"You said we weren't going to fight the guys in the hallway, right? Because they'd go after me to get to you? So yes, this is my plan. I'm not staying here for Orgy 2.0 and I'm sure not staying to see what other fun ideas she has for us. You said she's your enemy. That's enough for me. We need to get out of here, and this is the only way out. So yes, this is what I'm doing."
He grunts and crosses his arms, watching me as I work. "What do you know of this land?"
"So far? I know it sucks and everyone thinks I'm a tart and all the gods wandering around are assholes, including you. That's all I need to know." I take my frustrations out on the fabric in my hands. Man, it feels really freaking good to rip it into strips. I imagine it as Aron's unhelpful face.
Riiiiiiip. Oh yeah. That's the ticket.
"I know that Aventine is a city that worships me," he says, his voice cutting and blunt.
"I remember that part," I tell him. "I also remember the part where they tried to kill your ass."
"Nevertheless, they pray to me. And in their prayers, they ask for certain things. Lately, they have asked for glory as they mount their attack on the Citadel. It has stripped their lands and bankrupted their people, and so they are mounting an offense against it. They plan on destroying it and everyone inside. And they ask their god for glory as they do so."
I pause. “When is this happening?”
“Soon. Very soon.”
“Today soon?”
He shrugs.
Yeah, okay. Not helpful. I go back to making my rope.
I tear sheet after towel after sheet after towel. When my hands start to ache from tearing, I switch to knotting, and my rope grows by leaps and bounds. It's utterly quiet in the room except for the sound of me working, and my occasional glance over at Aron shows that he hasn't moved from his watchful spot at the window.
Yeah, I guess it'd be too much to ask for him to help his poor lil ol' anchor with, you know, the freaking escape plan.
That's all right, though. A girl wants to get out of here, she'll just do it herself, I reason. If he doesn't like it, he can just stay.
Then I remember that we're stuck together, and my jaw clenches. I'm not going to worry about Aron right now. I'm going to focus on getting out of here.
After a good hour or two of this, I'm starting to run low on strips, my rope covering the bed itself. At his spot at the window, Aron grunts. "They're here. Come and see."
I glance over at him. His mismatched eyes gleam with excitement as he leans out the window to get a better look at something. “See what?”
The smile on his face is brutal. "Aventine and its troops. And they've brought trebuchets."
Trebuchets? I don't know what those are, but a vague memory brings a mental image of catapults. Yeah, that isn't good. I scan the surrounding area. To me, it looks the same as it always does, nothing but dirt and hills and more dirt. It's brown on brown and ugly as sin. The clouds roll through the blue sky, and it looks like a beautiful day. I don't see anything, and I'm just about to say so when something in the distance gleams like metal. I squint, and sure enough, one of the clouds hangs lower than all the others. It's dust kicked up from horses, I realize…or land-hippos. He's right. Someone is coming.
And if it's an army of men from the city that just tried to assassinate Aron…
I grab his arm, wincing at the angry buzz his skin gives me. "We've got to get out of here before they arrive."
"I have been saying such a thing," he tells me, with a slight roll of his eyes. "You think Tadekha and her people are equipped to fight an army? They will just play music at them and blow kisses and this pretty, floating city of hers will topple at the first lob of the trebuchet."
"All the more reason to go," I tell him, racing back to the bed. I snag one end of the rope and then race back toward the window. "Help me find something to tie this to."
Aron sighs heavily, but he takes one end and we search the room. Eventually, we figure out that tying it to one leg of a