Dagny: An Inheritance Cycle Fanfiction.

13. An Unexpected Ally

So, Chapter 13! Personally, I think it's lucky.

Well, whatever else it is, it's the first Dagny chapter since she was kidnapped, so I guess it's lucky for anyone who likes her.

:) thanks so much for all your votes and comments on the last chapter.

Final Word Count: 1298 words.

The cell was dank, cold and unpleasantly damp. Dagny waited in darkness, her back braced against a rough stone wall and her knees drawn up to her chest. The floor was filthy, covered in matted, rotting straw like the pen of an animal. Stagnant, murky water pooled in cracks in the broken stone. Dagny didn't have the strength to stand, but she was damned if she was going to lie down in that filth so Rowan could laugh at her expense. Little guttersnipe, back where you belong.

Her fists clenched involuntarily and her snapped finger protested.

It hurt to breathe. She inhaled and her body retaliated, delivering sharp, blistering pain that cut like a hot blade through the rest of the duller aches she was feeling. Dagny guessed one of her ribs was broken. Maybe more than one. Rowan had told his men to "rough her up", nonspecific. Her arms, torso and most of her neck were impressively purple, a testament to how seriously the thugs took their work.

And somehow, the most painful thing was still the dispassionate way he had given the order. The cold, disdainful look he had given her when she, in her heart not truly believing he would hurt her, had asked him not to do it.

"We're friends, Rowan. Please," she'd pleaded, like the credulous fool she was. He had shown her what he thought of that friendship when he struck the first blow himself. He'd backhanded her across the face, so hard she crumpled, then walked out and left her at the mercies of his men.

Her face still throbbed painfully, hours later. She could feel her eye blackening and swelling, and her lip was torn and bleeding. That would probably scar, if it wasn't healed soon. Dagny couldn't heal it herself. Whatever drug he had given her cut her off from her magic, all of it. She couldn't even contact Sverrir. She had tried persistently for hours before she gave in and settled onto the filthy floor of her cell to wait for a miracle.

That had been hours ago. Dagny thought a full day must have passed. At least a full day. But maybe it just felt that way. Maybe it hadn't been that long at all. Maybe she was going mad from the pain, down here alone in the dark and the silence.

Dagny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.

The worst part of it all was the helplessness. She kept telling herself she was a Dragon Rider. How could a Rider be afraid of a petty gang of thugs? But they'd taken her magic and her sword and taken her away from her dragon and she didn't feel like a Rider. She felt like a useless, helpless girl who didn't have anyone to come and save her.

Pathetic. At least she hadn't cried when they beat her, much as she'd wanted to. Her resolve had held that far, at least. But she knew they hadn't hurt her as much as they could have, and she couldn't help morbidly speculating on how long she would last. They had hardly even started.

She should have been thinking, plotting, planning her escape, but she couldn't. Whatever that poison was, it dulled her wits as well as her magic. Her thoughts ran slow as molasses. It had to wear off, though. Soon. It had been so long already.

She lapsed back into shivering and suffering and trying with everything in her not to think about what the guards might do to her when they came back. She was still huddled there, arms wrapped around herself, when the rusted bolt moved and the door swung inward.

Weak, meagre sunlight entered the night-dark cell through the hole of the doorway, marking out a blunt square of brightness on the dingy floor. Dagny repressed the instinct to flinch away from the sun like some wounded prey animal.

"Well, Shur'tugal. Are you just sitting there snivelling?"

Her mind froze with a mix of blind relief and utter disbelief, and the strengthening worry that she had actually cracked up and was hallucinating. Dagny's fingers groped at the wall as she pulled herself laboriously to her feet. She squinted into the brightness.

"Sarrin?" She asked, incredulous.

It was Sarrin, unbelievably. The spidery lord stood limned in the doorway, his customary long robes folded around his thin frame. His round, watery eyes stared down at her.

"I expected better from you," he said, each word crisp and distinct, ringing off the close walls of the cell. Then he went on: "Though perhaps I shouldn't have. When have you ever shown any kind of competence?"

"How?" Dagny choked out.

She saw him take her in with a brief, piercing glance. Dagny knew she was probably a pitiable sight, clinging to the wall for support, her face battered and her borrowed robe torn, revealing bruised, broken skin. But Sarrin's face showed no pity, no shock or compassion, only frank appraisal and cold evaluation.

He didn't answer her question. Her shoulders stiffened as an explanation occurred to her, one both enraging and, she thought abruptly, very, very possible.

"Are you working with Rowan?! Are you part of his..." Her lip curled up in a sneer. "Rebellion?"

Sarrin made a sound that could have indicated vexation. "Always, you jump to the worst conclusion. You know, Shur'tugal, your assumptions are not always right. Often, in fact, they are flawed." He gave a thin, unconvincing smile at the stony look on her face. "Food for thought, perhaps."

Her legs trembled, but she refused to fall. She dug her fingernails harder into the furrow between the building stones, holding herself upright. Hot, sticky blood ran from her hand, dripping down the heatless rock. Fighting dizziness, she made herself glare at the cryptic lord.

"If you're not working with Rowan -"

"I would never," he began, enunciating precisely. "Work with the Thief Lord. The tools I use are never so clumsy."

Black spots danced before her eyes. She needed to sit, before the pain made her collapse. "Then how are you here?"

He showed no reaction to her caustic tone. "I think you mean, why am I here? Not to release you, before you get your hopes up. But I am not here to torment you, either. Can you move on that leg?"

The last question was asked in an utterly different tone. Dagny glanced down, examining her swollen calf.

"It's not broken." I think.

" That's not what I asked."

Could she move? Dagny considered. Was moving her leg enormously painful? Yes. Was it physically possible?

She looked back at Sarrin. "I can walk. I can't run."

An odd look flitted across his face. Satisfaction?

His next words jarred her.

"Interesting business, this rebellion, don't you think?" He began conversationally. "Did you know, the conspirators are having a meeting, upstairs, in this house, as we speak? A council session, they call it."

Dagny's focus suddenly sharpened. "I'm listening."

Sarrin's eyes were intent, though his tone stayed cool and artificial. "I won't go up there myself. I won't risk being caught."

She nodded, slowly.

"I will leave now," he said. "I may happen to leave the door to this cell unlocked." He paused. "Two flights up, the third set of doors on the left."

With that, Sarrin turned away in a dark sweep of burgundy robes, taking his torch with him. The darkness fell over her again once he had taken enough steps away - but she wasn't trapped now, not anymore.

She called after him before he was out of earshot. "And what if I'm caught?"

His gait hardly faltered. With his back to her, he lifted his shoulders once in a careless shrug. "Shur'tugal, I imagine they're going to torture you anyway."