Raya’s group grew slowly from word-of-mouth. Primarily, their new recruits were friends of the survivors that Raya and her friends had rescued from the Massed Alley jail. Though there had been talk of what to do next—such as liberating another prison, which Axar insisted was the best strategy for their public relations—nothing had been agreed upon yet. Raya finished off a quick breakfast and readmitted herself to the common room of the Blue Evening Inn.
On account of the business they had brought in, the innkeeper, a man named Toma, had offered Raya and her trusted few to access the inn as though they lived there. Raya ate her meals in the backroom kitchen and was welcome to use Toma’s office for meetings.
The business they had brought in consisted of the thirty people packing the common room. Raya glanced around as she entered. The only two absent, it seemed, was Axar and Ailo. That duo had gone sparring in a nearby alley. Benn was sitting at one of the largest tables, speaking with Hallist, one of the prisoners who seemed to know everyone, despite being rarely let out of his cell. With his connections, Hallist was invaluable to Raya and her friends. His opinion of them was equally important. Another important opinion, it seemed, was that of Avri, the passionate young woman who had started killing injured guards in the vindicated jail. She sat alone, at a table by the window, so Raya walked that way.
Avri pushed her dark brown hair out of her eyes and continued fidgeting with a deck of cards in her hands. She was no older than Raya, it seemed, but her temperament could not have been more different. As Raya stepped closer, she watched Avri remove a card from the deck, one of the Court cards, with its distinct illustration of a nobleman. She inserted it to a blind location, then turned over the top card to reveal the identical option. It had been smooth, and too quick to be a performance. Avri stopped practicing as soon as she saw Raya watching. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I just want to know more about you,” Raya said, amiably.
Avri waved to the chair opposite her, as she pocketed her deck. “Have a seat, but there’s not much to tell.”
“Where are you from?” Raya asked. “How did you grow up? What led to your imprisonment?”
“I’m from here, I grew up here, I thought I would die here…” Avri trailed off. The young woman wore a sleeveless tunic loosely around her frail frame. “Heck, I probably still will.”
Raya blinked. “What happened in there?”
“You don’t want to know about that,” the woman told her curtly.
“But I do,” Raya said. “It will help me understand what went on in there and what other prisons could be like.”
“The same thing that happens outside the prison,” she said. She stood up. “I’m going to get a drink before that story. Even if it is the morning.” She brushed past Raya as she passed between tables, then turned back and patted Raya’s shoulder. “Want anything?”
“No, thank you,” Raya replied.
Avri crossed to the bar, served herself, and came back a moment later with an ale. As she passed Raya again, she tossed down Raya’s coin purse on the table and muttered, “Thanks.” Then she slumped down in the seat and took a drink.
Jaw dropped, Raya grabbed her belt. She shook her head and slowly returned her pouch to its proper place. “That was impressive,” she said. “Next time, just ask. Where did you learn to do that?”
“Here,” Avri said, similarly to her earlier phrases. She snorted and leaned back in the chair. “You want my story? My ma died when I was nine. She was weak, sick, she tripped, and she knocked her skull open on a table about the size of this one. I learned my knack for pick-pocketing when I was scraping by for stale bread after that. I learned my skill with a knife when I got ‘recruited’ by a street gang, when I was fourteen.”
Raya took a deep breath as the story began, and let it out in a sigh. It was an intense story, to be told so frankly. And a sad one.
“Want me to keep going?”
Raya nodded.
Avri grimaced. “I learned my real lessons when I was seventeen. A man from the gang wanted a good evening and I had left my knife indoors.” The young woman took another, long drink of her ale. Raya flushed as she realized what Avri meant. The woman rushed on, as she lowered her mug. “I didn’t forget my knife the next night, and I slit that bastard’s throat. Except—Gods. Except, there was a city watchman patrolling past the alley at that very moment. Couldn’t have damned privacy then.”
“Oh no…” Raya put her hands against the sides of her face, as she leaned forward. Then she shook her head and uncomfortably crossed her arms again. “That’s terrible.”
“That’s how I ended up in chains. Murderer,” she said, grinning bitterly and holding the shoulders of her shirt in an identifying gesture. Then she leaned forward. “And then the rapes became a damned monthly affair…” Her voice kept raising. “So why, by all the rotten gods, are we sitting around here having a damn chat? There are still—”
Ailo and Axar had walked through the front door at that moment, coincidentally, and Axar boomed, “That’s enough!”
Avri was halfway across the table, her face flushed and her hands clenched into fists. She leaned back, downed the rest of her drink with a scowl, then slammed the mug down on the tabletop. “I’m going for a walk,” she said, and stood up. She didn’t brush against Raya as she walked out.
The rest of the common room resumed its friendly hubbub after another moment of silence. Raya put her forehead in her hand to collect herself for a moment. She just couldn’t imagine a life so different from her own. If Avri wasn’t back in an hour, she’d go looking. Raya stood up and faced the crowded room. “I can understand her anger and her impatience.” Everyone quieted to listen to her. “I can only begin to understand what all of you have endured. We need to work toward change, not just peace. And we need to hold each other up, even when we feel like falling apart.”
A hum of agreement went through the group. Raya nodded to them, and turned around to sit down at the window again.
A few moments later, Benn politely asked if he could sit. Once he had, he asked, “Are you alright?”
“I am,” Raya said, with a sigh. “I’m just a little shaken by what she said.” She shook herself and tried to look a little more positive.
“Things have been pretty intense, haven’t they?” Benn smiled to her and touched her hand from across the table top, just a quick pat. “You seem to be holding it together pretty well.”
“I don’t think I’ve had a lot of time to process it all,” Raya said.
Benn nodded. “Me neither. You know, way back in Vagren, when we were spending weeks just looking for clues… I thought things would go back to normal before long. Now I’m not sure.”
“I’m not sure if anything was ever normal,” Raya replied. She had lived in an illusion, it felt like.
“Working at Master Kama’s inn feels like it was longer than a year ago. Oh, I guess we were gone for the better part of a year on top of that. Still, it feels like another lifetime,” he murmured.
Raya blinked. She had left Olston almost two years earlier, she realized. It felt like so much had changed, but she felt the opposite of Benn’s expression. She felt like she’d been riding a storm, swiftly, to this very moment. And she could barely catch her breath before she was blown onward. Ever onward. But she smiled to Benn and offered him a reassurance that they would make it through.