Chapter 24: Chapter 22: Waiting in the Cell

“This sucks!” Bo declared loudly in the cell, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He hated being treated like he was stupid or a criminal, and somehow the “interview” with the official had managed to do both at once. He had been drilled about where he was going, the identities of the people he traveled with, how much money he had, if he was carrying any illicit items, how much food and water he brought, his relation to Liu Xie and Li Baobao, when and where he was born, if he had anyone who could verify his answers (which were “I don’t know” and “In a forest, I guess?”), and if his short hair had the accompanying paperwork proving he was a criminal or a ‘landless farmer’, and not just someone disrespecting his parents.

He was not sure how the process went for Li Baobao, but whatever happened with Liu Xie had to have been bad because he had been taken away for “deeper questioning”.

The cell they were in was small and cramped, there was some sawdust scattered on some suspicious wet spots on the ground that he and Li were sitting as far away from as possible. The ceiling was low enough that if Bo was to hold his hand up he could put his palm flat against it. Not that he would however, since wet green fungus was growing on it. He had experienced enough mushroom based incidents in his wanderings to not trust a single fungi.

There was some light coming in at least, and Li Baobao was nose deep in a book. Bo stared at him. The young man looked sadder, with his brows constantly furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” Bo finally asked.

Li Baobao looked up, as though surprised someone else was in the cell with him. “I’m… I’m fine, mostly. I’m just… trying to distract myself, I guess. A bit of reading is good! I still have my copy of the Bridgewater Sage’s book!” He paused for a moment before holding it out. “Would you like to read it too?”

Bo shook his head, pushing it back towards Li gently. “No, I can’t read.”

“Oh!” Li Baobao blinked. “Why not?”

Bo stared at the wealthy young man incredulously. “Nobody could read in my village. We were farmers and fishers.”

“Well, we have farmers and fishers too, back… back where I used to live,” Li Baobao shifted uncomfortably. “They could read too, I think.” He twiddled his thumbs. “Uhm, actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard where you were from, or Liu Xie for that matter…”

Bo shifted so he was closer to Li, looking back up at the suspicious fungus on the ceiling. “I’m just from a village. It was by a river and there was a forest on the other side. It was small. But it was home.” He closed his eyes, picturing the surroundings in his head. A quiet place with buildings of stone that had stood for so long it seemed no one remembered where they came from. Trees walling away the outside world, planting in the black soil with his sisters and helping his mother gut fish. “I lived with my mother and my two sisters.”

“What about your father?” Li Baobao asked.

“I never knew him. Or really…” he sighed. The trees were burning. There was a smell of cooking fish, and flesh… “Nevermind. When do you think they’ll bring boss back?”

Li Baobao tipped his head to the side as he looked at Bo for a long moment. “I don’t know. They sounded really frustrated with him.”

“Why?”

“He wouldn’t give them his sword,” Li Baobao set his book in his lap and folded his hands atop it. “He kept telling them it was a bad idea, I couldn’t hear the full conversation though, he talks quietly and he’s hard to understand sometimes,” he admitted. “I hope Rui and Zhu Er are ok.”

“Who is Zhu Er?” Bo asked before he could stop himself. As Li Baobao opened his mouth Bo shook his head, “wait, no I know. It’s that little animal child.”

“She’s not an animal!” Li Baobao protested. “She’s… she’s a bit uhm…” he tapped his chin.

“Feral? Aggressive? Bloodthirsty?”

“No! She’s a bit… wary,” he finally settled on the word with a nod. “She’s just a bit wary.”

“You know when I first met her she bit me so hard I’m pretty sure she cracked the bones in my hand,” he held up his hand to point at the faint teeth shaped scars.

Li Baobao bit his lip and shifted around uncomfortably once more. “She’ll apologize, I’m sure.”

“You sure do like seeing the best in people, don’t you?” Bo huffed.

“If I didn’t, all I’d see is misery.” Li Baobao’s head hung down. “But maybe I do try to look too much at the good in some people.”

Bo realized he had hit a sore spot in the other man and looked around for something to change the topic again. He glanced out of the bars of the cell door to a few men sitting across from them. One of them he realized looked unusual. He was in foreign looking clothes and had light brown hair tied back. “Hey, hey Li, look! Is that a foreigner?”

“Hm?” Li Baobao leaned forward to look around Bo and at the other cell. “Oh, yes I believe so.”

“You can try talking to him. Why is he here?”

Li Baobao frowned lightly, “that seems a bit awkward to ask a stranger.”

“Well, I mean, maybe he’s one of those people who were trying to get in those old lady tombs. Why is he here then? Maybe he speaks the same language as Whatever-You’re-Calling-Her.”

