After a few more presses of his thumb and forefinger against either side of his tender scar, Cole coaxed the splinter out from the spot where it had been stubbornly wedged. It hurt like hell but was now close to coming out. Rather than tease it anymore, he pressed his thumb hard against the bottom portion of the wound and didn’t let up until the wooden sliver poked out. “Squam,” he sighed while gently pulling the sliver out.
Another huffing breath came from outside the cell.
“Huh?” Lambert said while maintaining a defensive stance, with both hands gripping the bars in front of him.
Despite the fact that the wound on his palm was bleeding more than ever, the intense pain of having the sharp piece of wood lodged in there was gone. It was a blissful tradeoff. “Not reptile people,” he said. “Squam …” What did Ned call them? Holding up the sliver as if the word he was after was burned into its side, Cole nodded and said, “Squamatosapien.”
“Now you see why I talk to him and not you?” the Squam next door said.
Lambert crossed his arms and shrugged. “If he could see how ugly you are, he wouldn’t mind not having one less buddy around here. What you got there, Cole?”
“Nothing,” Cole said.
Pressing up against the bars as if his voice would carry better now that he was half an inch closer, Lambert whispered, “You’re right. Good thinkin’. They’re probably listening to us right now.”
“Maybe, but we can’t afford to pussy-foot anymore. We need to get the hell out of here and we need to do it quick.”
“And that sliver’s gonna help?”
Cole approached the bars anxiously at first, but sucked in a pained breath the moment he tried to grab one with his bloody hand. Taking a moment to wipe some blood onto his pants, he went to the other side of the front wall to examine the symbols he’d found on the bars. The sliver in his hand was flat and thin on the portion that had snapped away from the stake. The other end was still worn down into the small cylindrical nub of a single thorn. “It’d better help. I went through enough shit to get this thing.”
The Squam pushed its head out from between the bars of its cell. His leathery head made a rough scraping sound as he grunted and strained with the effort of getting the nubs on either side of his face clear of the metal barrier. Once his ear flaps were past the bars, he turned to look at Cole using an unblinking, dark yellow eye. “What are you doing now?”
Cole smiled as he held the sliver tightly and leaned against the front of his cell. Angling his body and lowering his arm so he could scrape the bar without being obvious about it, he said, “I’ll let you know after it works. What’s your name, neighbor?”
The Squam watched Cole’s concentrated efforts to scratch the pointed end of the splinter against one of the runes etched into the bar. His yellow eye rolled within its socket like a ball bearing housed in an oval casing. “Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Why does anyone want to know someone’s name? Must be a habit I fell into ever since preschool. What’s your name, kid? That sort of thing.”
This time, the breath that fluttered the skin covering the Squam’s nostrils sounded more like a deep-throated chuckle. “Frank. My name’s Frank.”
“Now we’re cookin’,” Cole said as he continued to scrape. He paused for a moment to wipe off some of the blood that had been transferred from the sliver onto the bar. Not only did it cut through the rune, but some flecks of iron came away as well. “Are there really only three more prisoners in this section, Frank?”
“Two Half Breeds, one Nymar. But they already took the Nymar away.”
Cole’s scraping stopped. “Why?”
“He’s dead,” Lambert announced.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Think I’m lying to you, asshole?”
Resuming his scraping, Cole grumbled, “You seemed a lot friendlier when I first got here, you know that?”
Lambert placed his arms across the bars so he could rest his forehead against them. “That’s when I thought you were someone I could work with and not some swamp lover.”
Hearing Frank’s angry hiss gurgling nearby, Cole said, “If things go the way I think they might, we’ll need to stick together to get out of here.”
“You plan on getting out soon?” Lambert asked.
“Sooner rather than later. That work for you?”
“Sure. How about we swing by to get some food first? I like them ice cream sandwiches in that vending machine downstairs.”
More leathery skin scraped against iron bars as the Squam strained to get a closer look at his neighbor. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Now that the wooden chunk was out of his hand and the wound was slowly healing, Cole felt as if he had his own personal sunbeam shining on his shoulders. It was the best he’d felt for days, and his mood got even better when he saw the fine job the varnished piece of wood was doing on the bar. Like the spear he’d left behind or any other Skinner weapon, the chip was harder than stone, lighter than plastic, and sharper than tempered steel. The fact that it sliced into his fingers while it was pushed against the bars worked in his favor as the splinter absorbed even more of his blood into its grain.
“I’m working on some of this graffiti,” Cole said. “You know. Trying to clean up the place before we have any more visitors.”
The Squam’s face twisted into a strange mockery of confusion. “Are you expecting another visitor?”
“They don’t seem to leave us alone for very long around here,” Lambert said while squinting to try to get a better look at Cole’s busy hands. “I know about them runes too. They’re not the ones used to unlock the door.”
“I know. I can’t reach those.” Suddenly, Cole stopped and closed his eyes. “Frank,” he said, hoping he wasn’t about to look like the biggest moron in lockup, “can you reach those symbols on the wall?”
“The ones the guards always touch to unlock the doors?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
Cole nodded and returned to his task. Gritting his teeth, he squeezed the splinter harder until the thorn sliced into his thumb. The command he recited echoed so loudly through his brain that he couldn’t stop himself from mouthing the words. The wood chip didn’t respond as well as his own spear, but it did shift slightly into a more angular shape that was better suited for gouging into the iron bar. He didn’t want to look up from the symbol he was carving into. Every bit of willpower he could force into the task was committed to honing the tool in his hand. “How long have you been in here, Frank?”
“Long enough to know those symbols can’t be scratched off.”
The chip in Cole’s hand was responding quicker with the thorn fully embedded in his flesh. When he wanted to saw deeper, it grew a more jagged edge. When his hold on it started to slip, it formed subtle grooves along its surface to allow his fingers to find better purchase. “Maybe not easily, but I think I can get it done.”
“Do you know how they work?”
“All you need to do is know which ones are the triggers and which way you’re supposed to trace the design to make them turn on or off.”
“I figured out that much by watching the guards,” Lambert said. “What else you got?”
“How about this?” Cole had been hoping for a dramatic snap of metal as the wedge of bar he’d cut came loose and fell to the floor. Instead, what he got was the grind of his wood chip getting stuck inside the groove it had made. There was some struggling involved, but he managed to pull his tool loose while also popping the small section of iron from the bar. He picked it up, brushed it off and examined it. Smiling proudly, he said, “Just what I thought. The runes don’t go all the way down.”
“Why didn’t you just cut all the way through the bar?” Frank asked.
“Actually, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do this much. This wood is stronger than I thought. Anyway,” Cole added while tucking the iron wedge into his shoe, “this is better.”
“Was something supposed to have happened?”
Cole dropped to his knees and bent down to the little square door. “Let me ask you something, Frank. Can you
