"I think I have a way out of here," I lowered my voice so no one else in the cavern could hear, but I couldn't hide the excitement. Together there was nothing Josef and I couldn't do.
"The overseer made his offer?" Josef asked.
"No," I said. "Well, yes. But..." I paused. It took a moment for Josef's words to really sink in, and when they did they brought denial with them. I couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it. Hope is an insidious disease, and denial is one of the symptoms. I saw an eager look on his face. I saw hope. The same hope I had held for rescue before the overseer crushed it. "How did you know about that?"
"Because he offered it to me as well," Josef said.
"You turned him down?"
Josef shook his head. "He didn't want me alone," he said. "He told me either we both agreed or we both stayed here. That you had to choose to be free. That you had to…"
"To break?" I spat. Just like a horse, you had to break its spirit before it could be ridden. I had to have my spirit broken before I could be set free. Again, I will point out the overseer knew his business. If he had used Josef against me, if I had known my friend had given up, it would only have galvanised my resistance. It did.
"But it doesn't matter now," Josef said. "We're getting out." I could hear the happiness in his voice, the relief. The almost hysterical hope. Then I crushed it just as the overseer had done to me.
"I turned the fucker down, Josef." My words settled between us like a death knell.
There are times in my life where I have looked upon those I love, searched their faces for the person I know, and realised I didn't recognise them at all. That was the way Josef looked at me then, as though he still saw me as the young girl I had been when we arrived at the Orran Academy, and only at that moment, was he realising I had changed. That young girl was dead, murdered the moment Josef betrayed me and forced me to surrender. Murdered by him! I was now someone else. I was what the Pit had made me, or was making me into. It hadn't finished yet. There was yet more it could do to me. More it could take from me.
"Why?" There was hurt in his voice.
"The cost was too high, Josef," I said. "We can't serve the Terrelans."
"Why not?"
"Because we're fucking Orrans," I hissed at him.
Josef laughed then, a harsh sound that quickly turned to pain as he clutched at his ribs. "There are no Orrans anymore, Eska. We're all Terrelans now."
"I'm fucking-well not."
"Yes, you are," he snapped. "Even if the Orran Emperor was still alive..."
"You knew?" I couldn't fathom how Josef had known of the emperor's death and not told me. How had he hidden something so important from me? Why had he kept it a secret? But the truth was obvious. Because the overseer had told him to. He wanted to save that bit of information to break me when I was at my lowest. And Josef had fucking helped him.
Josef paused. I watched him close his eyes and clench his jaw. I think this was the angriest I had ever seen him, even more than when the bitch-whore put a hole in my side. I pulled back from that anger. I was scared. It was a side of Josef I had so rarely seen before.
"It doesn't matter," he said eventually, his voice sharp. "Even if he were still alive, or any of the Orrans. Their empire is gone. It's all the Terrelan Empire now. And what did we ever owe the Orrans anyway? They kidnapped us from our families. Put us through... It was torture. What we went through at the academy was torture, Eska. Then, when they decided it was time, they made us kill for them."
I saw the anger on Josef's face fade away, and what it left behind was even worse. Guilt. I never really thought about the men and women we killed in battle. It was war. People died on both sides and no fucker emerged from the slaughter clean. I also hadn't realised how heavily it weighed on Josef. Unfortunately for us both, I was angry and I have never made the wisest of choices while angry.
"You knew. And you didn't tell me." There was scorn in my voice. I felt betrayed, and with good reason. I still don't know if Josef even realised it, but he had betrayed me again. Just as he had on the tower of Fort Vernan. Just thinking about it makes me angry all over again. There're so many years between then and now. So many miles travelled, so many friendships made and broken. So many loved ones lost. I find I still cannot forgive him.
"That's not really the point, Eska..." he started.
"How long have you been whispering the overseer's words in my ear, Josef?" I couldn't keep the anger from my voice. Nor did I care to. "How fucking long have you been telling him how to get to me?"
"Don't you want to get out of here, Eska?" Josef asked, tears in his eyes. "What does it matter who we're working for? At least the Terrelans won't be making us murder people."
It took some effort, and the help of the cavern wall, to pull myself back to my feet. Every part of my body protested at the movement, and I could see myself trembling, though whether that was from the exhaustion or the rage, I couldn't tell. Josef just stared up at me, his dark brown eyes wide and pleading. That look almost stopped me. Almost. I was so close to collapsing and curling up next to him. Maybe if I had forgotten my anger just for that night, it wouldn't have festered within me. Maybe I wouldn't have widened the rift forming between us. But that isn't me. I never let things go.
"You. Betrayed. Me." I bit off each word, turning each one into a damning insult. Then I turned and limped out of the cavern. No one followed me.
I found Tamura right where I'd left him, staring up at the breeze gusting from a crack in the rock. He nodded to me as I staggered into the tunnel, and just watched as I collapsed against a nearby wall. I think he was still watching me as I closed my eyes and finally let the darkness claim me.
That was the first time in years I hadn't slept with Josef curled up next to me. And it was the first time since we met, so many years ago, that one of us had chosen not to sleep next to the other. It wasn't until the next day that I realised I hadn't told him about my hope of escape.
Chapter 15
When I woke, Tamura was gone. I found myself covered with a patchy blanket. It's a strange sensation, waking up in total darkness. We spend so much of our lives in the light that when it is taken away, we lose all semblance of time. I might have been asleep for a few hours, or a week. All I really knew is that I was still tired. Well, that and I ached all over and my stomach felt like a portal to the Other World trying to devour me from the inside.
I like to think I'm quick to rise, even in my advancing years, but I was not that day. I struggled to stretch out my legs and arms, wincing at the tightness in the muscles. My rib was a special kind of pain and it made every movement feel like it was cracking all over again. After a while, I risked touching my cheek and found it painful and swollen, but it did not burn with new pain at the slightest touch. For that I am grateful. An ugly scar marring my face is one thing, but I imagine it would have been far worse had infection settled in.
I fumbled my way out of the tunnel, leaning against the wall and letting my memory guide me. I tripped a few times, and each time I worried that I might not be able to stand again, such was the effort it was costing me. There was light at the end of the tunnel, a lantern lit and hanging from a wall of the corridor. There were no other scabs about, the area long since abandoned for tunnels further below. I was glad of that.