...that Rakkec is still down here

As they stepped out of Rhuti's cave, a voice called out from somewhere behind them. Aliara stiffened at once. None of the broodmothers ever made any noise louder than a murmur. What's more, it had been a male voice.

"Hey!" This time, she spun around, and realization struck her. The voice was coming from behind a silk-wrapped doorway. The prisoner was still back there.

"Is anyone out there?" he called. Aliara couldn't see him clearly, but she caught a hint of movement through the silk. "Anyone? I'm hungry!"

Aliara elbowed Lil'esh in the ribs. "Have you been feeding him?" she hissed. Lil'esh nodded.

"I bring him ambrosia and slip it under the door. I wasn't sure what you wanted me to do with--"

"I can hear you!" Rakkec's voice was high and plaintive. "Please, I'll tell you whatever you want to know! Please don't leave me down here any longer!"

"Shut up!" Aliara barked. She tried to think. She had been planning to bring Teysa down here when she was well again to interrogate the drow. She knew that the smart thing to do would be to hand him over to the Matron. That, or cut his throat. But part of her resisted. She was uncomfortably aware of her place as one of a dwindling number of bipeds in the warren. The thought of reducing the number still further-- or delivering him up to the driders-- discomfited her in a way that she couldn't quite articulate. Besides, he was so pathetic. It was hard to imagine him as a threat to anyone.

"Are you armed, Lil'esh?" she whispered. In response, the drow lifted up her shirt far enough for Teysa to see the hilt sticking out of her belt. Aliara's hand went to her own sheath and she drew her dagger.

"Alright!" she called. "I'm going to cut a hole in the silk. Stand well back from the door."

She heard muffled footsteps, and the dark outline vanished. She stabbed downward into the silk and began to saw her blade back and forth. Sticky strands of webbing clung to her dagger. With her free hand, she peeled away dangling clumps of silk. Bit by bit she hacked through the curtain until she had drawn a slice all the way down the middle. She seized the loose edges in her fists and yanked them apart.

Only then did she step back and review her work. Torn strands of silk dangled down like willow branches. She could see Rakkec on the far side of the door. He stood hunched in on himself in the corner. She could smell him, too... a ripe, sweaty stink. He looked up at her in pitiful relief.

"Thank you!" he said, and stepped towards the door. In a flash Aliara's knife was in her hand again and held up before her. Rakkec froze and lifted his hands. "No threat! No threat!" he squeaked. "Please, can I come out?"

Aliara wrinkled her nose. "I should make you take a bath first. There's a pool in there, isn't there?"

Rakkec gulped. "I'm sorry, milady. I don't know how to swim."

"How to--" Aliara growled deep in her throat. "It's three feet deep! You're not going to drown, idiot!"

Despite herself, though, she started to relax. She wasn't going to kill this fool. She didn't particularly want to deliver him to the tender ministrations of the Matron, either, though if the drider insisted Aliara wasn't going to stick her neck out. Still... he just looked so harmless and pathetic. It could be an act to get your guard down, part of her thought, but another part responded Nobody's that good an actor.

"We'll get you some fresh clothes. Just take a bath, then you can eat. Deal?" Aliara turned to Lil'esh. "Can you grab him a robe or something from upstairs? From the smell of it, his leathers are all half-rotten." Lil'esh hesitated, so she added: "Unless you want to stay down here and watch him bathe. Either way."

Lil'esh's face suddenly acquired a pinched expression and she shook her head. She turned on her heel and practically dashed out of the cave. That left Aliara and Rakkec. They stared at each other through the door.

"Well?" Aliara gestured for him to hurry, and he flinched. She realized that she was still holding her knife and spun it between her fingers, then pushed it into its sheath. "What are you waiting for?"

"Please, milady, do I have to disrobe? In front of you?"

Aliara rolled her eyes. "I'm not turning my back on you," she said. She walked over to the wall next the door and posted herself up against it like a sentry. From this angle, she couldn't see into the room, but if he tried to make a break for it, she'd be able to stop him. "Is this better?" she asked.

"Thank you!" came the reply from within. She heard a rustle of leather, and the smell redoubled in ****. She picked idly at her fingernails with her dagger and waited for the splash.

When it came, it was everything she'd hoped for and more. It was hard to piece the scene together without a visual aid, but the sounds echoing off the cave walls painted a vivid picture in her mind. First came the footsteps slapping on the bare stone and the gasp of indrawn breath. Next, the gentle lap of water against skin-- as of someone testing a pool with their foot. Following that came the minute slippery sound of skin skidding on wet rock, then immediately afterward the strangled scream and heavy KA-SPLASH of a body landing belly-first in a shallow pool.

"Everything ok in there?" she called. For a moment, the sound of wet thrashing and flailing filled the air. Then a sodden voice responded:

"Yes."

Aliara stood up and peered in through the doorway. She leaned against one side of the arch, folded her arms, and shook her head. Rakkec was submerged up to his neck, which meant that he was probably either kneeling or sitting. His short hair was plastered to his head in a way that made his bald spot all the more visible. And the expression on his face was one of childlike enthusiasm warring with barely controlled terror. He saw her and started backwards, splashing water everywhere. "Hey!" he cried.

"Relax," Aliara said. "I can't see anything. And you don't have anything I want to see."

"Well... ok. This actually feels nice. Swimming is easier than I thought."

Aliara was about to correct him again, then she saw the wry smile on his face. She couldn't help it; she grinned back. "Yeah, you're a regular selkie," she said. "Soap's on the shelf by the pool. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it."

