Solace Lost

by Michael Sliter

  As Meri continued her plodding patrol along the wall, dragging her hand along the planks far above her head, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her finger, the feeling briefly cutting through her stupor. She retracted her finger, putting it in her mouth and tasting blood. Marking the location in her head the best she could, Meri fumbled around for the lantern, which Saren had thankfully refilled after his last violation. With numbed fingers, she worked the flint to create light, and then she shuffled back to where she had cut herself.

  Her eyes were unaccustomed to the brightness, but she fought through the sting and examined the walls through slitted eyes. Dirt and hard-grained wooden planks. She felt above her head, on a plank just at the tip of her reach. Nothing. As her pupils constricted and her vision cleared, she continued to search, not seeing or feeling anything. But, something must have cut her finger. Something sharp, and bigger than a splinter.

  Meri slowly ran her hand back and forth, finally feeling a small stab again. She squinted in the low light. It was a thick, slightly-damaged nail head, barely protruding from the wood, connecting a vertical support to a horizontal plank. She felt a small thrill.

  She tried to wedge her fingers under the nail, but it was too far above her head for her to get any leverage. Looking around, Meri only had one option—she upended her chamber bucket into the corner. The hope of potentially finding a weapon, a way out, had renewed both her energy and her senses. The stench generated from the stirring and spilling of her waste made her cough and heave, but Meri rallied and dragged the bucket along the ground, setting it on end below her possible salvation.

  Meri worked at the nail for hours. At first, she felt no movement at all and despaired, sitting down on the bucket with her hands on her head. But then she continued to pull and jiggle and pry at the head until finally, miraculously, she felt some miniscule wobble. She felt another surge of hope and continued to work at the head, her injured finger continuing to bleed, and with new cuts opening on others. She finally thought to wrap her oversized sleeves around her fingers, absorbing the crimson and giving her more leverage.

  At the end of the struggle, Meri had extracted the entire nail. It was nearly six inches long, and about half as thick as her little finger. To her, it was a gleaming sword, her one hope for escape and revenge.

  She set her cell back into its usual formation as best she could—even attempting to scoop her waste back into the bucket so as not to arouse suspicions, and barely stifling her retching as she did so. She then used the nail to help her cut a strip from her bag of dried meat, and she wrapped that around the head of the nail to create a grip. She pictured her make-shift knife plunging into Saren’s stomach again and again, defiling his body much as he had defiled hers. The thought of his blood washing over her hands brought an unconscious grin to her face.

  And then, Merigold waited.

  ---

  Maybe a half a day passed before Meri the heard noises above. The reluctant squeak of the cabin door as it opened. The ponderous scratching of the bed as it was dragged across the floor to reveal the cellar door. The dreadful thump of heavy boots. Of multiple pairs of boots. And, the echo of voices. Multiple voices.

  “Yeah, she’s down there.” Saren’s smooth speech carried through the cracks of the floor.

  “Alright, I’m ready for this.” Meri didn’t recognize the voice, hushed as it was.

  “I’m not so sure about this, Saren.” She thought that one might be Chad, one of the boys from town. The mop-headed, smiling son of a scribe.“ This doesn’t seem right.”

  “I told you. Ragen tried to kill me. Merigold tried to kill me. You’ve heard the rumors that they’ve made a pact with dark powers, back when she was sick. They’re the reason that the fever ran through the village last year, and why the Michelsons’ house burned down last month! You’ve seen Ragen running through town, threatening everybody, looking for his witch of a daughter. He even punched Alan, busted his face, for some imagined insult to his daughter. Both of them are a threat to us, to all of Dunmore. This is us fighting back.” Merigold shivered. Saren spoke the conviction of a zealot, as if he actually believed his own fabricated story. That she was to blame for disease and disaster, pestilence and death, like a witch from the stories. That Ragen was violent and erratic, a menace. And that she somehow deserved her fate.

  “Okay, okay. I know. Well, let’s get to it,” said the younger voice.

