Emily, inside an Impotuan fortification

I was able to eat again on the fifth day of my captivity. When Lady Arkaline heard of it, she barged into Arma's room and wanted to leave that day. Arma stood up to her and pointed out my balance was off and I still had the headache, both of which were true. I was having a terrible time standing up and trying to walk. Arma said it was another symptom of the concussion. She faced down Lady Arkaline, arguing that I would not be able to sit on an eagle without falling off.

I didn’t wear my Ud-shirt for three days. I hoped it was enough for Aylem's monstrous clairvoyance to find me. With Lady Arkaline agitating to return to Impotu proper, I started wearing it again. I had planned on falling off an eagle in flight, especially if I was placed in the back of the flyer on the saddle. It was an all-day flight to get to Kipgapshegar, which is where the rulers of Impotu had their summer palace, in what passed for mountains in the lands of the empire.

Arma spent her spare time writing letters to friends. She put the contents of Aylem's revelation and the Prophesy of the Great Breaking verbatim into each letter. A courier arrived and departed every day from the fort and Arma had three to four letters ready for three days running.

Arma said she would follow me to Foskos on the condition that we add a third to our party. He was a Chem named Twee. He lived in a cell in the basement next to the water well for the fort. Like most Chem captured and enslaved by the Impotuans, Twee had been blinded to prevent his escape.

The Chem had special water magic. If there was water to be found, then any Chem could command that water to surface and move through pipes or water mains. In every Impotuan village, city, or fortress, a blinded Chem slave provided water for the community. They were pitiful creatures, maimed just to move water around for Cosm. I was liking the Impotuan version of Cosm rule less the more I learned about it.

Blinding a person so he or she could not escape was foul. Arma explained that slave traders threw quick lime into the eyes of their Chem captives to rob them of their sight. It was another example of the needless cruelty of Impotuan society.

Arma visited Twee every day. She inspected his ration to confirm he was getting his full amount. She also checked his general health and made sure he had enough water to keep the gills on his neck moist. Chem could breathe through both lungs and gills, but if the gills dried out, the two organs that did the gas exchange with water would also dry out. Arma called them gill sacs. If the gill sacs completely dried, they would bleed, which would flood the other two lungs used for breathing air and drown the Chem in its own blood. For obvious reasons, Chem needed to stay near water, preferring to sleep half-immersed.

I had read about the Chem at the shrine so I knew a little about them. Because there were no Chem in Foskos, I had never met one. They preferred warmer climes than Foskos, which was a cold kingdom that had snow on the mountain tops three out of four seasons.

“How did Twee get here?" I asked Arma after she invited Lady Arkaline to leave us in peace for now.

“The way most supplies get here, by wagon and barge," she studied the soles of her shoes and compared them to her boots, debating which to wear. "It takes 30 to 40 days of travel in the upstream direction. If you have a light load, and there is no other traffic, it can take 20 to 30 days with eight mules on the towpath."

“Upstream?” Did they travel by boat?

“The Ahkeseld River is navigable up to the eastern foothills of the Blue Mountains. Once you get to the foothills, you need to use wagons on the old trade road that eventually goes to Inkalim.”

“Can Twee walk far?” I asked. “If we can get out of here, it will be a long way to walk to get to Black Falls or the customs gate above Truvos.”

“I shouldn't worry about how far a Chem can travel. He will slow down so I can keep up with him," she smiled at me with sympathy. "The question is whether you can keep up and I don't think you can. I can walk at least five wagon-days every day, and that would be a leisurely pace. If I enhance myself so I can keep up with a Chem for short distances with rests in between, so make that maybe eight to ten wagon-days of distance in a day if we had to push it."

She gave me a funny look and then one eyebrow dramatically rose toward her hairline, "Emly, I think this is the first time I have seen you speechless. Soft-spoken, yes. Speechless, no. That’s a great fish face. So, how slow are you?”

It irked me that there was true pity for my limitations in what she just asked. I breathed in and bit the resentment, and then let it slowly out and banished it. It was stupid to be angry over something no one could control, like race or height or magic ability.

“I have been recovering slowly from chronic fatigue, a lingering effect from when I died last year. It gets better but not quickly,” I could not help but sigh. “Right now, I think I could walk at least one wagon-day. If I were completely recovered, I could walk three, assuming level ground.”

“And you were going to escape on your own and walk all the way back to Foskos at one wagon-day per day? You would never make it before our soldiers found you.”

“I’m small and I have good forester skills. If I want to disappear, I can disappear and no Cosm barring the Queen would be able to find me. A ten-day walk through the wilderness is time-consuming but not difficult.”

