Why was thinking so hard?
He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, in and out, in and out, until he felt somewhat less overwhelmed. Opening his eyes again, he tried to see something, anything, in the dark. By the smell of earth and vegetables, he was in a cellar.
A cellarwherewas the vital question, but as he had no hope of answering it, it wasn't worth dwelling on.
He wasn't bound, so they must be confident he was secure. Why kidnaphim, though?
That was a stupid question, the guards had already told him. He was the twin brother of Nadir, concubine of King Shafiq. People were angry with them both over the matter of child trafficking. He was a weakness to exploit. To what purpose though? What could they possibly hope to achieve by kidnapping him? They wouldn't get money. They wouldn't get convicts released. So what was their goal?
Whatever it was, Ender had the sinking feeling it didn't require he live.
Taking more deep breaths as his stomach churned, he crawled until he found a wall and braced himself against it as he slowly and carefully stood. He had room to stand, which was something. Cellars in houses for the poor seldom had more than enough space to crawl. Some of them you could get by stooping, like his parents', and if you were in there long enough your back would hurt something fierce by the time you were done. Only in rich houses could you walk upright.
Going slowly, one hand on the wall at all times, he walked—until he ran face first into something. Wood, rounded. A barrel. That meant alcohol, more than likely. Heart racing, Ender felt his way around until he reached the front of the barrel, then explored until he found the stopper. He leaned in close, and sure enough, the smell of alcohol wafted over him. A particularly strong wine, something foreigners called liquor or liqueur or something like that.
Stepping back slightly to give himself room, he tore off a long piece of his skirt…and he needed something to wrap it around. Huffing in annoyance, mostly with himself, Ender resumed exploring the dark cellar, creeping along what felt like five barrels in length, stacked at least three high, until he struck wall again. After several steps, he nearly slammed his face into the ground tripping over…something.
Sitting up, taking several deep breaths, until his head and stomach settled back down to bearable, he felt around for whatever he'd tripped over. A crate, filled with…onions. Those weren't useful, but the crate itself might be. Grabbing hold of the crate, Ender dumped the onions out and stepped into the crate, then kicked and kicked until a piece finally broke. Stepping back, he worked the broken piece until it finally came free.
Hot and sweaty now, he wrapped his torn bit of skirt around one end of the broken scrap of wood. That was half the battle. Well, one third of the battle. He needed to soak it, and then he needed to figure out how to light it. Maybe that last one first.
Returning to the barrels, he wedged the torch between two of them and then resumed his exploration, backtracking where he'd already gone to avoid the hazard of the onions he'd just dumped everywhere.
Unfortunately, his tentative explorations turned up nothing. No convenient flint, no matches, nothing at all that would create the necessary spark.
Pressing his back to the wall, Ender slid down until he was sitting on the floor and drew his legs up to his chest, burying his head in his folded arms. He was trapped. Whatever they'd drugged him with was slow to wear off, making him sluggish and clumsy. He couldn't just give up, though, and if he was going to escape, he needed to be able to see. Fumbling around in the dark would only get him so far, especially if night had fallen. Certainly there was no light peeking through cellar doors.
Whining would get him nowhere. Giving up would help nothing. He had to keep going. Ender did the deep breaths thing again, and then finally pushed to his feet and kept going, until he slammed into something. Shelves. Wooden, kind of rickety, but heavy in a way that indicated they were filled. Ender tooka single, deep, deep breath to calm his racing heart and then started to explore.
Mostly he found food, in the form of jars large and small that would hold pickled vegetables and fermenting fruits. Nothing at all helpful in creating the sparks necessary to produce a flame. Damn it!
Something brushed against his foot and Ender startled, slamming into the shelves so hard he sent several jars tumbling into each other, knocking them to the floor in a crash of pottery, others spilling open and dousing him in pungent brines.
Damn everyone and everything. It had probably been a stupid mouse. He'd dealt with them hundreds of times back home, and now he startled like a soft city brat, leaving him smelling like all manner of pickles and surrounded by broken shards. And food that would draw the attention of even more mice and probably some rats.Wonderful.
Footsteps. He hadn't heard anything from above him, but now he heard footsteps. The barest hint of voices, maybe two or three. The footsteps moved further away from him, and then everything went silent.
After a moment, he heard the sound of a key turning in a lock, and then a door swung open, dull, weak light spilling down the stairs leading from the cellar. "Looks like our mouse is awake. Come here, little mouse, or you won't like it if I have to come down there and get you."
He wouldn't like anything they were going to do to him, so why should he make it easier for them? Also, he wasn't walking across all the broken pottery in his bare feet, though why they'd felt the need to take his shoes, he hadn't the slightest.
The man sighed and came down the stairs, lighting a torch as he did so, and gave a mean laugh as he found Ender and the mess he'd made. His boots crushed the bits of pottery effortlessly, squishing through pickled turnips and onions andfermented berries, the sounds making Ender shudder for no reason he could name.
Without a word, the man backhanded him across the face, sending jarring pain ripping through Ender and crashing into the shelves again. Then the man roughly grabbed him and threw him over one shoulder, then extinguished the torch before striding back toward the door, his arm holding Ender in place hard enough to leave bruises as he carried him up the stairs and into the night.
Exhaustion and pain drove Ender to unconsciousness, and when he woke, he was in a small, dusty room with only blankets piled haphazardly on the floor for bedding and an old crate for a table. The only window was boarded up, and he didn't need to try the door to know it was locked—and guarded, to judge by the muted voices coming from the other side.
Where was henow? Was he in the city? Somewhere else? How far away from the palace?
Why were they, whoever they were, doing this? He hadnothingto offer. No king would give in to the demands of criminals, especially traffickers, over one little unremarkable scholar. So what if he was the twin brother of a royal concubine? That wasn't worth risking the safety and well-being of tens, even hundreds, of other people.
Ender sniffle-laughed. To think that just hours ago, or days ago, his biggest problem was that he wanted to fuck Nadir, to treat him as a lover, not a brother. That problem seemed suddenly very small now. Or maybe this was what he deserved for having such thoughts.
His stomach growled, but Ender ignored it. Food was the very least of his problems right now. Escape was what he needed, but he'd already failed once at that, getting lost and breaking things in that awful basement. On the other hand, hecould see here. From the light pouring in through the space between boards, it must be the middle of the day, roughly.
Slowly standing, working out the stiffness and soreness in his legs, Ender made his way to the window using the wall for balance, until his legs loosened up. He tugged at each of the boards covering the window, and almost cried in relief when one pried off effortlessly. Well, at one end. The other end took more work. When he had it loose finally, he gripped it close and peered out.
Not in the city like he'd hoped. He'd already suspected from the quiet, but… if he wasn't in the royal city, where was he? How was he supposed to get back? Panic clawed at him, but Ender closed his eyes, leaning against the wall as he focused on his breathing. That was what you were supposed to do, right? Just breathe. In, out, in, out. If he could handle his entire world being turned upside down—
