-c-correctly?"
The sphinx laughed. "Of course not."
Alexandra's lip curled. "S-so you're a l-l-liar, t-t-too."
"And you're a vulgar little girl and a convicted Dark Sorceress," the sphinx said. "So watch your mouth and don't sass me, child. Your time here on Eerie Island can be hard, miserable, or excruciating." It inclined its head toward her. "Take off her manacles."
One of the goblins approached, holding a long brass rod, like a key without any projections. He walked behind her and tapped the collar around her neck. It snapped open. He circled in front of her, and Alexandra raised her wrists. The goblin touched her manacles with the brass rod, and they fell open. Alexandra slid her wrists out of them and threw them on the ground. The goblin bared its sharp, pointy teeth at her.
Alexandra kept her mouth shut, but her eyes radiated malice and vengefulness.
"You deserve to be sent here," said the goblin. It backed away from her before turning and scampering down the tunnel with its companion.
The sphinx said, "Just to be clear, I am allowed to eat you if you try to escape, or assault any member of the prison staff. Insolence and disobedience will be punished severely. Do as you're told, keep your mouth shut and your head down, and serve your time and perhaps you will someday leave here with all your bones intact."
Alexandra said nothing, but watched the sphinx from beneath her bangs, plastered to her forehead and clinging to her eyelids.
The sphinx's tail stopped swishing to and fro and stiffened, pointing at one of the exits behind it. "Go through that doorway. My wife will explain the rules to you in more detail, and send you to your cell."
Alexandra walked in the direction indicated. Distantly, she sensed Charlie still flying around outside.
Stay away Charlie, she thought. She had no idea what sort of defenses, magical or otherwise, Eerie Island might have, but she doubted inmates were allowed familiars, and surely they were prepared for aerial rescue attempts or escapes.
She walked through yet another dark tunnel into a stone chamber that resembled a dungeon cell. Torches flickered in stands in all four corners, and exits, gated with iron-barred doors, were embedded in each wall.
It was warmer here. Alexandra still shivered in her wet clothes, but the trembling was becoming less violent.
Along one wall stood a huge four-level wooden bookcase lined with books, scrolls, crystals and statuettes, silver ornaments and an old Russian matryoshka doll, carved African wooden masks, an urn, several wands, a stack of jigsaw puzzles, a Chinese vase, a jewel-studded tortoise, a stuffed owl, stacks of playing cards and tarot decks, a Rubik's cube, a flute… The long row of decorations, knick-knacks and artworks stretched off to the far wall.
A large polished table of what looked like petrified wood dominated one corner of the dim space. Someone reclined on a pile of cushions behind it, so Alexandra approached, stepping onto a large Oriental rug.
The figure behind the table lowered the crossword puzzle book she was perusing, and leaned forward. No, not leaned. She tilted forward as the lower half of her body uncoiled.
From the waist up, she was a woman — a woman of ageless, eerie beauty, with long, black hair that fell about her shoulders in a wild, uncombed tangle. Her eyes, heavily-lidded, and her lips, thick and full, were alluring, almost sensual, despite a greenish tint to her skin. There was something ancient and wise about her… ancient, wise, and inhuman.
She wore no clothes or jewelry. Beneath her bare breasts, her stomach stretched down to a scaly lower half right where her belly button should have been, and from there down, she was a snake — bigger around than Alexandra, and perhaps thirty or forty feet in length, though it was hard to tell with the lower half of her body coiled beneath her.
"So," the snake-woman said. "Our newest guest. Speak your name."
Alexandra took a moment to absorb the heat in the room; it was much warmer than those torches could account for. The sense of arcane power tingling at the edges of her senses was stronger than ever.
"Alexandra Octavia Quick," she said.
"Ah," said the snake-woman. "You may call me Edna."
She snapped her fingers, and the nearest gate swung open. Something stepped out of it with a clank. Alexandra turned to face the thing that approached her: a towering figure in black plate armor. Walking with mechanical precision, the armored form stopped directly in front of her and stood motionless. The visored helm didn't tilt in her direction or move at all. Its mailed gloves hung loosely at its sides, the right one near the hilt of a long sword.
"This is your personal Doomguard," said Edna. "It will follow you everywhere. It will stand outside your cell at night; it will stand just outside the privy and the shower, but never out of arm's length. It will stand at your back when you eat in the common areas, and it will accompany you should you be granted exercise or library privileges. In time you will get used to it. They don't speak, they don't breathe, they don't sleep, they don't fatigue, and they will not stop following you — ever."
Alexandra stared up at the Doomguard. "So there's no one inside?"
Edna chuckled, a hissing, raspy sound. "They are soulless, bloodless, mindless, pitiless. Such marvelous toys." She snapped her fingers again to bring Alexandra's attention away from the Doomguard and back to her.
"The Doomguard's purpose is very simple. If you attempt to escape, it will kill you. If you attempt to cast any spells, it will kill you. If you attack it, or another prisoner, it will kill you." Then she said something in a language Alexandra didn't recognize, and with a sudden, smooth motion, the Doomguard drew its sword, seized Alexandra by the hair, and yanked her around so that she was facing the snake-woman across the table with the Doomguard at her back and the sword against her throat. She could feel the edge touching her skin, and stopped breathing because she could sense its sharpness. If she hiccuped, she was sure she'd lose her head.
