After Commander Ramas’ visit, Raya spent another week in her cell. Guards then brought her to a small room on the third floor of the seemingly enormous building in which she was imprisoned. The room had a small bed, an actual door between her living space and her privy, and a small shelf supporting several books.
Ramas did not visit again the next week, nor the next. Each week slipped by and Raya grew deeper into her solitude. No cell meant no Drimmo. She did not know if her friends were still locked below or if they lived in similar chambers.
Raya had grown ill in her cell, before her move in accommodations. Now her present loneliness was made worse by the hoarseness of her throat, her sniffling, her fluctuating temperatures. Some days she didn’t even leave her single-blanketed bed, because she was freezing. Other days, her shirt was drenched with sweat. Her window was a narrow slot near the ceiling of her room, barred by two, spaced-apart metal rods; it did little to heat or cool the room based on the weather. In the very least, she could now tell when it was day, night, raining, or sunny.
In addition to isolation, Raya grew more hopeless. Though Ramas had warned he could not free her until the Delivered fell into the control of the City Watch, Raya began to wonder if she would be left to rot here for the rest of her life. Her arrest, over a month prior, seemed a lifetime ago.
Close to what she assumed was the advent of her second month in captivity, she found a piece of paper underneath the rice she was fed. It was stained with moisture from her meal, but when she unfolded the scrap, she froze. She could read the words clearly.
“You once spared my friends and me when you freed the slaves we kept under guard,” the letter began. Raya vaguely remembered the soldiers she had allowed to leave after their attack on one of the Pranan’s Hill prisons. She continued reading quietly to herself, “Now, I have heard of your downfall at the hands of Commander Ramas. I am trying to plan some way to get you out of there, but entering the prison is risky, even for me.” Raya had seen more on part of the reverse. She turned over the letter and continued, “If you have the utensils to reply, drop your note out the window of your room. The servant who delivered this note will find it in a hedge there and bring it to me.”
Raya did not have a pencil, but there was enough dirt on the floor to write with her finger. She tried rubbing words onto the back of the friendly note, but it was still damp and the width of her finger made small writing illegible. She looked around, and grabbed a book from the shelf. Her barred door was thick and allowed little sound to pass through it, even when guards stomped past. Nonetheless, Raya tore a page out as gently as she could. She smudged a few words across the front and finished her message on the back. “Name?” was her first question. She also asked, “What will you do?” She wanted to ask what his plan was, but needed to be subtle.
She folded the page as small as she could and then stood on her toes to shove her stealthy correspondence past the cool metal bars in her window. She stood on her bed to make sure it had fallen out and didn’t remain lying on the thick window sill.
Then she had to wait. Her brief communication had rejuvenated her, though she gingerly rubbed her nose all the same.
She emptied her next meal onto the shelf after rubbing it with the hem of her tunic for some modicum of cleanliness. There was no letter hiding beneath the stale bread loaf. The next morning, there was still none. Time stretched onward and Raya’s silence returned.
Two days later, she found his reply.