Page 14 of Condemned

“Sounds good. If not sufficient time, she might tear, but that official wants it done soon. He wants to go home.”

“This is still better than before.” Takk crouched and applied a key to the lock on her ankle chain. If she’d had tools, she would’ve undone that herself. And the cell door. Would’ve been gone before dawn. “We still have to sign the forms, Zo, and say she’s dead. No spear, good, but this is serious stuff. We risk death if discovered. Here.”

She saw a flash of metal as their leader threw something.

“Kondio, feed her the liquor. Get her drunk. Even if the clerk said yes, someone watching might question this. Once we get out into the country, we lose that clerk. If we cannot, we have to pretend to shoot her in the head. Either way, we have that grave we dug and we fill it in.”

“Improvise.” Zo levered himself from the wall. “Worst case, we put her in, throw in dirt, cover her head with the baskets that we left in the grave, and get her out soon as he leaves. Right?”

Oh, gods. Seriously? Suffocating was not a favorite fetish of hers.

They all agreed.

There were layers to this. A lot of effort. Takk’s comment about them risking death turned this upside down. If they did risk that, should she be thankful to them? It seemed a weird damn question.

They did not have to do this.

Did they really hate the war enough that it had spurred them to help her? Were they sort of nicer inside than she’d thought? Sort of. She, her body, was also being used as a reward.

The neck of the flask arrived at her mouth and she opened and let them feed it to her, swallowing the fiery liquid convulsively. Her throat burned. Soon after her head swam, sound dulled into a distant blur, and the room started spinning one way then the other.

Thoughts wobbled past.

What if this worked, and she prayed it would be so.

If it did... she took that mental leap... did she owe them? Really?

No. Of course not.