The Soul Seer’s Daughter

The smell was almost as bad as the one in the Dragon Pit. Alexandria had vomited several times, and the straw covering the floor of the cell had been none too clean to begin with.

"If I am to sleep in there, I want it cleaned," I declared.

"Ontari said-," began one of the guards, but then I caught his eye. And I felt nearly certain that mom would think it all right to use the gift now.

"This is no way to treat a human being." I tried to sound exactly like mom when she used the Soul Seer's voice, and I think I succeeded, at least a little bit. He ducked his head and would no longer look at me.

"We can sweep out the straw," he said. "And get you some water. But I can't lay my hands on clean straw at this hour of the night."

"Water, then. Hot water, at least two bucketfuls. And soap." He nodded without raising his head.

"Maunus, get a broom," he called to one of the others. "And you. Get that water!"

I stepped up to the bars to get a look at the young woman who was to be my cell mate. Prisa Alexandria lay on a brick ledge meant to serve as the prisoner's bed. She had her face turned to the wall and did not look up, not even when Maunus came back with the broom and the door was opened. While Magnus swept the dirty straw from the cell, four armed men guarded the prisoner with lowered spears, but she moved not a muscle.

"See to the rest yourself," said Maunus bitterly. "Me, I get sick just looking at that unnatural creature. This way, Domiella." He placed the buckets in the cell and bowed ironically, as though I was some fine lady on her way to a grand ball. I walked past him into the cell, and they locked the door behind me.

Alexandria lay curled up on her side, face to the wall. Her shirt had once been of the finest white linen, embroidered in blue and gold. Now one shoulder was torn, and the cloth was spattered with huge maroon stains. Her long brown hair was drawn back in a ponytail, partially undone. I could not see her face.

"Prisa Alexandria?" I said hesitantly.

At first she seemed not to have heard. Then she slowly turned around and dragged herself up to sit on the ledge, hunched and slouching. Seventeen, my mother had said, and she looked both younger and older now, I thought. Her expression was somehow both hardened and lost, and her face was swollen and battered around the jaw, nose, and left cheekbone. They had been rough on her, the guards.

"A girl?" she muttered in a tone of wonder. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"

"Clarke Griffin." And then our eyes met.

"Oh, God," she whispered, hiding her face in her hands. "Oh, God. Not again. Please, Domiella, please... just leave."

"I can't. They locked the door." I tried not to let my voice shake, but I think it did anyway. "I am to... stay here all night." Surprised, she glanced at me, but looked away quickly. "Why?"

"Something to do with my mother and Ontari."

It was so natural for her to look at the person she was talking to that she kept forgetting that she would really rather not meet my eyes. But every time she did, she cringed as if it hurt her. "Your mother... that would be the Soul Seer, I suppose?" She put a hand over her face again.

"Yes."

"You have her eyes."

"I know." And then I really noticed her hands. They had not let her wash. Dried blood remained encrusted at the knuckles, between her fingers, and under her nails. They had not let her wash. If my mother was right, and she was innocent, then... then they had made her sit here with blood on her hands, her father's blood, Costia's blood, and the little boy's blood... one whole night and one whole day she had been left like this, with her dead family's blood on her hands. Suddenly something was far more important than clean floors.

I grabbed one bucket and placed it in front of her and handed her the rough yellow cake of soap that they had given us. "Here," I said. "So you can wash."

For a moment, she just sat there. Then her shoulders began to tremble, so that I was afraid that she might be about to cry. She held her hands out, spreading her fingers, and the hands were shaking. But she forced herself to face me for a moment. Her eyes were nothing like Ontari's, they were green like a forest, but the whites were so reddened that it hurt to look at them.

"Thank you," she said. "I had no idea that the Soul Seer's daughter could be so... merciful."

She seized the soap the way a starving person would clutch at a loaf of bread. She scrubbed her hands and arms over and over again, then tore the shirt from her body and washed her chest and back and even her hair, though it made her shiver with cold. One whole side of her chest was bruised and darkened, like Marcus' had once been after the miller's huge cart-horse had kicked him.

She had nothing that she could use for a towel, since she refused to touch the blood-spattered shirt again. I took off my apron and offered it to her.

"Thank you," she said again, once more painfully forcing herself to meet my eyes. "You'll be cold," I mumbled when she kicked the shirt into a corner of the cell, as far away as possible.

"It hardly matters," she said. "I doubt they'll keep me alive long enough for me to get sick."

"My mother has told them that she knows you're innocent."

"Has she?" She studied her hands with great care. "Then she knows more about the matter than I do." She looked at me again, as if believing that it would hurt less if she kept at it long enough.

"And how can she call me innocent when she knows..." Her voice broke, but she continued all the same. "When she knows everything else. Every other thing I've ever done. Or not done. Every shameful, petty, pathetic misdeed. The people I've hurt. Every good act I was too cowardly to do. Everything I've taken from others and everything I was too petty, scared, or greedy to give... No, Domiella, I may be a lot of things, but I am certainly not innocent!" She spat out the word as though it hurt her mouth to say it. "But still I would not have thought... I did not think I could ever hurt Costia. And Aden. God, Aden, who... no, I did not think I was capable of that, however drunk I was."

