Moving along!
But not this jail. It had twenty-five individual cells, each with its own comfortable-looking cot and (barred) window, and it all looked very civilized… until I noticed the heavy steel circles embedded in the wall and floors. It didn’t take long for me to find the manacles and fetters in storage, either. Or the tumbrels in the rear alcove, either. Those did smell like death, for all the careful scrubbing.
“Do not look at the symbols on the walls,” came a voice behind me, to my careful lack of panic. I knew it was Oft. Besides, I was already as freaked out as I was going to get. This was such a wholesome-looking murder camp.
“I didn’t see any,” I told him as I turned. And then I blinked, because right now Oft was looking what his church calls ‘fell.’ When you see an Illuvitarian looking like that, he or she’s usually about to smite something — which is another one of their words. It basically means ‘hit it hard, and don’t feel bad.’
“Lucky you,” he said, and there was an undertone in his voice that sounded like deep, well-controlled anger. “The prisoners had time to scratch on the walls. The Scouts regularly scoured the cells, but some runes run too deep to be sanded away. They were left in the wood, and left to spread and rot…”
When you work in the Tomb Worlds, you learn real quick how to tell when somebody’s lost their mental center of gravity for a moment. Clearly, he needed a distraction. “Like I said, Oft, I didn’t see any. I’m not going to look, either.” I laughed, and wondered if it sounded as weak to him as it did to me. “Besides, what’s the point? They’re just going to be a bunch of curse words and pictures of dicks, right?”
Oft grabbed at that last bit like it was a life preserver. “What? Yes. Yes, of course. They were foul scribblings, nothing more. The last messages of flawed and disturbed people.” He gathered himself, visibly coming down from whatever terrible place his head had put him. “So, no need to tarry here, surely?”
“None whatsoever,” I agreed as we walked back to the Anticipant. I didn’t wish that the hauler had a supply of something flammable more than two, three times during the walk, either. And I carefully didn’t think at all about whatever it was that Oft had read.