III: Elias

Thanks to few 'well loved blankets' and change of clothes Laia's teeth had finally stopped chattering. Across the room she sat curled up among an oversized pile of wool blankets, nursing a steaming mug of tea. The smith had returned a while back bearing with a load of blankets, spare clothes, stale food, and two hot mugs of tea.

"It can get pretty cold down here," he had said."If you want to change clothe you can leave the dirty ones at the top of the stairs and I'll see to it that they get thrown in with the next washing. The maid comes by once a week." He promptly shut the door hard enough to blow out a few candles.

While I was grateful for the hot beverage I also despised tea. Unless of course it had a mountain of sugar mixed in and enough cream to flood a village. Never the less the mug warmed up my numb fingertips.

"Are you just going to hold it," Laia said amidst the heap of blankets. Muffled by the layers of wool, her voice sounded quiet and mumbled. Nothing like the voice of the girl who had staged and explosion of the bell tower to see to it that my head was still attached to my body.

I shook my head. "I don't like tea." I set the mug down, my fingers getting too hot.

Her eyebrows pulled together. Maybe she was trying to decide why we were talking about tea when there's much more important things to discuss. Such as how she plans to break us in to save Darin. "You should try it," she finally decided. "It's quite good."

I grimaced, but took a sip anyway. The hot liquid burned down my throat. Shaking my head I set the cup back down and decided the conversation desperately needed to be changed. "Do you have a plan?"

She looked started, golden eyes wide as the sun. "Of course." Her voice wavered.

"Then tell, we're not going anywhere any time soon."

Laia kept her face as straight as possible while she explained how she had learned about the prison and its prisoners. Though no where I'm there did I hear anything of how we were going to break in to the damn building. "Is that all you've got," I asked.

Her hair fell into her hair as she nodded. "It's not much but I figure once we get there and -."

"It's not anything." I scoffed. "Knowing an approximation of how many guards are staffed is nothing. And even so, with our escape there's bound to be advanced security, possibly even Mask's." Laia cringed when I said 'Mask's' as if I wasn't one. As if I was't one once before, corrected myself. Never again would I let the silver mask bind to my skin. I was free from it.

"Well it's better than nothing." She yelled, climbing out from under the pile of blankets. The act was meant to make her seem stronger, but it did the opposite. Climbing out of the blankets just empathized how small she really was. The white night shirt provided by the Smith hung off her like a drying rack and the black shorts came low past her knees. It wasn't that she was very short, but those weeks as a slave, and growing up in a household constantly low on food certainly showed through. Some part of me ached for her. I knew she was strong, she knew she was strong, but everyone else just saw a broken girl.

Suddenly I didn't feel the need to argue about plans or lack of there for. I held her gaze until she broke off from her rant about pre-planning and value of Intel. "Your right," I said. The corners of her mouth dropped. "We'll manage. And a little bit of information is better than nothing."

Laia, seeming to understand my lack of interest in continuing the conversation, nodded. She shifted awkwardly on feet before saying, "We should eat something."

I muttered an agreement, even though I had no interest in putting that stale bread in my mouth. She crossed over to the small platter set atop a few boxes and started cutting slices of cheese. The room was erie silent except for the occasional tap against the platter.

"Where did you learn to read?"

Her shoulders tensed but the tapping didn't falter. "What are you talking about," she answered, slamming the knife down too hard on the cheese. Great, another argument.

"You were reading street signs and the lettering on those boxes earlier," I answered. Couldn't have been that entertaining to read though, I mused. Most of the boxes down here had shipping labels curled over with age, or some with so much dirty it was impossible to read what it had once held.

Laia paused the cutting for a moment before answering. "My brother mostly. But he was taught by my parents before they..." She paused again and didn't continue. The knife clattered against the tray as she put it down and glanced behind her to me. I gave her a look of understanding which she seemed to grasp since her shoulders lowered a bit and she blew out a long breathe.

"My Nan and Pop didn't read or write much, just enough to get by. But most scholars won't ever learn to read or write a single word in their life." I wasn't sure if she was trying to make me feel guilty of not, but if she was she had succeeded. "Darin used to borrow booksfrom the neighbours for me to practice with."

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. "I used to borrow extra food when I was a Yearling." She glanced back at me with an expression of surprise. "Granted Helene would eat most of it."

Laia blinked. The corner of mouth tugged upwards but she didn't say anything else. Instead she started slicing off chunks of stale bread. The silence that followed wasn't tense like before. Instead it had shifted to something somber.

"Here, let me help," I said, standing up from the cold floor. The blanket fell off my shoulders and landed in a heap at my feet.

"It's fine. It's only cutting up some food anyway." She gazed back again and her eyes widened. The knife stilled in her hand. Laia mumbled a curse then dropped then knife back on the tray. I was about to ask what the deal was until I felt the steady trickle of blood along my abdomen. The blood had already soaked through the makeshift bandage I had crated back in the tunnel.

"I'm fine it's not a bad cut," I said. I was lying.

Laia's head was shaking at a rapid pace. "You should have said something. Teluman could have brought something or -."

"The Smith couldn't have done anything," I mumbled. The cut was starting to throb under the make shift bandage. "It's not bad anyway, just a little blood."

Based on the look Laia gave she knew I was lying again. "Sit down," she ordered using the same voice she had back under the stage at Blackcliff. I stumbled against a crate and lowered myself down to the floor. The piercing cold stung my hands and legs as I sat down, but it was nothing compared to the fire I was now feeling along my abdomen. Maybe standing up so quickly hadn't been the best idea.

Laia scurried over. Her gaze landed tentatively on my stomach before she said,"Take your shirt off." My eyebrows shot up, but I reached for the hem of my shirt. I had discarded my battle armour long ago. It peeled away, the bottom corner soaked with blood, my blood. Laia cringed and laid a gentle finger against the blood soaked strip of cloth along my abdomen. She traced the cloth along to the knot.

"This needs to come off." She said. She didn't wait for a response before uncurling the cloth and peeling it away. The cut was raged across my stomach, slicing from around my side to just below my belly button. Laia cursed again. Blood was oozing out and splattering against the cement floor.

"See not that bad." It was a huge lie. I had been worse before, but this certainly wasn't a minor cut. Laia wasn't fazed by my attempted humor.

"Okay, we need to clean this out then stitch it back up and re bandage it. Some peroxide and bloodroot serum would be good too," Laia muttered, assessing the damage. Her touch sent shivers through the rest of my body. I started to interject but she glared again. "This will get infected of its not properly treated and you need to take me to Darin."

She stood on shaky legs and glanced back down at me. "Keep this pressed to the wound and don't move," she handed me the shirt I had on earlier. Seeing as how it was already ruined with blood...

"And where you plan on going," I snapped. Laia's gaze drifted to the tiny dirty clouded window. "No! I won't let you."

"And what are you going to do about it," she snarled. "You need that wound treated. Sooner rather then later."

"Then we'll wait for the Smith to come back again."

"That could be days! You would bleed out long before then!"

I shook my head. "We'll your not going out there. Too risky. There's Mask's crawling all over the streets."

"I don't plan to go in the streets," she muttered crossing her arms. "I look around in Teluman's house. He's bound to have something in there."

"It's still too -." She was already at the window. The latch swung open with ease and she pushed the glass panel outward enough for her to slide through. Standing on a pile of boxes I watched her feet disappear through the window.