Maya and I slipped unseen into the chamber of the rescued. I closed the door quickly and quietly behind us.
The women still all lay as I had arranged them, staring blankly from the chains of their captivity. It was a deeply painful and sorry sight. I turned to Maya.
"So as you can see, we need to come up with a way to get these women to safety. And some kind of magic to wake them, I think perhaps we ought to get Laz, but I'm not really sure where he is - " I said hurriedly.
"I... I don't... understand," said Maya, her expression tense and stern, "Who do these women belong to, Greta?"
"Well to themselves," I said, pointedly dodging her implied question.
"I'm very serious. How have these women come to be in your room -- who do they belong to?"
"They belong to themselves!" I snapped.
"Urgh. I am not entertaining a semantic discussion with you now, you silly child. Have you removed these women from an incubus' room?"
"Yes," I said softly.
"Well then we need to go about putting them back." Maya was matter of fact in her assessment of the correct course of action.
"Putting them back? Are you out of your mind? Look at the state they are in, you are asking me to return burn victims to their house fire!"
"I am not asking you. I am telling you. This is none of our business."
"None of our business? Are we not women also?" I was appalled.
"What has that to do with it? Have you any idea of the punishments you will bring upon yourself committing a theft such as this? Imprisonment for years if you've done this to a solider, decades if you've done this to a centurion."
The truth of the matter must have been plain upon my face, for Maya's next words were:
"Heavens below, not the King?"
I nodded sombrely.
Maya's face contorted in vicious rage. I'd never seen such a emotion upon her, I was shaken to fright.
"What did I tell you the very first day that you arrived here? There is so much freedom offered to us and we need do so little to earn it. 'Don't commit treason' is a very bloody easy rule to follow Greta - and you have betrayed us."
The words were intended to cut me to ribbons. To have me sob and apologise and repair my 'mistake'. But they did not chime in my heart. I was not a traitor to any cause I valued.
"We wear chains! We're guarded day and night!" I crowed, "This isn't freedom Maya, if just looks like it from a distance. And these women have suffered one-thousand-thousand times the worse than us and we owe them our help. It is our duty as sisters, as human people. To abandon them is the only betrayal."
"Insolence and ingratitude," Maya snorted. Our eyes met. The woman who had once been my dearest friend and companion stared at me with dismay and disdain.
She could not understand that I would defy the royal family after their care and protection of me. She had forgotten that she had once rebelled against the expectations of her family -- that no love no matter how pure can justify an unquestioning obedience. She had forgotten.
Maya fled into the corridors and called at the top of her lungs for the guards to come arrest the treacherous witch.
And they did.
***
The dungeons were little used at this time of peace and prosperity. They were frightfully dusty and peculiar in design. The walls were deepest Auzurian blue, so that any waking prisoner might know the helplessness of their situation by the reputation of their captors. Bolted into these walls were every manner of golden fixture as you might find in horse stables and blacksmiths' workshops. Rings, nails, hooks, hoops and handcuffs.
Rather than a true window, light and air entered the space through a long narrow hole -- perhaps tall enough to fit a human arm through -- that stretched the length of the room at a height just below that of the ceiling. It meant that a long thin stripe of light was cast upon the blue veined marble floor. Nearer the wall with the almost-a-window, were an array of wooden contraptions that I did not like to speculate upon the use of.
In spite of my righteousness, I did not resist my arrest. I was still somewhat certain that once Laz was informed of the situation, he would bring his level-headed diplomacy to the matter, and flatter the King into turning a blind eye to my 'crimes' while also helping me to magic the trapped women far away from his clutches. The consequences of this could be finessed later.
(My lack of protest might also have been because I was not confident that I could successfully mount a physical or magical challenge to a dozen members of the Azurian Royal Guard.)
And so I found myself bound up in gold chains from ankle to bust. My wrists were encased in heavy cuffs that finished at my elbows and locked my forearms together behind my back. I felt ridiculous and squirmed around uselessly on the floor like a blindworm.