"I know what soap is," he sulked, but he grabbed it all the same and began to scrub. Aliara watched with a bored expression on her face. It occurred to her that an observer might consider her interest prurient, but nothing was further from her mind. He was a drow, he was a prisoner, he was stinky, but most importantly he wasn’t Teysa.

In truth, despite everything, she felt a little kinship for Rakkec. Drow he may be, but Lil’esh’s look of disgust said it all: he was as different from her as she was from Aliara. All of the drow “guests” were petty nobility at the very least. Rakkec, to hear him tell it, was just another faceless laborer. It was a forcible reminder that rarefied drow society had rested not only on the backs of thousands of slaves, but thousands of anonymous workers who lived and toiled and died around and below the City. Like Aliara, he had nobody to watch his back— no family, no court, no social circle. He was a drow alone. And like Aliara, he seemed to know it.

Of course, her sympathy only extended so far. If he tried to run— if he gave any sign that he was anything other than what he said he was— he was prepared to gut him.

She hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

He finished washing himself around the same time Lil’esh returned. She hovered outside the room with a bundle of cloth in her hand. Clearly, she did not want to come in.

“He smells a lot better,” Aliara said, then scoffed at Lil’esh’s expression. “Give me those, then.” She snatched the folded robe, crossed the cave and set it down on the shelf next to the pool.

When she joined Lil’esh outside of the cave, the drow was scowling. “He didn’t... take any liberties, did he?” she asked. Her voice was so prim and proper that Aliara almost laughed out loud.

“What the hell does that mean, Lil’esh?” she asked, trying to keep a smile off her face.

“He didn’t make any lewd comments? His kind always do. I could feel his eyes on me when you cut open the door.”

In Aliara’s memory, Rakkec’s eyes had been staring firmly at the exit. She decided to remain noncommittal. “I don’t think that’s on his mind, Lil’esh. He’s just hungry and scared.”

“Well... ok.” Lil’esh didn’t sound convinced. “Do you think he’s a spy? Or an assassin? That’s pretty common among drow nobility. He could be a double agent.”

“I don’t think he’s drow nobility, Lil’esh,” Aliara replied. “Why don’t you like him, anyways? Is it because he’s common?”

“No!” Lil’esh squawked, a little too quickly. “No. I’m just... I’m worried, Aliara. We were attacked! And he was with them! They killed Thi’vo!”

All at once, something clicked in Aliara’s mind. She laid a hand on Lil’esh’s shoulder. “Lil’esh... have you ever seen someone die before?”

Lil’esh’s face took on a hunted look. Her eyes flickered back and forth. Finally, she looked down and shuffled her feet. “No,” she murmured, and when she looked up again her face was a mask of horror.

“No! It was terrible, Aliara! She screamed, and, and I heard it, even after it ended I heard it in my head! And her arm! She held out her arm, and I could have reached it, but I was scared! And she saw me! She saw me run away!”

She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. Aliara stepped away from her quickly, in case she tried for a hug again. Not for the first time, she wished Teysa was here. Teysa was better at this sort of thing.

“You couldn’t have saved her,” she said. “I saw it happen. It was quick... ish. I’ve seen much worse, believe me.”

“But she was my friend.” Lil’esh sniffed and rubbed her nose, and just like that, something changed in her. She still looked sad, but the sudden sorrow that had twisted her face had receded like a cloudburst. “It feels so strange that she’s dead. I expect her to show up and ask us what we’re all so sad about.”

“I’ve lost people before,” Aliara said. She really couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands. Teysa, she knew, would have patted Lil’esh on the shoulder or even given her a hug, but Aliara was much less demonstrative. “It hurts, for a while. But I always tell myself that I’m still alive. You’re still alive, Lil’esh. You made it. That’s something.”

“I suppose it—“ Lil’esh cut herself off, looking past Aliara’s shoulder. There, dripping and shivering, stood Rakkec. In his white silk robe he looked like a monk. Beneath it he was a scrawny thing. The smell of soap wafted off him, which was at least a significant improvement over his former stink. Apparently the robe had included a pair of sandals, and he wore these now. His feet looked calloused and horny as shoe leather. He pulled the robe tighter around himself and looked down at the two women. Down, Aliara noticed; he was surprisingly tall, though his habitual hunch made it hard to notice.

“I feel better,” he said, and inhaled. “I smell better, too. What do I do now? Go back in my cell?” He looked around. “What is this place?”

“Never you mind,” Aliara said. “It’s a dungeon.”

Rakkec cocked his head. “Are there other prisoners?” he asked. “I hear muttering.”

Aliara cursed under her breath. She could hear it, too, Tivya’s constant litany. “Not exactly,” she admitted. “This is more of an... infirmary. There are sick people down here. Don’t go near them, or else—“

“I know, I know.” Rakkec held his hands up glumly. “You’ll kill me.”

She thought about tossing him back in his cell, but she’d need to get El’keth or someone to weave a new door, and right now she didn’t want to see any other driders. And she didn’t want to leave him down here with the broodmothers either. She didn’t like the idea of anyone, especially a man, unsupervised around those **** women (but could it be worse than what you let the driders do to them anyways? said a treacherous little voice in her head). But she also didn’t like the idea of him alone down here, with no company but the lost and damned.

She came to a decision. “Come on, then.” She reached into Lil’esh’s pack and grabbed a jar of ambrosia. “Catch.” She lobbed it underhand and Rakkec caught it easily.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Soup,” Teysa replied, and smirked. “You’ll like it. We’ll find you a room upstairs. Just stay put and don’t piss anyone off. You might make it out alive.”

“But what about—“ Lil’esh began, gesturing towards Tivya’s room. Aliara waved a hand. “We’ll come back for them later. Let’s get this one settled in. Then I need some time alone.”