Page 96 of The Dungeon Book

Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Orphir would butcher the minotaur for sorcery no matter what. If he didn’t need that magic to cure the princess, then he’d use it on the rebel forces, or some other foe. If he came across a coin, he would pick it up and spend it. It was not his nature to be merciful or generous or kind.

“Bait, whatever happens, I’m glad to have known you. When you found me . . . I was hollow. A failure of a master and a failure of a man. There was nothing in me. I’d have stared at the wall for eternity. You pulled me out of that. You reminded me I wasn’t quite dead.”

I sat down on the bed next to her. She did not react.

“But, child, the most important lesson I can teach you is this, and it’s a hard one – nothing matters but staying alive. Everything else is negotiable. Staying alive – that’s the first Rule, above or below.”

Not a fitting lesson for a young princess. Not the lesson that the noble Sir Peledon wanted me to teach her when he first employed me. But he was a mindless beast, and I was alive again.

I was alive again.

I was alive! Alive in that body, and that body had hands and arms, and legs that could run. I could do more than talk! I could act!

A thrill of determination ran through me, potent as sorcery. I could rescue Bait! I could spirit her away from this dungeon. I could get her to Neb and the rebels . . . somehow!

True, there were guards just outside the door, and more guards beyond that, and sentries on the walls, and any number of heavily armed RATS, not to mention Orphir and all his fearsome sorcery and I had no idea, but . . . but in that moment I was willing to risk death. A second death, admittedly, but a much more heroic one than the first.

“Bait,” I whispered, “I’m going to get you out of here.”

She did not stir.

“Bait, do you understand?”

She did not respond. Not even the customary “no”.

It was only then I realised that she had already escaped, and I had delivered my heartfelt confession to a rolled-up blanket.

In my defence, there was very little light in that cellar.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In fact, Bait’s escape was quite explicable.

These things often are. No need to invoke sorcery or secret passages; the secret of her miraculous escape was a staff shortage. As I said, the castle was heaving with courtiers, RATS, royal guards and the like, as well as its standard complement of sentries, servants, scullions, stableboys and such, not to mention a whole courtyard full of impossible monsters. A great number of bodies, and that meant a great number of mouths.

Indeed, with creatures like Fuglog the goblin as one of the prisoners, the ratio of mouths to bodies was heavily weighted in favour of mouths. So, the kitchen ovens burned night and day to feed that host, with all their varied demands. Toast, eggs and bacon for some, boiled oysters and stuffed pheasant for others. Meat in many forms – fried, roasted, boiled, or served raw and bloody, bones on the side. The call went out to the village and the surrounding area for temporary staff – and among those employed was Mistress Clove.

Although she’d been captured along with Only-Sister in the Dungeon by the RATS, once they confirmed she was just a horrible old woman and not a monster that looked like a horrible old woman, like a woodhag or a changeling, they abandoned her on the hillside to make her way home or die of exposure, whichever was most convenient.

Swallowing pride and a not inconsiderable amount of bile, Mistress Clove made her way back to Dunshelm and asked for work. Once, she’d been the undisputed ruler of the kitchen, the iron fist holding the wooden spoon, but she came back as the lowliest of the low, given only the most menial and unpleasant tasks.

Like, say, bringing food to a prisoner in the lowest cell of the castle dungeon.

Bait was sitting up in bed with one ear pressed to the stone wall when Clove waddled in.

“I dreamed I heard him,” said Bait. “The minotaur.”

“ ’Twasn’t a dream,” said Clove, “They brought him down from t’Dungeon early this morn. But don’t get your hopes up, child – he’s no less witless than he ever was, and he’s in chains. He’s not rescuing you.” The old cook raised her voice for the benefit of the guards outside the door. “Ain’t no one rescuing you, little beast. Here you’ll stay until you rot! No way out for you!” A fierce scowl, almost like a mask, crossed Clove’s lined face – which was quite a trick, as Clove’s default expression was a slightly different scowl. At the same time, Clove hitched up her voluminous skirt, revealing that she’d clutched an extra blanket between her knees.

Bait was never good at reading faces, or catching tone of voice. For a moment, she did not understand.

“He ain’t rescuing you. I am.”

*

I have not been charitable to Mistress Clove in my narrative. I find her odious. She mistreated me and Orphir when we were callow, young, condemned prisoners; she has the personal grooming habits of a dung beetle, the grace of a wild boar, the winning charm of a troll, and the palate of a slime. Now, some might say “Why, Cornelius, what is the point of bearing grudges from long ago? You are alike as two peas in a pod, two bones in a tomb, two humans living among monsters in the Dungeon. Let bygones be bygones.”

And to them I reply, in the words of young Bait, “no”.