Chapter 53.1: Something Like Sleep

Penny’s next couple of days were little more than an oil-smeared blur of dreams and reality. The sun rose and set and rose and set, and she wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t reversed that course once or twice. Crusader Hope came and went, her image coming into focus a time or two, but only long enough to be left in reflective steel relief, burned into Penny’s vision against the dark backdrop of the tent’s interior. 

“Penny?”

She ate with Jinkke and some soldiers at one point, or she thought she had. But then Penny also remembered eating with Minkus, Eddie, and a golem, which wasn’t possible. At least that made no more sense than the familiar vision of Penny’s father disappearing through that sunlit doorway, only now with Minkus in his wake. Minkus was everywhere. The asura girl made appearances, too, alternately sobbing into her friend’s chest and pointing accusations at Penny in that stone-sterile waiting room in Rata Sum.

“Penny.”

She drank something. Was it multiple somethings? Jindel appeared, manacled, under guard, or both, and the guards around her seemed to multiply. Hope gave her more of that dirt-bitter potion, and Penny slipped into a dark and unending oblivion time and again, satisfied at last to fall up and into the black of the sky before slamming back down on the cobblestones of Divinity’s Reach, allowed to see her shop just along enough to step toward it before being yanked back into the black. She came to cognition at a campfire, surrounded by people in black and white. The scholar was there, Jinkke was there, and Minkus was there, smiling as he extended a hand that coated her in ripples of blue light. It wrapped her tighter, warmer than the oblivion had.

“Penny!”

In and out, one thing after the next filled her senses, and Penny had no idea what was real or fiction, memory or present moment. What in Torment had happened to her?

“Smoke and sparks, Arkayd, get your cranium reconnected!”

Penny finally tried to respond to the voice, but her mouth was molasses. She got one eye opened, and three copies of Jinkke swirled into focus. “Smalls? Is— is that you?” She’d seen the asura enough times in the last— however many days, that she wasn’t sure which versions were real. She wasn’t even certain she was awake.

“Yes. Now wake up,” Jinkke demanded. “They’re transferring Crusader Jindel for her tribunal.”

Penny tried to blink the world behind the asura into focus. It looked like oblivion and felt— like a migraine. “Who’s transferring Jinkke where?” she muttered.

“Eternal Alchemy,” the asura swore, stepping away and fading into the engulfing darkness. She coughed once or twice and yanked back a flap of darkness. Searing light hit Penny so hard she rolled over on her cot—she was on a cot.

“Gods,” Penny groaned. Was that her voice? It didn’t sound like her voice. She said it again, “Gods.”

“Look here,” Jinkke instructed, her flat feet slapping toward Penny across the canvas. Penny rolled back and—

Penny screamed as the cold slap of water hit her face. She shot upright, spitting and pushing drenched hair out of her face. “What— Why— What is…” She couldn’t find the end of the questions, but wiped her have in her blanket and blinked eyes open at her obnoxious friend.

Jinkke raised the pitcher again in threat. “What day is it?”

“Gods, I don’t know.” Her mumbles picked up speed at the same rate as the interior of her tent gained solidity. “Sometime in Phoenix.”

“What’s your name?” Jinkke pulled the pitcher back as if to toss again.

“The great queen Jenna,” Penny snarked, her wits coming back to her.

It was the wrong response.

Jinkke tossed again, emptying the rest of the pitcher’s contents over Penny’s face and chest. Penny sputtered, waving wildly and jumping up off the cot. Her left leg ached with tension, almost bringing her down before she caught herself and fumbled past Jinkke. The asura only turned to watch.

“Stop that!” Penny barked, reeling as gravity found her.

Water spread down her tunic toward the bandages that wrapped her midsection. Only, raising the tunic, she found there were no bandages now. There was no wound, only the pink impression of new flesh where the wound had been. “What in Torment?”