The chains were tight and heavy and pulsed with vindictive binding magic. Even when I didn't struggle in my bondage, I felt the metal leeching my energy slowly from me, sapping at my resolve. No matter how I tried to contort myself, or what spells I hissed, the chain held fast.
"Peerless Azurian craftsmanship," I muttered darkly.
Then I simply laid still, spiritually defeated as I thought upon Maya's straight forward rejection of my principles. How could we have so utterly failed to know one another? My dear friend so quickly an enemy.
***
"You have a visitor," the guard's announcement interrupted my self-pity. I turned my face toward the door that was already swinging shut to trap the arrival with me. It was Nicklas.
"Greta! I cannot stay long, I'm here without the Queen's permission, she thinks me to be taking exercise with Maya in the courtyard garden. But I came as soon as I could."
Dear, sweet Nicklas. So tender in his concern, so earnest in his intentions. I felt nothing but contempt and resentment toward him. Where was Laz? Why had this silly village boy troubled himself to lie to a succubus and risk a beating to see me -- and yet my celestial paramour, my majestic Prince, my deepest beloved -- was nowhere to be seen? I could not muster the patience to enact kindness such was my irritation.
"I see," I said flatly, barely bothering to cast my eyes in his direction, let alone lift my cheek from the cold of the flags. Nicklas crossed the floor to sit beside me.
"Pray do not feel defeated. I have a plan to free you," he whispered. I rolled my eyes, dreading more so the embarrassment of whatever stupidity might be described than the actual dangers of any practical plan. With difficulty, I squirmed into a seated position.
"Well, you'd best tell me then," I sighed.
"I dare not discuss it, lest we be overheard." He put his mouth close to my ear, "Just be ready to run at first moonlight, keep something silver with you if you can, " he touched the silver chain that was wrapped many times about his wrist as he spoke, "That might not be possible, but try. Then keep whatever you find with you just in case."
Nicklas put his soft, square-fingered hand on my cheek and looked seriously at me. His eyes held water. And though he did not voice the words, I felt a pulse in him, that same devotion I'd sensed before. That he would willingly die for me. For though he did not voice the words, I worried that his plan meant that he might plan to. And as I felt that deeply held conviction of his sweep through me... well, I felt ashamed that I could not love him better.
"Do not do a thing that puts you in danger Nick, not a thing. Do you hear me?" I hissed.
And he smiled rather sadly yet warmly at me.
"That's not a sermon you can give without being a hypocrite, is it now?"
And he hugged me to his body. So that I felt his heart beat in his chest, and his breath expand in his lungs, and the fleeting electricity of his nerves. He was fragile as a new-born faun. And I was comforted in spite myself. I closed my eyes and let my forehead loll on his shoulder.
For a brief time, we were quiet and grateful for each other.
"Hypocrites are the only kind of people who make sermons," I said.
He chuckled. Squeezed me more tightly, then placed a swift kiss upon the parting of my tresses before releasing me from the embrace. Nicklas turned to leave just as the door swung back open to demand the end of our visitation.
"I don't deserve how good you're being to me," I said. But only after enough moments had elapsed that I was certain he wouldn't hear it.
***
Some greater, but unknown, amount of time passed. The sky changed little, but my boredom and chaffed body insisted that it had been a great many hours.
At first, I had passed the time with wild speculation; what plan of action could Nicklas -- a puny mortal of no particular expertise or abilities -- possibly have mapped? Perhaps this was unfair. He had some rudimentary magical knowledge and perhaps even skill; after all he had summoned a succubus. And unlike myself, trapped through carelessness, he had always intended the occurrence of his kidnap, so perhaps he was also more cunning than I knew.
However, as I turned the pages of my book learning in my mind's eye, there was no clue or inspiration that I could glean. And as the dark magic in the weight of the gold chains ebbed at me, I lost still more of my mental strength.