Li Baobao shrugged before shuffling over to the bars and calling out.

The other man, drowsily, looked up and blinked in bewilderment. His face was pale and looked slick with sweat, and bruising mottled around his left eye. His arm was bandaged up tightly, the wrappings with old blood crusting on it. He got up and shuffled to the cell door and replied to Li Baobao.

The exchange went on for a bit before Li Baobao turned his head back to Bo. “He says his name is Eklund! He and his friends are some of the fortune seekers who went to the tomb.”

“Huh, what’s he doing here then? Was there not enough treasure to share?”

Li Baobao relayed the question and the foreign man’s eyes grew wide and distant as he spoke. Li Baobao’s own expression shifted to one of horror. “...That’s terrifying. That’s awful!”

“What did he say?” Bo asked, moving so he was closer to Li again.

“He said… he said it was a slaughter,” Li Baobao replied. “Man-eating flowers, angry dead, strange monsters. People going mad and turning on their friends. He and a few others escaped but apparently couldn’t bear being near each other, so they all went their own way.”

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Bo scratched his chin in thought. Cursed places like tombs or forests were all popular for scary stories with drunks and the young alike, usually boasts about how great someone was for overcoming them or warnings to stay away. But the foreign man, with his wide distant gaze and beaten body, did not seem to be lying. He remembered someone. A slender lady with gold hair and purple eyes. A few hours before he met Liu Xie, he met a foreign woman with food. She spoke with a strange but pleasant accent, and happily gave him some food. He was certain she said she was going to tombs too.

“Hey Li, ask him if he knows-” … but he could not remember her name.

“Knows? Knows who?”

Before Bo could clarify, a guard with a long pole was strolling down the hallway, striking the bars with the pole to create a loud repeated clanging noise. “HEY! This isn’t a social gathering! Shut up!”

The foreign man immediately shrank back into his own cell like a scared animal, while Li Baobao pulled away from the bars to avoid getting his fingers crushed. Li Baobao shrugged helplessly at Bo.

The two shuffled back to the end of their little cell and Bo felt his stomach growl. He glanced back up at the green fungus. “Why didn’t they at least give us something to eat if they’re making us stay here over night? Or some water?”

“Well, when I’ve traveled through here before, I asked once,” Li Baobao answered. “Since the wall was originally built to try stopping Fish People from coming in, they asked the government of the Northern Kingdom for advice. Since Fish People need to be submerged in water or at the very least regularly drink it, they decided to build these checkpoint places and keep people in place overnight. If they die from lack of water, or turn into a fish, they’re-”

“Yeah alright but you know I think this is a stupid way to do it,” Bo snorted. “I mean, that dumb hag has all those talismans and says they can detect evil presences and stuff why can’t they just do that huh?”

Li Baobao helplessly shrugged, “I’m a merchant, not a scholar.”

 

“I SAID STOP TALKING!” The pipe hit the bars with such force it bent one of them. Both men pressed their backs to the wall as the angry guard passed by again.

 

The lights that leaked into the cell faded away, submerging both men in blackness. With nothing else to do, Bo found a corner to curl up in. He could vaguely sense Li Baobao doing the same. He stared out into the darkness until his eyelids grew heavy and he fell asleep.

His eyes opened slowly. It was still pitch black but he could just barely see the bars of the cell and the hallway outside. There was the steady yet uneven rise and falls of dozens of snoring men. Some were louder than others. Bo closed his eyes to try falling back asleep.

 

“...el…m….”

 

He frowned and opened his eyes again. Among the snores was a strange wet noise. Bo shuffled forward on his knees, sleepy and still wary of the angry guard somehow coming back in.

 

The faint smell was familiar, and as he peered out into the hall he thought he could faintly make out something laying on the ground.

 

“H-help… me… help…”

 

A shadowed hand feebly reached out to nowhere and no one. A crouched thing snapped and tore through the wet tissue of a body. Bo felt cold and frozen. The begging sluggishly drowned in gurgling that was lost beneath the snoring and darkness.

 

“Bo?”

 

Bo snapped upwards onto his feet so fast he almost swung straight back into the ground. Li Baobao caught him and held him as he steadied. “Hey, hey, I’m fine. What’s wrong?” He asked. Light had returned, and outside was the groggy noise of people waking up and guards barking orders. “It’s morning already?”

 

Li Baobao nodded. “You slept like a turtle! The guards were yelling for people to get up for a while now.”

 

“Huh, I was sleeping pretty good I guess!” He shrugged. “I had a weird dream, but maybe that’s just from THEM STARVING US.”

 

“Don’t yell, I don’t want us to get in trouble!”

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