  Meri gripped her makeshift knife in her left hand as tightly as she could, feeling the bite of the cloth as it pinched her fingers. And then she walked into the corner and deliberately released it with a sigh like a dying woman. There was nothing she could do against three men. Or, two men and one boy. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing her eyes. Trying to imagine for a moment that she was back at the inn, back in her warm room. Safe with Ragen watching over her. But the picture was vague, grainy, as if she were viewing the scene through frosted glass. She could barely remember Ragen’s face.

  The ladder was lowered into the cellar.

  “Merigold, come up here. There are some people here to see you.”

  She climbed slowly, a woman condemned, trying to hold back tears. Trying to find the numbness that had been her shield. But, the brief promise of salvation from earlier seemed to have woken her from a dream. And the waking world promised to be a terrible place.

  Saren leaned next to Chad and Paul, another forager from Dunmore. Chad was sixteen years old, wild brown hair partially covering his angular face. His father, Terrin, was a local scribe, making his living hand-copying The Book of Amorum. Chad, of course, assisted his father and likely knew the holy guide better than even most Taneos. In contrast, Paul was an older man with short-cut gray hair, a well-kempt beard, and yellowed teeth. Saren smirked at Meri as she scanned the faces of the men in the room. She probably couldn’t hide the terror from her eyes, or the tremor from her limbs.

  “Hi, Merigold. How are you today?” She said nothing.

  “Merigold. I’m very happy to be here today,” said Paul in his raspy voice, smiling a wide, ominous grin. He was as old as her father. She’d always felt a little uncomfortable around him, and now the burning coals in the pit of her stomach, the fiery fear, told her that her anxiety hadn’t been enough.

  “Well, there are some people here to help me with you today. If you wouldn’t mind…”

  Meri began to shake uncontrollably, as if she were suffering from a palsy. She forced herself to clench her teeth to keep from biting her tongue. Her weakness was so much that she nearly tumbled back down into the cellar. Perhaps that would be best, hitting her head, letting darkness take her. Letting it all end, forgotten by all except her maligned father.

  The vision of the three men swam before her, and she clenched shut her eyes, wishing the thin eyelids had the ability to block out reality. How much more could one woman take? How could Yetra allow this to happen to her? To anyone? How could men such as these before her be allowed to exist? To thrive? Merigold felt a cold anger replacing the hot fear in her stomach. There was a wrongness to this, that such men should be allowed dominate her, control others. They were the ones who deserved to suffer, who deserved to be locked away from the world. But, the world was not just. Yetra was not just.

  “Merigold.” Saren’s tone held a soft warning, as if he were admonishing a child for getting into mischief. “Merigold, you know what you need to do.”

  Her fists clenched at her side, as impotent as those of that admonished child. She longed to strike him, to make him pay. But, with a shuttering exhalation of breath, she relaxed her fists, mind focused on her instrument of vengeance discarded in the cellar below. She would endure. She had to endure.

  Meri removed her oversized pants and went to the bucket of water in the corner to wash. It had become part of her routine. He never let her wash afterward—only before. She moved back to the bed then, sat down, and set her feet on the bed. She dared not look at the men for more than a second. Paul’s hungry, wolfish lo
ok threated to shatter her fragile resolve.

  Again, she tried to picture the Duckling. The common room, with its different colored tables, painted so that it was always easy to know which tables to serve and what payment to collect. The roaring fire by the white table. The friendly people, drinking their beer, eating their eggs and stew. Then, Saren was seated, there, at the blue table, along with Paul. The common room suddenly felt cold. Unclean.

  But Ragen was there, too, protecting her. He hit Saren, just as he had that man who’d groped her when she was younger. Just like he had with Fenrir. He broke Paul’s yellowed teeth as the man leered at her. Her father, her guardian.

  Closing her eyes, Merigold could picture Ragen’s face clearly, again, as the two men and one boy closed in on her.

