“Once this war is over.”
“Once this damned war is over. Have you heard the latest rumor?”
Moving from the corridor under a stone archway that led to a staircase, they vanished from her view, carrying the only torch. Their conversation was quickly muffled by stone and distance. Her legs carried her after them, but by the time she reached the staircase she could only follow the receding glow of torchlight. She climbed quickly, chafed by a sudden cold draft of wind. Between one breath and the next, the torch went out, leaving her in pitch-blackness. She climbed the stairway by touch, fingers brushing the dressed stone, feeling the cracks and flaking mortar smoothing away beneath her skin until it seemed to her that she was in a narrow stair with wood walls, wood floors, and a ceiling so low that it brushed her hair. She stumbled up against a latch. Though her fingers touched the latch, they hesitated.
Her jaw had gone tight, clenched hard, and the pain brought a rush of questions. Where was she? Had she unwittingly descended back to Earth?
Quickly vanquished and fled. “Walk through the door,” her voice murmured, “and I will be one step closer to my heart’s desire.” Wasn’t it true? Surely it was true. She set her hand on the latch just as she heard muffled sounds of weeping to her right. Startled, she jerked back as the latch twitched, turned from the other side, scraped against wood, and snapped up.
The door was thrown open.
A pretty young woman blinked into the darkness. She had a fresh scar on her upper lip and wore only a shift, the fabric so finely woven that Liath saw the blush of her nipples beneath the cloth. “Oh, thank the Lady,” she said, grabbing Liath’s wrist and tugging her out into a bright chamber where a rosy light poured in through four unshuttered windows. “You got her safely hidden.”
The mellow light pooled over a parquet floor and set into relief a set of frescoes depicting such obscene subjects that Liath blushed. Her new friend pressed past her into the hidden cupboard—for such it was—and helped the weeping woman out from the shadows. She wore the long and rather shapeless wool tunic, dyed a nondescript clay red, worn by common folk, although unlike the Wendish style she wore also a tightly fitted bodice and a brown apron over it. Her hair was bound up in a crown of braids rather than covered by a light shawl, as a respectable Wendish woman’s would be. Beneath the streaked tears and the frightened expression, Liath could see that she was remarkably pretty, blackhaired with the kind of eyes one could stare into for hours. She shrank away from the sight of the huge bed and its silken canopy.