Rock Bottom (Jasmine)

JASMINE FLAMESWORTH

Drip…drip…drip…

I'll need to speak to Dalmore about that leak, I thought through the dull ache in my skull. I attempted to roll over and pull my pillow over my head to muffle the constant drizzling, but instead of my pillow, I came away with a handful of damp straw.

Sitting up caused the inside of my head to slosh, which made it even harder to focus on my surroundings.

My bleary eyes scanned the room through a bottle-glass blur that suggested a night of significant over-indulgence on my part. I recognized the room. It was a cold, wet stone enclosure about ten feet square. A single barred door led into and out of the jail cell. There wasn't even a window, because the cells were in the base of the Wall itself.

Despite the lack of windows, the cells were always damp. I glared grumpily up at the steady dripping from between the stones above my head. This sent a sharp, stabbing pain up my neck and into my skull, and my eyes snapped shut.

I rubbed a dirty palm into one eye socket, trying to push away the pain. It helped, a little.

I couldn't remember enough to be sure what I was in for this time. I'd been at the Underwall Inn, keeping an eye on the other patrons to earn my keep, I remembered that much. There were never more than a handful of people at the inn at once, but since the Council had fallen, tensions always ran high.

The few soldiers who even stayed at the Wall—mostly because there was nowhere else for them to go—were just as angry and afraid as everyone else. When one of them had a rough day and a few too many drinks, things were likely to get violent. I'd tossed more than a few soldiers out on their heads since the rest of the Twin Horns went underground and I…well, I didn't.

Then, something clicked into place. I half-remembered the face of a big, loud-mouthed, gorilla-armed soldier.

I leaned back against the cold wall of the cell as I puzzled through the prior evening's events. It'd been another dreary day, and I'd had a few too many drinks. The soldier had been boasting endlessly about how tough he was.

What was it that he had said? Something about his sword, I was sure. I dug the tip of my finger into my temple, the pressure giving me some relief from my hangover.

Things started to come back into focus, and the goon's rumbled bragging resounded in my aching skull. He'd been going on and on about the Alacryans, and then he'd said, "Let's just see them Alacryan scum try an' take the Wall, aye lads? I'd beat the life out of 'em one by one, an' wouldn't even need to take ol' Mankiller from its sheath, aye?"

Mankiller? I thought, scoffing and causing a jolt of pain to arc through my head. I pressed the heel of my hand back into my closed eye. "How limited was his vocabulary to name his sword by its designed purpose?" I asked myself, sneering despite the hangover. My voice was raw and weak.

I had cracked up drunkenly into my beer when he talked about his oversized kitchen knife, and the big brute had turned to ask me what was so funny. I could have just waved him off, but instead, I had told him exactly how ridiculous his sword's name was. To make sure he'd understood the insult, I then said he couldn't beat the life out of a three-legged dog with his hunk of rot-iron, much less an Alacryan mage.

An image of the big man, easily twice my size, lying unconscious on the floor oozed into my sluggish mind. He'd been missing a few teeth.

That's the problem with fighting soldiers though. There are always other soldiers.

One was currently looking at me through the barred door of the cell, I realized dully. He was a pimply young man, around my age, with shaggy reddish hair. "Can I help you?" I asked, then wished I hadn't when my insides roiled dangerously.

"Senior Captain has given the order to release you, Flamesworth," the soldier said, emphasizing my name. He grinned at me. "The senior captain has also asked that I inform you that this will be the last time. Any more…altercations…and he'll chuck you out. Not enough resources to keep riff-raff like you in jail."

No, I thought bitterly, just scheming, treasonous nobility like my father.

"Understand?" the soldier asked, squinting through the bars. I nodded, which wasn't any better than speaking.

A key rattled in the lock and the hinges wailed as the door was pulled outward. The soldier stood to the side and jerked his head. "Come on then, I can't babysit you all day."

I slid up the filthy wall until I was on my feet and stumbled out of the door. The soldier led me down a long hallway filled with identical cells, almost all of them empty, then up a narrow, winding stone stair, then practically pushed me out a thick wooden door that opened into an alley at the base of the Wall.

"Like I said, this was the last time. Pull yourself together, or get the hell out of town, yeah?" With those final supportive words, he slammed the door shut, and I heard the bar fall into place on the other side.

I leaned against the rough wooden planks of the building making up the other wall of the alley, resting for a moment before beginning the slow slog back to the Underwall Inn, where I was staying.

I passed a few people on the way, but the Underwall wasn't far, and there weren't many of us left at the Wall. A couple of soldiers gave me cold stares, but it was hard to tell if it was because of the fight, because of my bad reputation, or because they were just sick of working for free and waiting to die every damned day.

That's what life was like at the Wall, after all. Etistin, Blackbend, and Xyrus had all fallen. The other major cities, too, most likely. Elenoir was fully under control of the Alacryans. Darv, from what I'd heard, had broken into all out civil war.

