Carson pulled the edge of the sheet over my head and I brought my knees up to my chest, scrunching myself into a ball and making myself as small as I possibly could. Neither of us dared to breathe more than the shallowest of breaths or move the slightest bit. Dim light from a torch flooded the tiny closet, and we waited intently, listening to each movement of the person who had intruded on our hiding place.
It was apparently just an unsuspecting guard retrieving a few folded sheets and a couple of extra pairs of manacles and chain. We could hear the clinking of her armor and the chains she carried as she moved. Her movements were fluid and uninterrupted; she did not seem to have noticed us. An agonizing minute later, the guard left the closet and left us to let out a long breath as the danger passed us by.
Listening intently for several more minutes, I still did not dare to move for fear of being heard, but eventually forced myself to calm down. The changing of the guard was going smoothly, and if my attack on Pel had been noticed, the whistles and tolling bells of the palace's signaling system would have been sounded. It became sublimely obvious then how often that cruel woman must have accustomed herself to slipping past the other guards to have her way with the prisoners. I was sickened at the thought of how many other men being held prisoner in the palace had likely fallen victim to her abuse.
Forcing those thoughts and the resultant anger from my mind wasn't an easy task. I consoled myself by drawing Carson close to me, and I felt better knowing that I had done the best I could for him at least. As circulation began to return to his extremities with the warmth that was returning to him, he shivered vigorously. I gripped him more tightly and he huddled in close, rubbing his bare arms in a half-hearted attempt to warm himself more quickly, but I knew that it was more likely that the sensation of Pel's touch still haunted him.
I sat with him silently like that for a half an hour before I was fairly confident that the guards that had been wandering the corridors had all found their posts. Each shift was about four hours. It was designed so that rotation between shifts would keep the guards from becoming overly fatigued by being stuck at a particular position for an extended length of time. I had contributed to that shift in protocol myself. But now I almost wished I hadn't, because it would have made it easier to sneak Carson out.
The color in his face had slowly been returning, and as I helped him up, he seemed stronger than he had been before. I ran through a myriad of possibilities in my head to sneak him to the inn, which was of course located in the center of the city, and as I looked about the closet, an idea came to me. Carson would not be happy about it, though. I grabbed a pair of manacles and stuffed them into my pockets as quietly as I could, and then slowly unlatched the door.
The corridor was empty, and as I listened carefully in either direction, I could hear no one stirring. Finding my way through the corridors was much easier this time, and I knew exactly where the small indentation for the hidden passageway was located. Carson seemed surprised that we had made it this far, but said nothing to endanger us.
A rush of cold air bit at the bare skin on my arms as I opened the last hidden exit between us and our freedom. The temperature must have dropped more than I had thought. We were outside the walls of the palace, surrounded by the darkness of night and the trees of the forests that grew in clusters around the city. I glanced back at Carson and gave him a look of concern. He had begun to shiver again, and the sweater that I had lent him wasn't very helpful any more.
I reluctantly pulled the manacles from my pockets. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I have to put these on you."
If he could not see them in the darkness, he could hear the manacles clinking as I drew them from my pockets. He knew what they were, and shrank away from them and me fearfully.
"I know, Carson," I said, dropping them onto the ground and stepping closer to comfort him. "I can't take you to my home; it is the first place they'd look for you. I really wish that it didn't have to come to this, but if anyone sees you with me, your life could be put in danger again. I promise you, so long as there's still breath in me, I won't let them take you back there."
He calmed a bit, and then looked at me again with those pleading eyes. "Then why are you going to chain me?"
"If someone sees you, they'll think you're a slave," I explained simply. "But I'll have to blindfold and gag you so that you won't be recognized."
He cringed at the prospect of having to bear that humiliation again, but said no more about it, simply resigning himself to the fact that there was no other way to escape unseen. I laid an assuring hand on his shoulder and embraced his chilled face between my palms.
"Trust me," I promised him. "I'll get you back to your people."
He said nothing for a long moment as I placed the manacles on his wrists and ripped a few scraps of cloth from the sheet that was now draped around his waist. I used one scrap to blindfold him and hesitated a second before gagging him with the second. It seemed like he wanted to say something. But his lips remained tightly shut, and so I placed the strip of cloth over his mouth and said nothing more.
