I stood still for what seemed a long time, still a little bewildered by the ease with which I had been captured, disarmed and thrown into a cell. I hadn't been ready to act, not ready for violence. I reasoned that it was because I knew I was surrounded by hundreds of Alendi in the keep and thousands outside it. Violence wouldn't work, I had assumed. Guile and stealth were the way forward. An image of the Alendi lying on the stairs, his neck broken, flashed in my mind. Violence worked well enough for Sapphire, I thought.
“Yes,” I said to myself softly, “but I'm not Sapphire.”
“Who are you then?”
I started, banging my head on the door and spun around. I had not realized I was not alone. There were two beds in the cell and on one of them, sitting with his back against the wall and looking at me with mild curiosity, was a man of the city. He studied me with casual indifference, as though he had been waiting for a servant to bring him a plate of tidbits and was mildly puzzled as to why I had been brought instead. I could tell that he was a patron by his dress, by the fact that he was clean-shaven, and that he was looking at me in contempt and had asked the question with the mild curiosity of one who does not really care to hear the answer, as I was bound to be a social inferior and therefore beneath notice.
“Tahal Samant,” I said.
“No, that's me.” He sighed when I did not respond, judging me a man of little wit no doubt. “I asked you first.”
“Sumto Merian Ichatha Cerulian,” I said.
“The drunk,” his lips curled in mild contempt. “Just as I imagined you.”
“I came to rescue you.”
“Oh, thank the gods, I'm saved,” he gestured airily, looking to the heavens.
He was beginning to irritate me. “Orelia asked me to come and get you.”
He sighed. “How like her. And what are you going to do now you have found me? Pour me a drink? Sing me a song? Dance a drunken reel? Tell me a ribald joke and laugh uproariously at your own surpassing wit?”
That's when I lost my temper.