lecia.
-
“What rack?” A disembodied voice floated in through a square vent on the wall. Somewhere in the background, Valko admonished the other prince - yeah, what rack, that’s really disrespectful - while simultaneously refusing to contain his gleeful grin.
It had been a process, but she’d finally loosened the screws enough that she thought she could break through. Their talking had masked the sound of her poking about, but things were going to get noisy. Lecia squeezed herself around, hitting the walls of the vent several times. She positioned her feet toward the opening, and kicked it as hard as she could.
Once. Twice. Finally, on the fifth attempt, one side of the metal grate ripped free of the wall. She nudged it out of the way with her foot, and she shimmied through the opening. In a half-crawl, half-slithering motion, she spilled out of the wall.
She took one quick look around the room.
“Simon, I am looking for you everywhere,” she said, a wave of confusion passing over her features. From inside the wall, the prisoners had sounded as if they were doing okay. She had not expected to find one laying on the floor in a puddle of… she lifted her foot, and the sole of her oversized, borrowed, sneakers resisted. Something sticky, whatever it was.
She pulled a large knife with a ruby encrusted hilt out of her pocket.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. Time to get to work. She crouched beside Simon first, sawing away at the bonds that tied his hands to the chair. “You are both being lucky, yes? They use rope. Not the plastic bracelets or the metal. I do not like those. This is being fast for cutting.” True to form, the rope quickly began to fray.
“The door is locked or no?”
-
A voice from above caused Simon to flinch in surprise. Was that--could it really be Lecia? He twisted a bit to stare up at the vent as it rattled and eventually fell to the floor. “Lecia,” he said, barely processing what she was saying. He felt guilty all of the sudden for not looking for her, even though he’d been captured and trapped in this room for god knows how long. “Thank god you’re all right. Where did you get that--” Simon stopped himself from asking about the knife. Did it really matter? He was glad she had it.
She knelt beside him and started cutting away the binds on his wrists. The shock of Lecia hopping out of the wall wore off quickly--Simon had a feeling she’d evaded capture, or else the mild paranoia and preparations to prevent what had happened to her would have been all for naught. He just hoped her safety wasn’t wishful thinking on his part.
“I am not sure of the door,” Simon answered, slowly pulling his arms apart as the rope dropped away. He shifted his legs to see how far he could move his ankles, but he was still quite tied to the chair. Looking down at his hands and the bright red marks from the rough rope, the gravity of the situation weighed on him once again. The diverting conversation with Valko had been oddly... enlightening, but anything was better than being tied to a chair.
“Who else is looking for us? Are you the only one? Where is your father? How... long were you in the vent?” If Lecia overheard what he’d told Valko... Dread pooled heavily in his stomach and he had to talk himself out of feeling sick.