Taking back my sweater, I placed it over my own shoulders once again and grasped the chains of his manacles to lead him. As we walked into the dim streets of the city, his shivering became more and more pronounced, and it took all the willpower I had to ignore it. One child had come out onto the porch of his home to fetch firewood for his mother, and I sighed with relief as he thoughtfully ignored us as we walked past. An older woman with the look of someone who gossiped much with her neighbors also spied us on our way to the inn, but it wasn't uncommon to see a new slave being led through the streets to someone's home, especially when time passed and it grew closer to the winter months.
But no one paid us any mind. I was simply a noblewoman with her slave to them, minding our own business and making our way to an enjoyable night of feasting and drinking at the tavern. We reached the secluded back entrance to the inn unmolested, and I reached out for the door. My fingers had just grazed the surface of the knob, when the door was thrust open and a crazy blonde woman brandishing a broomstick towered over me threateningly. I jumped back in surprise, nearly knocking Carson onto his backside, and watched apprehensively as the broom was slowly lowered.
"Where the hell have you been?" Lota whispered insistently, pointing a grimy finger at my chest. "I was worried sick! I expected you to be back here with your friend more than half an hour ago."
"I'm sorry!" I exclaimed apologetically. "We had to hide for a while."
"Shhhhh!" She placed a finger over her lips and spoke with a hushed voice. "Now get inside, both of you, before you catch an illness borne of the devil herself."
I dragged Carson inside the welcoming atmosphere of the tavern and inn, where warmth seemed to be radiating from fires strategically placed in the corner of each room. With a smooth and practiced motion, Lota led us to a cellar door with an entrance well-hidden beneath a plush carpet. The study area above it was dark and rarely used by the travelers and drunken alcoholics that most frequented the inn, providing less of a chance for them to be observed or heard in the hidden space. Lota had already prepared for us as best she could, and had set up two cots with warm bedding, several candles with the fire alight in the corner, and food and water also rested on a simple table.
Upon seeing the decrepit state of my friend, she frowned understandingly and brought me a salve for his wounds before closing up the cellar door behind us and re-covering it with the rug. I led Carson to one of the cots and quietly directed him to sit. His shivering continued unhindered until I wrapped a warm blanket around his shoulders. Removing the gag first, I reached for the blindfold next. Upon its removal, he asked a question that had apparently been bothering him for some time.
"Are they really gone?" he whispered softly. "That guard… she said that my friends were already gone, and that they thought I was dead."
"Yes, they left." I didn't quite realize how impacted he had been by that, and my hands fell as I tried to word my response in a way that should give him some hope. "But I met with Sheppard before I came to rescue you, and I gave him a note telling him that you were being held in the palace. I arranged to give them an opportunity to leave peacefully, and they left me with the promise that they would return with help tomorrow. So, you see, it wasn't just on a whim that I saved you from that place."
The concerned look in his eyes softened immeasurably, and I smiled with relief before continuing to remove his manacles. I had them off him in just a minute, and it was then that I noticed how horrible the bruises and cuts around his wrists were as I held his hands in mine. Opening the jar of salve, I dipped a bit of cloth into it and dabbed carefully at his wounds. It must have stung dreadfully, and he did flinch now and then, but did not utter a sound.
When I had finished with his wrists, I looked up into his face, which was now smooth and unmarred from the worries that had plagued him just an hour ago and no longer fraught with terror. His hand found my face and pushed aside a stray lock of dark brown hair that had fallen over my eyes. I don't think I had ever before been so tempted to passionately kiss a man. It felt so strange and exciting, something I had never felt before, and I desperately wanted him. But I held back for the sake of his well-being, and instead stood up and moved behind him.
Gently urging him to lie down on the cot, I then cleaned and dabbed salve at the ugly gashes that crisscrossed his back. It seemed certain to hurt even more than his wrists, but still he remained silent, merely flinching occasionally as the dabbing motion touched a tender spot. I marveled at his strength of character as I spied additional bruises dotted in patterns along his ribs, legs, and arms. It was difficult to imagine the courage it must have taken from him to withstand this punishment, courage that I doubted I myself would have had in such a situation.
Carson was fast asleep by the time I was done. The dark, horrid circles under his eyes were harshly outlined even in the dim candlelight. Pulling another warm blanket over his prostrate form, and careful not to disturb the wounds on his back, I went to the other cot and practically collapsed onto it in exhaustion. I didn't even bother to draw up the blankets over myself before I was lulled by the crackle of the fire into a deep and dreamless sleep.