Dearest Zann,
I lay on the cart, other prisoners around me, looking up at a couple of guards with homemade spears. I had my arms raised to show them I wouldn’t try anything. The cart was already rattling down the street, a couple of men running alongside it rounding up troublemakers. One of the guards glared at me.
“So who are you fellows?” I asked him. “You don’t have uniforms, so–“
He swore and stabbed at me with his spear.
I fell back, to the side, and tried to deflect the spear with my arms. “Sorry, sorry. Not talking.”
He looked me up and down, and spat on me.
When I fell, I ended up mostly in another fellow’s lap. He was older and dressed more finely than I was. The fellow murmured, “These are the Half Sun Square Guards. New group. Rule this neighbourhood.”
“Mm,” I murmured back. “Trying to keep law and order in the midst of chaos?”
“No. Just a gang. But they have power now, around here. If you have money on you, try to hide it.”
I did have some coins, but didn’t see how I’d be able to do anything secret with it under the eyes of the guard. “Thanks, I’ll try,” I said.
In any case I didn’t have a chance, as we stopped in front of an inn and the guards badgered all of us off the cart with their spears. Several of us tried to struggle or complain, and were killed instantly.
The rest of us were driven down inside and searched. About ten of us, blinking in the darkness after staring up at the sun while lying on the cart. They didn’t do a very good job of searching, but that didn’t help because I hadn’t done any kind of a job of hiding anything. They took everything I had on me except they didn’t seem to notice the coin around my neck. They also wrote down our names and who we thought might pay “bail” for us. They called it bail but they seemed to mean ransom. I thought about lying but decided the truth might actually help me out here. I told them Candur would bail me out.
The inn was empty of custom. These Half Sun Square types seemed to have taken it over as a headquarters. We were in the common room with some broken furniture and bloodstains. One Half Sun Squarer sat on the bar, picking his teeth and staring at us, ignoring the sheaf of papers in his hand. His name was Ladal and he knew me. He was probably the leader of the gang.
Once the gangers had what they wanted from us, they shoved and kicked us down to the cellar and locked us in one of the kegrooms. Obviously there weren’t any kegs in here anymore. There were people, though; before the closing door left us in the dark I could see that there were a couple of dozen people already inside. It was crowded and smelly.
“Do they feed us?” one of us newcomers asked.
“Maybe once a swing,” someone else said. “What you do is you buy food and water from a couple of the guards who sneak around here trying to pick up a bit of extra coin.”
“But they took all my money!”
“Ay. You hide it on yourself, is what you do, if you’re going to get arrested by this lot.” Someone was crying.
I decided right then that I wasn’t going to put up with this. I didn’t know how or when, but I was tired of taking punishment every time I met someone more cruel than I was, and I was going to get out of here.
I found an empty corner and sat down to think.
Love,
Ybel
Matthew Elmslie 