It was Arma’s turn for a fish face. “How is that possible? Where would you have learned how to survive in the wilderness?”

“I lived by myself in the wilderness for many years, many wagon-days from Foskos. The few things I could not make for myself I would buy from the Sea Coyn at the trade fair at Uldlip. To be honest, I assumed it would take many days to reach Black Falls or the Customs gate above Truvos. So I've been worried about how much hunting or fishing I could manage to do to keep you and the Chem fed. A Cosm eats many times what any Coyn eats. I've been fretting about it because I'm not in good shape right now. I don't know if I could bring in that much game."

Arma looked at me and then started to laugh softly, "Oh, this is funny. I'm worried because you can't keep up with me and you're worried because you might not be able to hunt enough to keep me fed." She had a good hearty laugh, "Well, little one, Twee and I will carry you, and we'll get to Foskos fast enough that food will not be an issue."

“So, my partner in escaping, I know I can escape,” I pointed out, though I refrained from telling her the three different routes I deduced to get out of here. “How do we get Twee out of here, and you too?”

“Twee told me that you and I should find our own way out," she leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees, "and he will make a tunnel under the foundation of the fort and walk out. The blindness that prevents any Chem from doing this isn't an issue since you and I will be waiting to guide him. He said earlier this morning that he has most of a tunnel already made."

“How?” I was mystified.

“He moves water around with his magic and the water will make wells, tunnels, underground aqueducts, trenches, you name it. If he wanted, he could undermine the foundations of this place and probably drown every person in the structure and then just swim away; however, without sight, he’d never be able to travel away from here successfully.”

“Arma, I know I can go out that window right now and walk away unharmed,” I admitted. “How do you escape this place?”

“Oh, you know,” she smiled and shrugged her shoulders, “I was thinking of just going out that window and levitating myself down to the ground. Then, with a charm of misdirection on top of a charm of shadows, not to mention wearing black when it’s nighttime, I would walk away and wait for Twee.”

“It sounds too easy,” I worried. “What are we overlooking?”

“Pursuit by eagle-mounted mages," she looked worried. "They are fast and powerful, and Lady Arkaline will be in a rage. All three of us would suffer if we were captured."

“What about water for Twee?”

“I can invoke the charm of water. I also will have two waterskins, just in case.”

“We should go tonight if Twee is ready,” I said. “I might be deemed well enough to be taken to Impotu in the morning so we should go tonight. Once we’re out of here, how do we find Twee in the dark? Without sight, he may have a bad sense of direction. What about using a charm of location?”

“Good idea," a bitter look flashed across Arma's face for just an instant, "but I have no access to charm gems. As a priestess of Mugash, I should receive ten blank gems a year as well as a stipend. I have received neither for nine years now."

“Alright, here’s another idea,” having committed myself, I wasn’t going to abandon these two. “We leave as a group in Twee’s tunnel.”

“That’s insane,” Arma shook her head, “we would drown.”

“Would we? If Twee can move water around as you described, then he should be able to move the water to give us breathing space inside the tunnel. Let's ask him if that's possible."

“Hmmm,” she said and then nothing else for many breaths. “He says he can do that.”

“What? You just mindcasted now?”

“Yes,” she gave me a funny look. “Why do you look surprised?”

“It was so fast. I didn't catch the signs of you going into a trance," I shrugged. "So, the last problem is getting me down to where Twee is."

“I need to change my bed linens today so I have laundry to do," she grinned. "If you curl up and hug your knees to your chin, you will fit into my laundry basket. Problem solved."

“Where are your water skins?”

“Already in the basket along with some pemmican, just in case we get slowed down.”

“It will be difficult to walk through the forest in long skirts,’ I pointed out. “Do you have riding clothes? Pants are much more practical if we need to stay off the roads.”

“I do my laundry in my riding clothes, so we're all set. All we need to do now is hurry up and wait.

We were able to escape much earlier than we had planned. At the fifth bell, the drum the Impotuans used to signal the time of day and general orders to the fort as a whole began beating a cadence I had not heard in the five days I spent there.

"That's the assemble to fight order," Arma said, looking up from the letter she was writing. "I’ll see what’s happening.”

Arma returned a while later and picked up the laundry basket, placing it on her bedroom table. "We should go now," her color was a little up. "Arkaline has taken every available flier to defend our staging fort. It's under attack by the Foskans. There must be less than twenty people left who are mostly the kitchen staff and the gate sentries. This is likely our best opportunity to get away without being chased. Let’s make sure we’ve got all your clothes so I can put you and them in the basket under the sheets.”

She grinned. She had deduced how much I hated being picked up and carried around and used it to tease me.