It was finally the darkness that persuaded her to sit with her fingers around the bars, removing several inches of stature with the curl of her back. Corporal Sullivan himself had escorted her to the cell of this new stonework prison; it promised a more secure stay, with rats better fed and visitors better watched.
The walls were grey avenues of rough plaster. There were no chains, and a single, long bench was against the back wall beneath the high window. She ground her fist to the base of her overturned gruel bowl, as though her first night was already wrought in the complications of escape - to dig through an impenetrable floor with a chipped shape of wood. Not only would the task be daunting, but she would give up after a moment of passionate frustration, which had the empty thing clattering across the floor.
The hollow sound cut through the silence; a one-eyed glance to the barred window captured a slice of starry sky. A dark, confused lock was bound around her wrist and tugged with mechanical insistence – mouth wide open against a bony knee, jaw-muscle working. If nothing else it kept her voice from sallying forth proclamations of her indignance, of the stench, of her rights and morality!
Some hour later she crawled through a shaft of dim and hectic radiance, and crumpled into a lump of mature hatred on the bench below the window. Light did little more than peer at her and pluck a brown lozenge from her trousers.
The bruised youth fell to her convicted sleep wondering over and over if Audmathus would save her from Pharris Tergor’s black mercy ...