...and put Rakkec in a cell

The group that marched back to the armory bore little resemblance to the one that had marched out. Rakkec walked with his arms bound behind his back with strips of silk. Lil'esh led him and Aliara followed behind, her hand resting on the pommel of her dagger. Dirreg, his mangled foot swaddled in a thick bandage, leaned heavily on Ty'liv's shoulder and limped along. Behind the group walked Jy'ven the drider, carrying the shrouded body of Thi'vo in her arms.

They stripped off their worn and dented armor in silence. None of the drow were uninjured, though aside from Dirreg and the luckless Thi'vo, their wounds were cuts and scrapes at worst. Sweat and blood had soaked through the cotton tunic Aliara wore under her leathers, and she knew she had to change, but she wasn't ready to go back to her apartment. Not yet. Every time she thought about the comfortable little cave, she saw Teysa: Teysa soaking in the bath, or praying at her little altar in the corner, or just lying in the hammock with a lazy smile on her face. That room had belonged to the two of them. Aliara alone had no right to it.

Instead she leaned against the wall and looked Rakkec up and down. Lil'esh joined her. "Where do we put him?" she asked. "Are there... prison cells, or something?"

Aliara thought for a moment. "No... but I think I have an idea. Bring him along." She looked at the other drow. They were all staring expectantly at her. She felt that something more was called for.

"Uh, everyone," she began, and grimaced, aware that this was not the smoothest way to address a group. Teysa had always been better at this sort of thing. "Teysa is... she's hurt. I don't know how badly. I'm going to bring this one," she pointed at Rakkec, "somewhere we can leave him safely. You all... you all fought bravely today. Good job. I'm proud of you. I know Teysa--" her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath. "Teysa will be, too, when she wakes up. Take a rest." She looked from one face to the next. "That's all."

Without waiting to see how they responded, she reached out and grabbed Rakkec by the elbow. "Come on, you," she said. "Come with me." He stumbled a couple of steps closer and Lil'esh fell in on his other side. Aliara tugged, maybe a little more fiercely than necessary, and Rakkec had to do a mad jig to keep his balance. She set off without checking to see if he was following.

Aliara's sense of direction was much better than Teysa's, and in any case, she'd been here just hours before. She led them down the spiraling pathway into the lower warren. When the path forked, she turned right, and politely pretended not to notice the expression on Lil'esh's face. The path opened out into a circular cave lined with arched doorways. Most of these were covered by silk curtains. Lil'esh looked around in wonder. "Where-" she began.

"Halt!" The voice was high and quavery. Aliara looked around in time to see a massive shape bearing down on them. It resolved into El'keth, her hands held high, an expression of shock on her face. She recoiled. "Oh! Aliara. I'm sorry, I thought you were..." she trailed off. A female drow poked her head out from behind El'keth. She was holding a rock in both hands, but now she let it clatter to the floor.

"Lil'esh!" the drow exclaimed. "And Aliara! What happened?"

"We heard a terrible commotion," El'keth said. "And then silence. But I see you are alive! Did you win? Who is this man?" She looked around. "Where's Teysa?"

"I'll tell you everything, El'keth, I promise," Aliara replied. "This man is our prisoner. I figured we could put him in one of the empty cells down here. Can you cover the entrance with silk thick enough to block the door?"

El'keth nodded. "Of course. Where is my mother? Is everyone all right? You look hurt." She looked at Rakkec and narrowed her eyes. "Did this man attack us? Who is he?"

"I'm fine," Aliara said, waving her off. She was starting to feel her bruises, but she didn't think anything was broken. She had been in worse scrapes than this. "And this man... I don't know. I don't know what he is. I just want to keep him safe until the Matron can talk to him."

She pushed Rakkec towards the nearest empty archway. The room inside was small and unfurnished, but there was a small pool of water and a smooth ledge. Glowing fungus scaled one wall and cast a faint illumination over the room. Aliara had been in prison cells much less comfortable than this.

"Wait!" Rakkec said as he stumbled across the threshold. "My arms... please, just let me--"

For a moment, Aliara was tempted to refuse, but she relented. She hooked her dagger through her belt, spun it between her fingers, then slashed through the silk strands that bound him. He flinched as the blade sliced towards him, but then shook out his arms and began to massage some feeling back into his wrists.

"El'keth's going to seal the door," Aliara said. "It's just for now. Maybe you can cut your way out, maybe not. But if I or anyone else in this warren catches you outside that room, we'll kill you. So maybe think about whether the risk is worth it."

"I won't!" Rakkec promised. He threw his hands up over his head to show that they were empty. "I swear! I won't! I can't go back the City anyways, that Lord probably wants to kill me."