  Chapter 10

  The so-called Great Hall felt like anything but. It was far smaller than one would have expected, and certainly more drab. There was little in terms of adornment and decor aside from a single, gigantic painting of Yetra’s Ascension. But the lighting was so dim that none of the guests could make out the details of said painting. The guests themselves were rather drab, as well. Clothed like peasants, they sat at a long, wooden table, each facing the front of the room. Each had a servant standing slightly behind and to their left, as was dictated by protocol—almost as a joke. Spurning the conventions of protocol, however, were the armed guards who stood several feet back from each guest.

  As if anyone had the illusion of actually being a guest, Emma Dran thought as she surveyed the not-so-great hall from her position at Lady Escamilla Breen’s shoulder. She was dressed slightly better than her mistress, with her own simple, light orange dress at least having a splash of color. The clothing forced upon the “guests” was meant to embarrass and shame them, forcing them to feel as if they were as inconsequential as peasants. Coming from such stock herself, Emma had never thought there was anything humiliating about the men and women on which this country rested. The lower classes kept the country fed with their farming, kept rooms warm with their logging and forestry, and kept the country safe with their huge presence in the military. Nonetheless, the people forced into such mean garments as they wore now did not universally share Emma’s views.

  As always, Lady Escamilla seemed unaffected by the situation. She was actually the daughter of a failed merchant, not a noble by birth or by name. Unlike her father Garrick Breen, Escamilla had a knack for trading. Rumor had it that Escamilla had started with a bag of fruit in a small town near Florens, trading for more yets than it was worth. Then, she’d bought some figs from a down-on-his-luck traveling Sestrian, and sold those for triple what she’d paid to the kitchen of a noble house. She’d continued to provide various supposed delicacies to this noble house until she’d had enough money to have a substantial inventory and her own small warehouse (a shed, really). But, Escamilla always had her ear to the ground, and could always predict the market. Right before one of the more serious border incursions by the Wasmer, Escamilla had invested every ounce of her wealth in dried beef and hard-baked, long-lasting, and tasteless bread, making a fortune by selling these needed supplies to the military of Florens and Rostane. Before colorful scarves became all the rage among the notable in Draston, Escamilla had acquired an endless silkworm farm. She always knew, it seemed, what the world needed.

  Eventually, Escamilla had begun investing in land, particularly land with often unrecognized potential. Her first purchase, a seemingly valueless plot of forest in Florens, actually contained some of the most productive sour apple orchards in Ardia. This had allowed Escamilla to generate wealth with minimal investment of her own time. And as her orchards had become more profitable (primarily because of the hard cider that was distilled from the sour apples, which no one wanted to eat raw), Escamilla had continued to buy up land from across the four duchies of Ardia. Emma was continuously surprised to hear how the nobility tended to mismanage their wealth and land, but Escamilla always seemed to know when a count needed to settle gambling debts or when a baron had lost a whole crop of wheat to pests. Before long, she’d owned land in all four duchies—Rostane, Florens, Hunesa, and Draston. Enough land that, if it were put together, she could almost have had her own duchy. As a result, she’d become widely known as Lady Escamilla. The woman who rivaled the dukes and the duchess.

  Escamilla was now in her early sixties and, while no one would ever have said that she was an attractive woman (even when she’d been young), she did have a certain presence. An air of poise. Of power. She was skinny—nearly skeletal, in fact—her body and face being all hard angles and lines. Her hair had gone completely white decades earlier, whether due to stress or heredity, no one could say. What people could say was that, when captured by her eyes, they immediately felt sized-up, as if they were a product to be bought or sold. And Escamilla was very good at buying and selling.

  And now, this powerful, self-made woman was prisoner in everything but name to Little Duke Penton. Emma shifted her gaze from her mistress to the man sitting before his “guests.” Samuel Penton III was a disappointment when compared to his father, Samuel II, who had truly been a great man. His forethought, creativity, and sensitivity had revolutionized Rostane. Ardia, even. His public works included his creation of a water system that provided jobs for the poor, as well as an accessible water system available to the public, a reduction in taxes for the lower classes that allowed peasants to actually achieve success and increase their station, and a huge investment in ship-born trade that continued to stimulate the economy. He’d also implemented a beautification tax with the goal of making Rostane more appealing to travelers. However, this had been executed poorly, so that the enhancements only impacted already attractive upper-class areas.

