Chapter 1
Earth scuffed Dashi's palms as she moved, adding a fresh layer of filth. There hadn't been enough water to wash her hands in a fortnight. There hadn't been enough water to wash the rest of her in three months.
Outside, dawn was only hours away, but darkness would cling to her narrow world indefinitely. This was where it retreated when the sunlight declared victory, where it bivouacked before the next assault on the day. It was dusk and shadows here, always dusk and shadows.
Dashi turned at the corner, balancing on her hands and keeping her legs pointed to the ceiling. She was getting weaker—she'd only gone around two dozen times and already her arms were trembling—but she kept moving, letting the ache in her shoulders make up for the inaction of so many consecutive hours.
The guards were inattentive just before dawn: if you wanted to do something that was frowned upon, this was the best time to accomplish it. Not that there was much to choose from in terms of nefarious activity. Mostly, it consisted of a brisk trade in hand-rolled cigarettes, which Dashi didn't consume, and exhortations by her male neighbors to show them her “best parts,” which she ignored.
Her perpetual restlessness wasn't even the type of behavior she'd thought a prisoner would need to hide. It wasn't dangerous. She wasn't trying to escape. That particular notion hadn't crossed her mind lately, not in any vehicle more serious than a daydream. She'd tried and failed at digging. The walls were made of enormous stone blocks, impossible to break. Beneath its patina of dirt, the floor was made from the same. She'd been stripped of any metal when she arrived and meals were served in wooden bowls with no utensils.
No, her compulsion to move stemmed from boredom and boredom alone. It was an unrelenting, painful kind of monotony and, like a horse that bites incessantly at the stall door when it's been stabled too long, she'd created her own methods of staying sane.
The guards didn’t see it that way, naturally. They always paid closer attention to any prisoners who seemed overly energetic—“threatening,” they termed it. Thus, Dashi confined her activities to the lifeless hours of early morning, when her only spectators were the flies from the offal bucket and the lice on her blanket.
The sharp creak of a door made her flip to her feet. In another breath, she was on her mat, curled up with every semblance of sleep. The tramp of footsteps reached her ears, growing louder as the guards approached. She thought there were three or four, though she couldn't be sure without opening her eyes.
“This the one?” The guard sounded like he was standing just outside her cell. No, that couldn't be right. They must have come for one of her neighbors; they'd been here longer than she had. Surely their judgment would come first, even if their crimes were less severe.
There was a murmur of assent, followed by the clank of the bolt being drawn and the protest of hinges.
They're not here for me. I have more time, she assured herself, but her pounding heart begged to differ.
The footsteps stopped just in front of her face and Dashi sat up quickly to forestall the inevitable kick.
“I'm up.” Her voice croaked slightly, but she thought it was due to thirst, not nerves. That's probably why her hands were shaking too.
The guard grunted a laugh. “Knew you weren't sleeping.” He turned back to the others, who, Dashi saw, weren't regular prison guards but men in military uniform. “Told you: criminals aren't made, they're born. Not one of the lot can be trusted, even over small things.”
“You were born too,” Dashi said, her voice still harsh. “To a hairy sow rolling in her own waste.” Maybe it was nerves after all. Altan always said that's how she reacted to strain: by leaping from the precipice, lashing out in some way.
The guard's attention jerked back to Dashi and his hand fell to the cudgel hanging from his waist.
One of the soldiers cleared his throat. “We'll take the prisoner from here.”
Nothing could have been worse than those words. Nothing could have better signaled her impending judgment. The khan wanted a clean show: no pre-bloodied prisoners for him. He let his executioners do that.
The guard peeled his fingers from the cudgel, instead nudging Dashi roughly with his boot. “You heard him. Get up.”
Dashi got to her feet, moving in slow motion, as if she hadn't just been pacing the cell on her hands. Her eyes focused on the waiting men. Broad-shouldered military types, all of them. Not stupid either, if their sharp gazes were any indicator. One of them held out a metal cuff and, when Dashi took a step back at the sight, the guard grabbed her hair and shoved her forward so that she fell to her knees. The cuff closed around her neck with a snap.
This was it, then. The end.
The average prisoner didn't rate a trial. Not unless the public outcry was loud enough to make the khan take notice. Dashi couldn’t remember the last time that had happened and she rather doubted it would be the case for her. More often, accused criminals were just executed. Publicly, on some occasions. With little fanfare, on others.
Even if, by some not-inconsequential miracle, she was being taken to trial, it would only delay the inevitable. There would be no escape from her fate.
She was guilty of murder, after all.
