“We have no chance to break out of here ourselves,” Dor said, squeezing twice. “We have no resources they don’t already know about.” Two.
“We don’t have magical powers or anything,” she agreed with an emphatic double squeeze.
“But maybe it would be better to let them think we have magic,” Dor said, not squeezing. “That might make them treat us better.”
“There is that,” she agreed. “If the guards thought we could zap them through the walls, they might let us out.”
“Maybe we should figure out something to fool them with,” he said, this time squeezing once. “Something to distract them while the centaur army is massing. Like growing plants very fast. If they thought you could grow a tree and burst out the ceiling and maybe make this castle collapse-“
“They would take me out of this cell and keep me away from seeds,” she said. “Then maybe I could escape and set out some markers so the centaurs can find us more quickly.”
“Yes. But you can’t just tell the Mundanes about growing things; it has to seem that they forced it out of you. And you’ll need some good excuse in case they challenge you to grow something. You could say the time of the month is wrong, or-“
“Or that I have to do it in a stable,” she said. “That would get me out of the heavily guarded area. By the time they realize it’s a fake, and that I can’t grow anything, I may have escaped.”
“Yes.” But had they set this up correctly? Would it trick the guards into taking Irene to the stable where Amolde might be, or would they not bother? This business of deception was more difficult than he had thought.
Then she signaled alarm. “What about Smash? They’ll want to know how he tore off the front gate, when he can’t do a thing now.”
Dor thought fast. “We have to hide from them the fact that the ogre is strong only when he’s angry. The guard at the gate insulted Smash, so naturally he tore off the gate. But King Oary gave him a good meal, so he wasn’t really angry despite getting drugged. Maybe we can trick a guard into saying something mean to Smash, or depriving him of food or water. When Smash gets hungry, he gets mean. And he has a big appetite. If they try starving him, watch out! He’ll blow his top and tear this cellar apart!”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s really our best hope. Ill-treatment. We don’t even need to trick anybody. All we have to do is wait. By midday tomorrow Smash will be storming. We’ll all escape over the dead bodies of the guards who get in the way. We may not need the centaurs at all!”
Something caught Dor’s eye. He squeezed Irene’s hand to call her attention to it. The guard was quietly moving. No doubt a hot report was going upstairs.
“You’re an idiot,” Irene murmured, squeezing his hand twice. “You get these fool notions to fool our captors, and they’ll never work. I don’t know why I even talk to you.”
“Because it’s better than talking to the rats,” he said without squeezing.
“Rats!” she cried, horrified. “Where?”
“I thought I saw one when I woke. Maybe I was wrong.”
“No, this is the kind of place they like.” She squeezed his hand, not with any signal. “Oh, Dor-we’ve got to get out of here!”
“They may take you out pretty soon, to verify that you can’t grow plants.”
She squeezed his hand seamingly. “They already know.” Actually, the purpose of the fake dialogue had been to convince their captors that Dor and Irene had no magic. Then if they somehow got the chance to use magic, the guards would be caught completely by surprise. In addition, they had probably guaranteed good treatment for Smash-if their ruse had been effective.
Soon a wan crack of dawn filtered in through the ceiling near what they took to be the east wall. But the angle was wrong, and Dor finally concluded that they were incarcerated against the west wan, above the cliff, with the light entering only by chance reflection; it would have been much brighter on the other side. No chance to tunnel out, even if they had the strength; what use to step off the cliff?
Guards brought Smash a huge basket of bread and a barrel of water.
“Food!” the ogre exclaimed happily, and crunched up entire loaves in single mouthfuls, as was his wont. Then, perceiving that neither Dor nor Irene had been served, he hurled several loaves through to them. Dor squeezed one through the crevice to Irene.
The water was harder to manage. No cups had been provided, but Dor’s thirst abruptly intensified, perhaps in reaction to the wine of the day before. He finally borrowed and filled one of the ogre’s gauntlets and jammed that through to Irene.
“Tastes like sour sweat,” she complained. But she drank it, then shoved the gauntlet back. Dor drank the rest of it, agreeing with her analysis of the taste, and returned the gauntlet to Smash with due thanks. Sweat-flavored water was much better than thirst.
“Give me your hand again,” Irene said.
Thinking she had more strategy to discuss, Dor passed his right arm through the crack, gnawing on a loaf held in his left. “That was a mean thing you did, getting me food,” she murmured, squeezing twice.
“Well, you know I don’t like you,” Dor told her, returning the double squeeze. He wasn’t sure this mattered to their eavesdropper, but the reversals were easy enough to do.
“I never liked you,” she returned in kind. “In fact, I think I hate you.” What was she saying? The double squeeze suggested reversal, the opposite of what she said. Reverse hate? “What would I want with an ugly girl like you anyway?” he demanded.
There was a long pause. Dor stared through the crack, seeing a strand of her hair, and, as he had expected, it had lost its green tint.
Then he realized he had forgotten to squeeze. Belatedly he did so, twice.
“Ugly, huh?” She squirmed about, bringing something soft into contact with his palm. “Is that ugly?”
“I’m not sure what it is,” Dor said. He squeezed experimentally.
“Eeek!” she yiped, and swatted his hand.
“Ugly as sin,” he said, trying to picture female anatomy so as to ascertain what he had pinched. It certainly had been interesting! “I’ll bite your hand,” she threatened, in their old game.
“There are teeth there?” he inquired, surprised.
For an instant she choked, whether on mirth or anger he could not quite tell. “With my mouth, I’ll bite,” she clarified. But only her lips touched his fingers.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
She kissed his hand twice more.
“Ouch!” Dor cried.
Now she bit him, lightly, twice. He wasn’t sure what mood this signified.
It was a new variant of an old game, perhaps no more, but it caused Dor to think about his relationship with Irene. He had known her since childhood. She had always been jealous of his status as magician and had always taunted him and sicked her plants on him-yet always, too, had been the underlying knowledge that they were destined for each other. He had resisted that as violently as she-but as they grew older, the sexual element had begun to manifest, at first in supposedly innocent games and accidental exposures, then more deviously but seriously. When he had been twelve and she eleven, they had kissed for the first time with feeling, and the experience had shaken them both. Since then their quarreling had been tempered by the knowledge that each could give a new kind of joy to the other, potentially, when conditions were right. Irene’s recent development of body had intensified that awareness, and their spats had had a voyeuristic element, such as when they had torn the clothes off each other in the moat. Now, when they could not be sure of their fate, and in the absence of anything else to do, this relationship had become much more important. For the moment, almost literally, all he had was Irene. Why should they quarrel in what might be their last hours?
“Yes, I definitely hate you,” Irene said, nipping delicately at the tip of one of his fingers twice, as if testing it for digestibility.
“I hate you, too,” Dor said, trying to squeeze but only succeeding in poking his finger into her mouth. His whole being seemed to concentrate on that hand and whatever it touched, and the caress of her lips was excruciatingly exciting.
“I wish I could never see you again,” she said, hugging his hand to her bosom.