  It had been at Samuel II’s behest that his peers—Dukes Malless and Proan, and Duchess Fraunt—and subordinates had met at the Ardian Council three years before, with the goal of putting treatises in place that would truly unite Ardia for the first time since King Thontos had been in power: uniting trade, military, and policies. Unfortunately, Samuel II had taken ill during that event, though it was common knowledge that there must have been some foul play involved. Following his death, Samuel Penton III, the Little Duke of Rostane, had come into power. The moniker “little” had nothing to do with his size or appearance, but rather the fact that he would always rest in the shadow of his father.

  Emma’s eyes were drawn to the little duke now. He was actually a very tall man, as nobles seemed to breed for imposing physical characteristics, if not intelligence and sense. He had an average build which appeared to be enhanced by his penchant for wearing armor whenever he was giving audience. Even now, he wore a breastplate that emulated the chiseled body of a strongman, as well as an opalescent-white cape emblazoned with the wolf of Rostane, peeling back his lips and bearing his fangs, flecks of spittle evident in his grin. Duke Samuel had a similar issue with spittle when he spoke, and particularly when he was angry. Like now.

  “I am uncertain why you continue to resist my offer. The price of resistance is high, as you know. Just ask Baron Erlins,” spat Duke Samuel, rising from his ornate chair.

  As Theran Erlins had been tortured extensively in front of this group and was now presumed dead by the “guests,” they were unlikely to have an opportunity to engage in such questioning. Erlins had been similarly imprisoned by Samuel II, and Emma considered him to be a brave fool. He’d thought to escape in the conventional way, with steel and muscle. To his credit, Erlins had killed three guardsmen before being brought down, bleeding from a serious wound in his leg. In an excruciating two hour-long session, his body and spirit had been utterly destroyed after that. Fingernails had been removed from both his hands with pliers, and his left hand entirely removed—one bone at a time. Whenever Erlins had lost consciousness, Savant Iolen, a Senior Scholar at The Enlightenment and the acting physician, would inject him with a potion that would keep him awake. Eventually, the stump of his hand had been cauterized with the flat side of a s
word, heated to glowing in the hot coals of the fire, and Iolen had said that he would be unable to administer more potion without fatal consequences. So, the big man had been carted off, and was either imprisoned or dead by now.

  Emma had been horrified during the entire session, growing more and more sickened at the sight of the torture, the blood. Her own hand had been mutilated years ago by a man she’d loved, and she only retained her thumb and index finger. Though she still had the ability to grasp and carry things, it always brought her a biting pain. Her mutilation had been an indirect attack on Lady Escamilla from one of her many jealous rivals, or so Emma assumed, and had just happened to be perpetrated by Fenrir, a man she had made love to many, many times. A man who’d professed his own love to her on numerous occasions, but who’d been entangled by his obligations to both his wife and his father. A man who’d violently maimed her hand as she’d locked eyes with him.

  “What, nothing to say? All I expect is that you swear fealty to me, relinquish the control of your armies to Rostane, and provide a portion of your income to the Rostanian treasury. In return, you will be allowed to continue ruling your lands and be provided a royal advisor to guide you in matters of the state. Or, you share the fate of Erlins. It seems like an easy decision, not one meriting such impertinence,” said the duke, now with the hint of a self-satisfied smile.

  There were five guests in the room. Aside from Escamilla, there was Viscount Alexander Saford who ruled a large plot of land outside of Hunesa, Earl Michel Fraunt, the son and heir of Duchess Emily Fraunt of Draston, and Count Arn Sinder, who ruled a county within Rostane, itself. And, the crown jewel of Samuel’s designs, Duke Henry Malless, ruler of Florens and the little duke’s chief rival.