of the barrows. The first man took a wooden shovel and entered a cell. A moment later he came out with a pile of straw balanced on the shovel, which he threw into the barrow. Then he shuffled closer along the hall. The second barrow contained a large mound of straw already, and that was being tossed in to replace the old. Between her and the barrows but nearer to her stood a board full of pegs against the far wall. On the pegs hung what she guessed were rings of keys.
She looked in the other direction, where the corridor was perhaps a third as long before reaching a dead end. A cart stood in the darkness, so close that in two steps she could have touched it. It contained stacked boards like the one in Yemoja’s cell, all of them balanced upon the bowls of the morning meal.
Shortly, the tall guard emerged from the next cell along, and she drew her head back in. She pressed to the wall and listened to the sound of him coming back to the cart, then wheeling it farther up the corridor. It scraped and rumbled along, and then stopped. Keys jingled and another door creaked open. She glanced out. He had gone. The men at the other end were moving slowly, steadily closer.
She counted until the guard reappeared. He pulled another board off the cart and walked across the corridor to the next cell, spent a moment fumbling the keys, and then went in.
The instant he did she was away. She walked briskly down the hall, pulled the purple robe tight around her, and kept close to the wall. With every step she expected someone to yell, but nobody saw her. Nobody paid her the slightest attention. She passed a narrow doorway into a stairwell, but kept going until she reached the board on which the keyrings hung.
There had to be dozens of them. She scanned them for a key to match the lock on Yemoja’s ankle. It was easy to spot, replicated as it was at least a dozen times over. Duplicates, so that multiple jailers could work in multiple cells at once. It didn’t matter if all the locks were the same, not if you were chained to one.
She lifted one set of them and pressed it against her robe to keep it from jingling. She turned around. The guard with the food cart was picking up another board. He glanced toward her, paused, and raised his head. She pressed hard to the wall and slid along it. Reaching the stairwell, she stepped into it, then stood and counted to ten before carefully peering into the hall again. The tall guard was carrying another meal into another cell. He hadn’t seen her after all in the corridor’s gloom. She ran back to Yemoja’s cell.
She knelt before Yemoja. It took only a moment to fit the key into the slots and open the cuffs on both ankles. Yemoja babbled something and Leodora hushed her, then listened. Nobody came to the door. All the noises in the hall were from far away.
She realized she’d been holding her breath, and sighed. “All right, now,” she said. “Just wait a moment.” Then she took the cup from the board and carried it to the corner where she’d slept. The sun was rising outside and the cell was already too light. She needed darkness. There was only one way to get it.
Turning, she reached out to Yemoja to take her hand. Yemoja complied, and Leodora drew her to the corner. She poured some of the contents of the cup onto the floor, and it was immediately absorbed in the dirt. “That won’t work,” she muttered. She got the bowl and set it on the floor at their feet. It was too small, too contained, to qualify as a pool of water. She glanced back at the board. It was certainly larger. It would have to do.
She carried the board to the wall and set it beside the bowl. Then she took out the phial. “Now comes the hard part,” she said, and picking up the bowl she gave it to Yemoja, then gestured to indicate how she wanted it poured out onto the board. The long-snouted creature whuffed but said nothing, and finally nodded.
Leodora looked back out the door. She watched the guard lift another board from his cart and walk into a cell. It was now or never, she supposed. She grabbed the door