Her gaze snapped back to Jinkke, though she still found some difficulty in stringing the words together. “How is— What happened to— Gods, how long have we been here?”

The asura nodded in satisfaction, lowering the pitcher to her side. “That’s the most coherent thing you’ve said in three days.”

“Three days?” Penny spat, gawking. Her eyes moved down her leg, where the rest of her bandages were removed too, revealing more pink flesh and reminding her just how much of her pant leg the medics had cut away.

Jinkke nodded, putting a hand to her hip. “We’ve been in Captain Gelwin’s camp for the last four days. You’ve been dosed on that sleeping elixir for the last three days, and throughout that time, you’ve been essentially like— this.” Jinkke gestured at the sopping, disoriented woman. “It makes me grateful I didn’t require that vile substance.”

“Three days?” Penny repeated, sorting through the disordered store of thoughts she’d amassed. It was a confusing mess. “I’ve been asleep for three days?”

“That is not what I said.” Jinkke tried but failed at keeping the grimace off her face. “The first day, yes, you were completely unconscious, from sunup to sundown and through the following night. You slept through most of the second day too, though you ate meals we brought. You might have gone precisely the same way yesterday, were it not for Crusader Hope’s reduction of your dosage. Of course, precisely the same might have been an improvement.”

Penny squinted at her, both wondering what in Torment Jinkke was talking about and trying to bring the asura back into focus. “What does that mean?”

Jinkke sighed. But Penny also saw the edge of a smirk touch her face. “You remained here sixty-some-odd percent of the time, still unconscious, but the rest of that day…” She paused, touching a finger to her lip and considering her words. “You joined us around the camp intermittently. At least some general facsimile of you did, babbling nonsense and then falling unconscious in random locations again.”

A few hazy images came to Penny’s mind: spinning tents, conversations only Penny thought were funny, and— weeping? She forced a confident smirk to her face that she didn’t feel at all. “I must have been the life of the party.”

Jinkke arched an imperious eyebrow, but before she could snap back a response, she started coughing. 

Moving for the open door flap, she collected herself and glanced back over her shoulder. “You unquestionably were not, but that’s irrelevant at the moment. They’re transporting Crusader Jindel for her judgment at the Vigil Keep. I doubt you want to miss your opportunity for a farewell.”

For an instant Penny wanted to ask Jinkke what made her think that would matter so much. But then, there was a wobbly image in Penny’s mind of embracing the blond soldier and gushing self-recriminations. She didn’t know what that meant or if it had actually happened—oh, Grenth, she hoped it hadn’t.

Instead of saying anything further, Penny followed, drying herself as best as she could with one hand on the blanket. With the other she held her aching leg. It worked, the strength of it fine, but gods it was tight, like it had been cramped for months. She told herself to never need healing again.

If Penny had thought the light blazing into the tent through the door flap was too much, she almost wailed as she stepped out of the tent and into the drowning, full light of day. She pressed her eyes shut, only toying with opening them as she tried to stay on Jinkke’s tiny trail. It burned her eyes, but she fought to adjust, slowly recognizing details about the world. The sun’s warmth on her exposed arms and leg was unexpectedly welcome, though she knew it wouldn’t be for long. It was hotter than it should have been for the start of a day—Penny could almost feel the water evaporating off her and collecting into the grossly humid air. It was that realization that made her look for the position of the sun in the sky. It was already west of its pinnacle, assuming Penny still understood where west was. Gods, what time was it?

“I finally managed to rouse her.”

It took Penny a moment to realize Jinkke wasn’t talking to her, but about her. Yissa’s small, dream-sick form slid up beside them, and the nauseating swirl of multiple people’s movements threatened to empty Penny’s stomach.

Ahead of them, maybe thirty yards away, several other forms started coming into focus—enough so, anyway, that Penny knew they weren’t shrubs or barrels. Vigil soldiers stood in a semicircle at the gates of the camp. If it hadn’t been for the consistent patterns of gray and white that called everyone else’s uniforms, Penny might not have made out Valliford, differentiated by the random colors of her slapdash civilian attire.

