still grab one of the chairs and try to break it against the wall anyhow, just because I'm stubborn like that.
Of course it doesn't break. I turn to Aron and gesture at the feather-light chair in my arms. "Can you break this? Maybe we can make weapons out of it."
He grunts and moves to my side. With one swing, Aron's able to shatter it against the wall, and then we're surrounded by nothing but tiny glass shards, none large enough to use as a knife. Figures. Tadekha's thought of pretty much everything, damn it.
"Shall I break anything else for your tantrum?" Aron inquires, and I resist the urge to shoot him the bird.
"Let me think," I tell him, pacing the room—and now avoiding the area with glass shards. I've got nothing but a boatload of towels and a bed and…I turn and stare out the window that Aron's been so fascinated with. Oh. In the movies, someone would make a rope ladder and climb their way out of captivity.
I race forward, pushing past Aron's big body to stare out the window. Immediately, I get dizzy at how high up we are. Jesus. "How high up do you think we are? One hundred feet? Two?"
"Feet?" He frowns at me. "You measure your feet?"
He really is a teeth-grittingly infuriating man. I snap my fingers in front of his face. "Focus, big guy. What's the unit of measurement in this crazy world? Feet? Meters? Leagues? Lengths? What?"
"How should I know? I am a god, not some fool tradesman."
I groan. "You really are impossible sometimes." I lean over the window and stare down at the ground below. It's more of the desolate waste of the Dirtlands, nothing but rock and dirt and more dirt. I notice that the Citadel is floating…no, drifting like a cloud. In the distance, there's a rocky outcropping that looks a little higher than the rest of the surroundings. All right, then. That's what we aim for, provided I'm not out of my ever-loving mind in thinking we might be able to reach this with a rope ladder. I look around the room, then push past Aron, racing toward the bathroom once more.
"What are you doing?" he demands.
I ignore him, grabbing one of the cakes of soap and returning to the window. I lean over, gazing below, and then carefully drop the soap, trying to count the seconds it takes for it to hit the ground below.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
The soap disappears into a puff of dirt far below.
Okay, six. So that's…what, sixty feet? Six hundred? I don't know enough about physics to make my experiment work. All I know is that we're up high and we need a way down, and this is it. I take a deep breath, wondering if this is going to kill us. Then I think about how Tadekha turned last night into an orgy. Yeah, fuck that bitch. I'm not staying here. I glance down again. Two hundred feet is a good estimate, I decide. Surely between all the towels and blankets I can make enough rope to cover that length. I slap the windowsill as if to put an exclamation point on my plan and turn away. "Time to get to work."
"What do you mean?" Aron follows behind me as I head to the bathroom and grab armfuls of fluffy towels, hauling them out to the bed. "What are you doing?"
"I'm making a rope ladder so we can climb down."
He snorts with derision.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a better plan?" I haul the linens onto the bed and then go back for the second armload. I wish there were more, but my second armload is pretty paltry. That's all right, though. I'll make it work. I can rip the towels into strips. Same with the bed linens. It doesn't have to be the best-looking rope. It just has to be long enough and sturdy enough to hold my weight.
He crosses his arms and watches me as I sit down on the bed with piles and piles of towels. I grab the first one and begin to rip it in half. Or, I try to. Fabric doesn't tear as easily as I expect, and I struggle with it for a painfully humiliating moment before giving up and using my damn teeth. That works, and I'm able to rip it in half and then tie the two together. "This is your plan," he states, as if I've lost my mind. “A rope.”