23. The Dungeon (1)

Cold, hard, and damp.

Where would all three of those go together?

Exactly. I’d woken up on the cold, hard bed of a prison cell.

If Rose’s account held up, this was a hundred and fifty years in the past, at the height of the Empire’s wars of conquest, an age of upheaval. I looked down at myself and found an unfashionable prisoner’s outfit of crossed black and white stripes. So I’d been taken captive, but whether by the Imperial army or by House Arne, I couldn’t tell yet.

I sprang off the cot, jogged in place, and ran a check on my body.

Test results: this body was very, very ordinary. The muscles weren’t bulky, but it wasn’t all sinew and bone either. It was plain average, through and through.

And that ordinariness moved me deeply. I could draw a deep breath without my lungs ripping, and I could jump without my ankles twinging. It drove home all over again, right down in my bones, what a cursed piece of glass Arden’s body had been.

Good. Body — pass.

With no defects to worry about, the next step was finding a way out, because stuck in here all day I wouldn’t get a sniff of the truth, let alone see the Saintess’s face.

Eve was a ghost, yet apparently not ghost enough. She strained to slip through the gap between the bars and failed, and I had to wonder why on earth she’d been designed unable to pass through space.

To make matters worse, there wasn’t so much as a spoon in the cell. So on the off chance, I grabbed the iron bars and rattled them every which way.

— Clang, clang, clang!

The noise rolled out through the silent dungeon, and an irritated man’s voice came back from the cell next door.

“Damn, that’s some godawful noise. Hey — you in there alone?”

I set Eve’s cheerful answer aside for the moment and kept the conversation going.

“Anyway, where are we?”
“…You insane?”
“Looks like I took a knock to the head and lost my memory.”

It’s a clichéd routine, but there’s no easier setup for fishing for information.

The man snorted. “Hah, you really are a piece of work. They hauled you in with your skull cracked open, and now your brain’s gone soft? Bleeding like that and still alive — guess you’re either lucky or really unlucky.”

“Guess so. No wonder my scalp keeps stinging.”
“Hah, you lunatic!”

Luckily, this was someone I could talk to. And with his guard down, it was time to get to the point.

“So tell me — how’s the war going?”
“What do you mean, how’s it going?”

I sounded him out in the most neutral tone I could manage.

“As in, is the Empire winning.”

The laughter from the next cell cut off the instant I said it. When his voice came again a beat later, it was much colder and more cynical than before.

“…You really did get hit hard, didn’t you.”

Had I slipped up? No. A soldier asking about the state of the war was the most natural thing in the world.

When I went silent, the man clicked his tongue and went on.

“The Empire winning? Dream on. As long as that goddamned Saintess is still standing, this war isn’t ending.”

Bingo. Information acquired.

If he was calling the Saintess “goddamned,” then we were unquestionably captured Imperial soldiers. And House Arne was holding out far better than I’d expected.

“A wound like that should’ve put the guy down, no question. But the second the Saintess’s light touched him, he was back on his feet like it never happened. Not a scratch left on him, clean as new.”

He was running back through his battle against the Saintess.

“Honestly, enemy or not, it was incredible. Enough to make you believe that if there are gods, they really are on their side.”

That was pure admiration out of an enemy’s mouth, awe shot through with the defeat that comes with it.

Is the Saintess’s healing really that broken?

She hadn’t just healed wounds, either. Apparently she’d shown holy power overwhelming enough to flip the entire flow of a battle. So “the greatest Saintess in history” that Rose had talked about wasn’t an overstatement after all.

“Still, it’ll be over soon.”

Meaning the war was ending? I felt a spark of hope that the reason for the Saintess’s disappearance might come out right here, so I leaned in closer to listen.

“They just hauled another guy out a minute ago. You know that, right? Guys they bring in here keep disappearing, one by one, in order.”
“Disappearing?”
“Yeah. They say it’s for interrogation, but not a single one’s ever come back. Now there’s just me and you left.”

A chill slid up my spine. This wasn’t simply a prison. Interrogations no one returned from meant the prisoners were either being summarily executed or being sold off somewhere.

“So get yourself ready. Next round’s me — or you…”

He muttered it with resignation.

That was when —

— Shrrring.

I heard the man stand up in the next cell. He came right up to the iron bars, and through the single wall between us, he spoke in a strange voice.

“Hey — new guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Been wondering about something for a while now.”

The air grew heavy.

“When they brought you in, you were limp, dragged along like a piece of cargo, right? Didn’t budge even when the guards kicked you.”

So the original owner of this body had been unconscious right up to the moment of possession.

“Was I? I don’t remember.”

I played dumb the same way as before. He fell silent for a moment, then went on.

“Guys who get rolled up on a battlefield and dragged in here are all the same. Something’s broken on them, or they’re so wiped out they can barely breathe. Like me.”

Now that I listened more carefully, there was a pained, metallic rasp mixed into his breathing. It wasn’t a normal way to breathe.

— Click.

I heard him grab hold of the iron bars. The warmth had drained out of his voice, and sharp wariness had taken its place.

“You wake up and start jogging in place, you rattle the bars. Nobody with even one cracked bone moves like that. You’re way too fine, not so much as a scratch on you.”
“…”

“What are you? Some spy the rebel scum planted in here?”

I was honestly impressed. I’d never imagined someone would size me up by my breathing.

“You faked being hurt to sneak in here, didn’t you? Trying to dig information out of us!”

The instant his shout broke loose, heavy boots came thudding down the corridor.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The footsteps drew steadily closer, and then a harsh metallic crash slammed into the iron bars.