Squinting, Penny spotted the glint of sunlight on the manacles at the young woman’s wrists, and Jinkke’s words came back to her mind, finally making full sense. They’re transferring Crusader Jindel.

“What happened?” Yissa’s words broke Penny’s focus. The scholar inspected Penny spuriously. “She’s utterly saturated.”

“Someone,” Penny began, frowning at Jinkke, “thought it would be funny to douse me like a campfire.”

“No,” the asura corrected, crossing her arms. “Someone thought it would be expedient to use water to shock you back to your senses. Smelling salts were the alternative, but the medic’s supply was limited.”

“You had smelling salts?” Penny demanded. “You really did choose to—”

“Quiet.” Jinkke huffed out the demand in a low tone that barred debate. She subdued a cough.

The three stood still beside another charcoal tent, and Penny took the opportunity to slip into its narrow strip of shade. She squinted in the direction the others were already looking, at that crescent of Vigil soldiers. It was the first Penny was able to recognize any of the figures surrounding the captive. It looked like half the camp was there, but at its edge, she could make out the shiny head of the old captain and the dark shape of a wagon strapped to a pair of enormous oxen. Almost naturally, silence fell across the group, and Gelwin turned to face the soldier in cuffs.

Penny’s senses continued to return as she blinked sense into everything she saw and heard. It was the distant sound of his voice that returned quickest, as she strained to hear what he was saying. Despite what she missed, Penny couldn’t misinterpret what was happening: this was the official conviction and sentencing—at least before the real conviction and sentencing the young woman would face at the Keep. Heads fell as the captain’s words came to a sharp and finite end. He stepped aside, and the Vigil soldier at Jindel’s elbow turned her by the arm toward the wagon.

“Wait,” Penny said, piecing thoughts together as the words left her mouth. She kept her eyes up on what was happening. “You said three days.”

“Yes,” Jinkke agreed. Her tone said she wasn’t clear what Penny’s problem was now.

Penny nodded, pointing past Jindel to the wagon. She did have the wits to keep her voice down. “The old man said their wagon wasn’t leaving for another fortnight.”

“My ears,” Yissa whispered. “You have indeed been in a fugue state. Given circumstances, they made a concession to standard protocol. The supply team has been assigned to immediate transportation of Crusader Jindel—whether that will indeed continue to be her designation remains to be seen, though not, I dare say, by us. An additional cargo of supplies is to be collected upon their return from Rata Sum, after the prisoner is set upon her next leg of journey. If you query me, it’s not perhaps the most efficient method of—”

“I didn’t query you,” Penny said, shutting down the loquacious scholar. She spun, stumbling a step that she hadn’t even taken yet toward their tent. “That’s supposed to be our ride too, and it’s leaving.”

Jinkke’s three-fingered hand gripped Penny’s wrist. “Arkayd, that is exactly why it’s leaving early.”

Penny stopped, glancing back at Jinkke and quietly thankful for the moment to catch her balance again. She formulated the subsequent question, but Jinkke had already gotten there.

“Their protocols restrict the transport of military criminals and civilians on the same vehicle,” she explained with a tired sigh, “especially civilians familiar with the captive. Smoke and sparks, you were there when it was decided.”

“No I wasn’t,” Penny argued. “You don’t think I would remember…” Jinkke’s arched eyebrow and crossed arms made her think better of continuing the argument. “Yeah, OK,” she huffed. “But now it’s going to be even longer till we get out of here.”

Jinkke scoffed. “You’ll survive.”

Penny frowned. Even when he’d had opportunities to throw barbs, Minkus had never done so. His sister was clearly not him. None of them were.

Penny shook that away. She didn’t have the strength to think of Minkus, not now.

“Degrease your gears,” Jinkke said, a touch more gently. She nudged Penny in the leg. “The captain is coming.”