"My mother says you didn't do it. And she is rarely wrong." Her eyes stared vacantly at something - visions, ghosts, memories - that were invisible to me. "I don't remember," she said tonelessly. "I can't remember doing it, but I can't remember not doing it, either. And it has been rather hard to forget that I had their blood on my hands."

I studied her for a moment. "I don't think you did it," I pronounced with all the certainty I could muster.

"You're a child," she said. "Children think well of everyone."

"I'm not a child. I'm sixteen. Only a year younger than you, Prisa Alexandria."

The emptiness left her eyes. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Has Ontari lost her mind completely, to let a young girl into a condemned woman's cell?"

"As I said, I'm sixteen" I said with some irritation. "And you are not a condemned woman. Not while my mother says you're innocent. And that... is actually why I am here. Ontari thinks she can make her change her mind."

"And can she?"

I shook my head, smiling. "She doesn't know my mother very well."

I took my little belt knife, hardly longer than my finger, and started to cut slivers off the soap into the other bucket of water. I then beat the water frothy with my hand and used the broom for a mop. Alexandria retreated to the ledge, pulling up her feet so as not to be in the way. Probably the King's daughter had never actually held a broom in her hands. It was now completely dark outside, as far as one could see through the tiny peephole that was also the cell's only source of daylight and fresh air. In the corridor outside, an oil lamp had been hung, casting a yellow flickering light into the cell. From the guardroom at the end of the passage came occasional loud voices - judging from the roars of triumph and accusation, it seemed that the guards were playing some sort of card game.

"Domiella-," said Alexandria.

"I'm not really used to titles," I interrupted. "Please call me Clarke; at least I'll know whom you're talking to."

"Clarke," she said. "Then you must call me Lexa. All my friends do. Did. But what I wanted to say was... there's really no need for you to stay here all night. Call the guards. I'm sure Ontari merely wanted to... unsettle your mother a bit."

I shook my head. "I don't think she is about to give up that easily. And anyway... if I call the guards now, I've lost. And I hate losing. Besides, I'm not afraid of you."

She gave a brief snort of laughter. "So I've noticed. But still. This place is cold and inconvenient. And there are— well, rats." She said the last bit as if expecting me to raise my skirts and leap onto the ledge, screaming for the guards. Perhaps that was how the girls she knew would have behaved.

"There are rats under the floor of the stable at home," I said calmly. "Ernie - that's our dog - he kills them when he can, but they're not easy to get rid of. Besides, you're much colder than I am." Actually she was shaking all over, I could see. I took off my cape. "Here. Try this. It might be a bit too small, I know, but it might still warm you a little."

"That wasn't... I can't..."

"Take it. You can give it back later, when you're a bit warmer."

A little while later there were steps in the passage, and one of the guards came to unhook the lamp outside the cell.

"Bedtime," he called. "And you, Monster Alexandria!"

"Yes, what about me?" Lexa said tiredly.

"This is all Ontari's idea, not mine. But I promise you, Monster, that if you lay a finger on that girl..."

"I'll do her no harm."

"No. You won't. Because you know that if you do, I'll personally break every bone in your body before they chop off your head." He glared at Lexa, then nodded briefly in my general direction

"Good night, Domiella Griffin. Just give a shout if she acts up. We're just down the passage."

"Good night, Guardmaster. And thank you, but that won't be necessary."

He muttered something and went away, taking the lantern with him. The cell became almost completely dark. A very thin, pale sliver of moonlight penetrated the peephole, and that was all.

"I'll sleep on the floor," said Lexa. "You take the ledge."

"Don't be silly." I tried to sound just like mom when she becomes impatient with Madi. "There is plenty of room on the ledge for both of us, and it will be far warmer."

"But you can't— I mean, you had better not touch me." She sounded almost panicky.

"Don't be silly," I repeated. "You're not a monster, are you? You won't harm me." And before she could come up with any more objections, I sat down next to her and leaned against her shoulder.

Her whole body jerked. Her breath came and went in a hiccupy gasp. And perhaps it was the darkness. And perhaps it was because no one had touched her in kindness since the bloodbath in Costia's room. Or perhaps it was simply that she had come to the end of her strength. She began to cry, helplessly and uncontrollably, shaking all over, and her arms wrapped themselves around me and clung, clung to me as if I was the only thing that could save her from drowning.

"Some monster you are," I whispered. "How is anyone supposed to be afraid of you?"

After a while her shoulders stopped shaking and her breathing became easier. But she still held on to me, and it was nice to be held, for it had been a long and frightening day. My own breath slowed to a sleepier rhythm and I yawned. She moved a little farther up the ledge so that I could rest more comfortably.

"So strange," she said softly into the darkness. "You are your mother's daughter. And yet... her eyes tear me apart and make me feel like the sorriest beast to ever crawl upon this earth. While you..." She sighed a gusty little breath of air against my cheek. "You make me believe that I might be innocent after all."