Cylus 20 Arc 717
The wooden board that was supposed to be her bed and bench hurt her back when she lied on it. It was not wide or long enough to be comfortable. The position of it against the wall made it so she couldn’t place the board anywhere but adjacent to the central line of her body. The chains that attached to the corners furthest from the wall, holding the board in the horizontal position seemed to be designed to take up more space, limiting the surface that could be used to sleep on.
The floor would have been more comfortable, though the residual smell that clung to the stones of both the back wall and the floortiles made her unwilling to even consider touching it. She wasn’t as obsessive with cleanness and the like as someone she knew, but there was a limit to what she was willing to place her body on. Mud or hay wouldn’t have been a problem, but the tangy scent of urine that hung in the small space like a toxic cloud left no doubt in her mind that the floor was not an option. She had crawled to mud and blood, she had swum through marches and still water trapped in filthy caves. She had hidden amongst fresh corpses, clambering over them, draping them over her. She even rode a fucking horse, but she would never lower herself to the point where she would prefer to lie on a piss and whatever other waste-stained floor over a hard, unyielding, torturously designed wooden board.
She chewed on hard bread that was several trials too old to be consumed, swallowing it down with the help of some stale water that probably came from a rain barrel where mosquitoes and other vermin would have laid eggs in if it was the right season. But she refused to touch that disgusting floor with anything but the soles of her boots.
Yana was not sure why she was here. There were no charges against her, the men who’d brought her in had revealed nothing. Instead, they had boldly announced she was under arrest and was to come with them. They’d been armed, and from the looks of it, they had been itching for a fight. The Yludih was certain she would have been able to take the both of them on and escape, but she was too aware of what resisting arrest led to. Any excuse was enough to tack on more punishment, more jail time, and would provide them with actual charges.
No, instead she’d surrendered, asked what she was accused of, why this arrest was taking place. After all, she was certain she had done nothing that would warrant such treatment. Nothing illegal, except for the poison she’d slipped in the Commander’s ale. Even then, that event and the arrest had followed too closely to one another for them to be linked. Besides, the poison shouldn’t have been in a detectable state just yet. No obvious symptoms, no clues. Nothing. And yet, here she was.
That could mean one of two things. Either the Etzos military had figured out she was back --but she found it odd they hadn’t come for her themselves, and she hadn’t been brought to one of their cells-- or someone with a gru--
Footsteps closed in, Yana could hear the clattering of keys, the fiddling with the rusty lock on the thick door that lead to the jail area. The creaking as the key was turned, the loud clang of the latch unlocking the mechanism that kept the way closed off. The door opened with a loud scraping over the floor tiles, wood dragging over stone. Someone was coming.