— KWANG!

“Which one of you bastards was that?!”

A massive jailer carrying a torch had stopped in front of our cells. His brutal face twisted in the firelight, exuding a foul, murderous aura.

“Shut your damn mouths! Which one of you bastards has the nerve to run his mouth during the sacred evening prayer hour?!”

His gaze swept back and forth between the man in the next cell and me. The man flinched and stepped back. Maybe he’d been a prisoner so long that fear of the jailers had been drilled into his body as instinct. Of course, this wasn’t an age where you go on about prisoners’ human rights like in modern society.

I grabbed the iron bars and stared the jailer dead in the eye.

“It was me, you son of a bitch.”
“…What?”

The jailer’s brow twitched.

“Got bored. Did a little talking. You got a problem with that?”

A chill silence followed my provocation.

— Clatter, kreek.

The jailer pulled a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked the cell door, then shoved his hulking body into the narrow cell with me. In his hand was what looked like a wooden club.

“Today I’m going to strip the meat off your bones.”

— THWACK!

“Khu-uggh!”

The club slammed into my stomach without preamble. The breath was knocked clean out of me and my organs twisted in pain, and I collapsed to the floor and curled up on instinct.

“Fight back! Bark some more, you bastard!”

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The merciless beating went on. His boot caught me in the side and the club came down on my back, but I covered my head with both hands, kept my vital points protected first and foremost, and silently weathered the blows.

Hurts like a son of a bitch, sure.

But it was bearable. Compared to the bone-melting agony I’d lived through inside Arden’s cursed body, this was nothing more than a simple physical impact. That, at least, was what I brainwashed myself into believing.

“You… tough little bastard…”

After beating me a long while, the jailer finally stopped the club, breathing roughly. Maybe my refusal to so much as groan had unsettled him, no matter how hard he hit me, or maybe he’d simply worn himself out. Either way, he spat on the floor.

“Ptui. Filthy rebel scum. Tomorrow morning, you’re the very first one being dragged out. Remember that.”

He stormed out of the cell, huffing.

Slam. The door shut and the lock turned.

I stayed sprawled on the floor until his footsteps had faded completely.

“Uuugh…”

Only when the tension drained out did the groan finally break through. The places I’d been struck throbbed when I pressed them, but luckily no bones were broken. I staggered upright, propped myself against the cold wall that ran between my cell and his, and sat.

The inside of my mouth must have been split, because a coppery taste of blood washed around it. I spat the blood-mixed saliva onto the floor and lobbed a casual line toward the wall.

“You hear that?”
“…”

There was silence on the other side, but I could hear his breathing. We couldn’t see each other’s faces, yet we’d shared the sounds of the violence that had just played out so vividly between us.

“Still think I’m a spy?”
“…No.”

After a moment his voice came through, low and settled.

“Nobody beats their own people like that. Sorry I doubted you.”

The sharp suspicion had drained out of it. True enough. What jailer beats a planted spy to a pulp to extract information?

Eve had waited for the conversation to wrap up. Now she looked over my swollen face with a tearful expression, and I waved a hand at her like don’t worry about it, and asked:

Eve quickly wiped her eyes and nodded with a grave look.

“Old and well-worn” wasn’t enough to go on. I thought it over for a moment, and then an idea flashed through my head.

Eve didn’t understand, so I sent a chat sample of my own to help her.

Eve’s eyes lit up, and she closed them. A moment later, a strange combination of characters floated up in front of my eyes.

It was a simple combination of text, but this was, in effect, the blueprint of the key.¹

I tapped on the wall with a fingertip.

“Hey — neighbor.”
“What.”
“You happen to have, like, an iron spoon or chopstick on you?”
“…Why’re you asking?”
“I can’t stand breathing the same air as guys who beat people for being loud.”

A puff of dry laughter came from the other side of the wall. A moment later, something came rolling through the gap under the iron bars. — Tok.

It was a spike of iron about as long as a finger.

“…It’s not some bone left over from a meal. It’s a spoon handle, ground down.”

The man added matter-of-factly:

“I sharpened it to stab the jailer in the throat and kill myself the next time he came in. I’ll invest it in you instead.”

A weapon for suicide, and a last act of resistance. And he’d handed that precious thing over to a perfect stranger.

“I’ll put it to good use.”

I picked up the spike. The tip had been ground to a sharp point all right, but for a key, the shape was just too plain. So I crouched on the floor and started grinding it against the cold stone.

— Shrk, shrk, shrk.

A nerve-grating scrape rang through the cell. I was nervous about the jailer hearing it, but after the beating he’d just given me, I trusted he wouldn’t be back for a while.

Failure wasn’t an option. There was no way the man in the next cell had another spike.

Eve became my eyes, and I worked my hand like a machine. My fingertips blistered on the cold iron and my nails chipped, but I didn’t stop. In the next cell, the man listened to the scrape of metal with his breath held.

How long had it been like that?

What I had in my hand was a deformed-looking spike, but one that would now do the job of a key. I steadied my trembling hand and slid it into the keyhole.

— Clatter.

I felt a faint catch at my fingertip, so I stopped breathing and twisted my wrist.

— Click.

I pushed the iron door open, squealing on its hinges, and walked out into the corridor. Cold air brushed against my sweat-soaked forehead.

I took the spike along and went straight to the next cell. His eyes alone glittered out at me from the darkness, and I shook the key at him through the gap in the bars.

“Easy.”

Seeing that, the man muttered as if in disbelief.

“…You lunatic.”