Aliara stepped back and nodded to El'keth, but Rakkec held up one finger. "Wait!" he said. "Wait! I have... I found something. On the battlefield." He reached into the pocket of his trousers and dug around. "I found this after I woke up. I think when I tackled... your friend... it fell off." He held out a small steel medallion. Embossed on the front was the sunburst of Agamor.

Aliara froze with her fingertips extended. She remembered pinning the symbol to Teysa's roundel before setting forth. She wanted to take it, but her fingers seemed not to want to obey her. They froze, trembling, inches from the tiny medallion. Rakkec looked at her with a worried expression and pressed it into her palm.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and cast his eyes down. "I hope... I hope your friend is all right, lady. I really do." He hung his head, turned, and strode off into his cell. Numbly, Aliara nodded at El'keth, who turned and began to spin silk across the doorway. When she had finished, Rakkec had disappeared behind a billowing white curtain.

When she had finished, El'keth turned to Aliara. The half-elf was sitting on the floor of the cave, her back against the wall, her knees tented before her. Her head hung down and she was turning the holy symbol over and over in her fingers. It was made of cheap steel, the symbol pressed in shallow bas-relief. Her fingertips traced the sun-shaped outline. She couldn't remember where Teysa had gotten it-- she'd probably had it before joining the party. Maybe it even came from the Abbey she sometimes mentioned. Aliara wondered how much that holy symbol had seen, how many times Teysa had almost lost it in brutal melees and narrow escapes. To lose it in an ugly little skirmish far beneath the earth... it hardly seemed fair.

But she didn't lose it. I have it. And when she wakes up, I'll give it back to her. Her hand closed around the medallion so tightly that its edge bit into her palm.

El'keth settled down beside her. "Aliara," she said softly, "what was he talking about? What did he mean?" Her hands wrung together nervously. "Where's... where's Teysa?"

Aliara looked up at her. El'keth's face had the same strange, smooth beauty as her mother. Her eyes were glossy black marbles without iris or pupil. But she had something her mother lacked. When the Matron wore an expression, it flitted across her face like a mask; her smiles and frowns were things she put on for the benefit of her human guests. For El'keth, there was no such distance. The worry on her face was raw and real. Somehow, that made Aliara's job easier.

"She's hurt, El'keth," she said. She picked her words carefully. "There was a battle. The drow brought a... a sorcerer, some kind of monster. Teysa killed him, but she was badly wounded."

"Will she... will she die?" El'keth asked. The last word escaped as a whisper.

"Your mother has her," Aliara said. "She says... she can save her." She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears and ignored the pain in her hand. Her fingers would not relax. She took a breath, counted to three in her head, and opened her eyes again. "She'll be fine. I'm not worried."

"She will save her!" El'keth exclaimed. She wrapped her arms around Aliara's shoulders. The half-elf flinched away, waited for a couple of heartbeats, then pushed El'keth gently off her.

"She will. I know she will. My mother can do anything," El'keth said. She spoke in the manner of one trying to convince herself. "She will live. She must."

Aliara sat like that until she trusted herself to stand. She let her palm open. The medallion had gouged a shallow cut in her skin and its edge was wet with her blood. She took it in her other hand and clenched her injured fist. El'keth glanced down at the bloody medallion and her eyes grew wide, but she said nothing.

Lil'esh and Fen'li were loitering a polite distance away. Fen'li coughed when she saw Aliara stand up, and Lil'esh's head snapped around. She had been peering into one of the cells-- Aliara thought it might be Rhuti's. Fen'li looked uncomfortable, but there was a strange expression in Lil'esh's eyes-- something halfway between embarrassment and avidity.

"This is where the broodmothers live?" she asked.

Aliara nodded. "You've never come down here before?"

"I was..." Lil'esh hunted for the right word. "It seemed to be none of my business. Are they... comfortable?"

"As best as we can make them," Aliara replied. "It was worse when we arrived. They were hung up on the walls. All of those who could leave, left."

"My mother used to tell me scary stories about the driders," Fen'li confided. "She said that if I was bad they would snatch me up and eat me whole."

"We never!" El'keth said, indignant. She looked abashed. "But it was still a terrible sin, what my mother did. That way is done now. There will never be any more ****."

"So what are you going to do when these ones pass?" Lil'esh asked. She held out an arm in a sweeping gesture to take in all of the caves.

"I don't know," El'keth said. "Maybe by then we will find volunteers?"

Fen'li shuddered. "I doubt it!" she squeaked. "You'd never get me to sign up for that, never!"

"Yeah," Lil'esh said, but her voice was a carefully controlled monotone. "Who would?" She stared for a moment longer, then shook her head as if to clear it. "Come on," she said. "Let's go upstairs. I want to see if Dirreg's foot needs attention."