All around the Wall, the Alacryans had seized control. We'd only been spared for so long because the Wall no longer held any strategic value. They didn't need to get past it to take anywhere else, unless they planned on marching into the Beast Glades, and they'd already proven that they could get in there easily enough.

No one, including me, expected our reprieve to last forever. Eventually, a force would march on the Wall, or even worse, one of their retainers would arrive to lay waste to the soldiers here. Most of the garrison had already been emptied, sent to Etistin to die, and many others fled, stripping off their uniforms and throwing down their weapons so they could go home and hope to make the best of life under Vritra rule.

Not everyone had somewhere to go, though.

The door screeched as I pushed my way into the Underwall. Dalmore looked over from his place behind the bar. He set down the mug he'd been cleaning—he was meticulous about those mugs, cleaning them constantly, over and over again—and pointed back at the door.

"Oh no, not this time. You're done." Dalmore was a stocky man in his middle years. He had clay colored skin, slightly wrinkled, and short, dark hair that was quickly receding away from his forehead. "Sorry to say it, Jasmine, but you've been more trouble than you're worth."

I rolled my eyes and kicked my leg over a wobbly stool right in front of him. A row of freshly cleaned mugs sat on the bar, so I grabbed one and turned it upright, then looked at Dalmore expectantly. His eyebrows rose and his frown deepened simultaneously, but he didn't move to pour me a drink.

"Be reasonable, Dal. If you didn't have me around, who would keep those soldiers from cutting your throat and stealing your beer?"

He scoffed. "You'll be the reason they slit my throat. I was damned happy to have a member of the Twin Horns

sticking 'round here to keep an eye on things, but you've cost me three times what you've saved. No, we're done, Jasmine. I want you out. Now."

I met the innkeeper's hard gaze. "Can I at least have something to dull this hangover before I go?"

***

Ten minutes later, I was climbing up the cliff face next to the wall and regretting it. My foot slipped from a rock, sending a jolt through my body that nearly made me vomit, but I gritted my teeth and got my footing.

Putting one hand over another, and occasionally throwing out a blast of air to correct myself if I lost my balance, I made my slow, nauseating way to the ledge where Arthur and I had sat and talked after he fought with Reynolds.

We'd both wallowed in the muck of the worst of our impulses regarding our families. At least we'd had families back then. It hadn't been long after that conversation when Reynolds died and Arthur placed my own father under arrest.

Angry, unwelcome tears built up in the corners of my eyes, but I bit them back, then hissed in pain and wiped at my lip with the back of my hand. It came away bloody.

I threw my head back to shout out a curse, but all that came out was a shuddering breath.

"If only we'd known how much worse it could get, right Arthur?" The wind grabbed my words and carried them over the Wall and off into the Beast Glades.

Somewhere below me, in the Wall's finest prison cell, my father sat and nursed his wounded pride. I don't think the lisp from his burned tongue bothered him nearly as much as the knowledge that the Flamesworths had been stripped of their station and holdings, even if it didn't mean a thing now.

I'd been to visit him just once, after news of the fall of Etistin and the Council. He hadn't wanted to see me, of course, so I satisfied myself by shooting barbed comments through the barred doors, telling him how Senyir had left the Wall the day after he was arrested, unable to stand the shame, and how suddenly Aunt Hester and I, instead of being outcasts, were the only Flamesworths who hadn't lost everything because of his selfishness.

I hadn't been back since. If the Council hadn't fallen, he probably would have been executed already. As it was, though, the new senior captain, Albanth Kelris, didn't have the stomach to take my father's head himself.

The cold wind conjured goosebumps along my exposed arms and neck, and I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. There was no Arthur to create a barrier with fire mana, just like there was no Arthur to stand between us and the Alacryan army anymore. I conjured a current of air to swirl invisibly around me to keep my own body heat in.

"Sorry," I said softly, picturing Arthur not as he was when he flew around over our heads, raining deadly magic down on thousands of mana beasts, but rather how he had been when I mentored him, adventuring together in the Beast Glades, a ten-year-old boy who had somehow made me feel like a child.

I couldn't keep myself from wondering what would happen to Dicathen without Arthur. The Alacryans had outplayed us at every turn, defeating our strongest warriors and executing our leaders before most of us even knew we'd lost the war. Without him, what hope was there of retaking our continent?

That was exactly why I'd stayed behind when the others ran off to join in the underground rebellion. Helen, somehow, seemed to find hope that the Alacryans could be thrown from our shores. I shook my head and pulled my knees tighter against my chest. Helen had been like a mother to me, but I just couldn't share her eternal optimism.

Hope had died with Arthur.

With this dour thought fogging my tired mind, I drew a flask from my dimension ring, poured a splash on the ground for Arthur, and took a long, thirsty swig.