Edna spoke again, and the Doomguard released her.
"See how strong and fast they are?" The inhuman woman smiled, and the pupils of her eyes compressed into slits. "My husband, dear Typhie, probably told how you horrible Eerie Island can be? In fact, we impose very little punishment on humanfolk. Stay in your cells after curfew, and don't cause trouble, and you're free to wander about and do as you please… mostly. If you have family or friends willing to send you reading and writing materials or games and toys, or, oh, craft supplies, let me know. I am not an unreasonable being. Gifts are always appreciated." Her eyes had taken on a yellow gleam in the torchlight, and one winked.
"It's really not so terrible here. But we lose so many guests, often within the first few weeks, because they don't believe me when I tell them that their Doomguard will kill them the very first time they test the rules." She shrugged her bare shoulders, in a gesture more serpentine than human. "Some decide, later, to commit suicide in much the same way."
Alexandra shivered, now not just from the cold.
"Anywhere that says 'Off-Limits' is off-limits. If you touch a door or gate that says that, your Doomguard will kill you," said Edna. "And the outer wall of this prison, which you can see when you go into the outer courtyard, is off-limits. You can walk up to it and touch it — but don't. Because —"
"My Doomguard will kill me," Alexandra finished.
Edna smiled. For the first time, her tongue flicked over her lips, reddish-black and forked. "Exactly."
"I'm waiting for a formal trial," Alexandra said. "They're supposed to let me know when the date will be."
Edna's laugh was sibilant and liquid. "I'll be sure to let you know."
Alexandra found the laugh unreassuring. Was everyone sent here without a trial, promised they'd get one eventually?
"Can I ask a question?"
Edna nodded.
"Does anyone ever really leave here?" Alexandra asked.
Edna leaned slowly back against her cushions, and her long tail arched and then coiled up beneath her, sliding against the stones.
"Everyone mortal leaves here eventually," she said. "There is no cemetery on Eerie Island."
She snapped her fingers again, and a different gate from the one the Doomguard had come through opened. "Go find yourself a cell. Any empty one will do. Make sure you like it, because you don't get to change your mind later. And really, truly, don't try to run, or attempt some pathetic wandless magic, or hide outside your cell, or anything foolish like that. Your Doomguard will kill you."
She picked her crossword puzzle book back up.
"Do I get dry clothes?" Alexandra asked.
Edna raised a greenish eyebrow. "That's another question. But yes, the goblins will bring you prison robes in the morning. If you'd like something more comfy…" She smiled again, showing gleaming white teeth. "That too can be… negotiated. Do you happen to know an eleven-letter word for an inability to express feelings, ending in 'a'?"
"No," Alexandra said numbly.
"Ah, well." Edna waved a hand, dismissing her. Alexandra walked through the open gate, and her Doomguard clanked along behind her.
There was a row of cells on the other side of the gate, with torches set in the wall opposite them. All of the cell doors were closed. About half had Doomguards standing motionless in front of them.
"I don't suppose you talk?" she said to her Doomguard as she walked down the corridor.
"They don't," said a gravelly male voice. Alexandra stopped, seeing a cowled face looking at her through the unbarred window of his cell door. His Doomguard stood just to the side, directly in front of the door latch.
"Is there a women's cell block?" Alexandra asked.
The man laughed. "You must be a Muggle-born."
"What if I am?" Alexandra said.
"Do you have Muggle relatives?" asked the cowled wizard, sounding interested. He leaned forward, thrusting his face a little further through the window. "Muggle friends? You must know a lot of Muggles." There was something very creepy about his voice.
More voices filled the stone corridor — hoots, jeers, male and female, calling her "princess" and "fresh blood."
A woman shouted, "Do you sing, little girl?"
"You're very young," said the man in the cell. "You must have done something awful." He leered. Alexandra could only see his nose, which was large and wrinkled, but she stepped back as he extended a hand toward her. She almost bumped into her Doomguard.
"I killed a man without a wand," she said.
Without waiting to see his reaction, she marched on, not glancing at the other cells. The shouting continued, so she kept walking until she found an unoccupied cell around a bend and nearly at the opposite end of the corridor from where she'd entered. The cell before it was also unoccupied, its door hanging open, while the last cell, on the opposite side, had a Doomguard in front of it, but whoever was inside was quiet, at least. No catcalling or whistling or taunting came from within.
The cell she entered was spartan. There was a threadbare mattress on a wooden frame, a blanket and a pillow, a table and chair, a dresser, and a stone pedestal with a sink and a piece of reflective metal hung on the wall above it, and next to that, a primitive commode that was just a hole cut in a wooden bench, like an outhouse.
"It's really not so terrible here," Alexandra mumbled sarcastically to herself. She walked through the open door.
The door swung shut and the lock clacked. She heard her Doomguard settle into position on the other side. The shouting and jeering soon died down. Alexandra stared at the door for a long time, but eventually cold and fatigue won. She peeled off her still-wet clothes and slid under the stiff, scratchy blanket on the bed. She turned her head away from the cell door.