(The triumphant return!)

*

It got dark, and then it got light again.  Rube made everyone change their clothes, just so they could say they had.

Eventually, somebody else came by.  Not the woman from earlier, but a man in a black uniform that looked like the male version of the dress she’d been wearing.  High Priest Tavin’s servants had a strict dress code, Rube guessed.

“The Lady Sameander has a job for you,” he said, a little testily, as if they hadn’t heard his co-worker properly and just needed her words repeating fourteen hours later.

Rube looked sideways at Jeanette, who shrugged and looked innocent.  It was safe to go ahead.  “What is it?”

The man reached through the bars and handed Rube a piece of paper.  “Lady Sameander wants this sewn onto everybody’s shirts in time for the reception tomorrow.”

Rube looked at the paper.  It was in an alphabet she didn’t recognise- it looked like it was made up of squares and triangles.  “How many people’s shirts?”

“The whole family.  All seven of them.”  He sounded impatient.

Rube looked back at the paper.  “Right.…  but this is about a hundred words long.”

“Is there a problem with that?”

Rube thought about it.  What else was there to do in this cell?  “I guess not.”

“You guess not?”  The man raised his eyebrows and put his hands on his hips.  “That’s not a very nice thing to say.  Sounds doubtful.”

Rube got the impression, from the over-dramatic outrage on his face, that he was expecting an apology.  Instead, she stared at him as blankly as she could, and waited to see what happened next.

After twenty seconds or so, the man gave up.  “I’ll bring you the materials,” he said, and left.

*

Between the three of them, they managed to get it done in a few hours.  By (they estimated) lunchtime, Jeanette was sucking on her sore, sliced-up fingers, and Sally was whingeing as if she’d been forced to work down a mine, but they had seven freshly-sewn shirts.

After a while, a couple of black-uniformed servants came by and took them out of the cells.  “You’ll be presenting these to the High Priest and the Lady Sameander,” they were told.  Up through the dark hallways they went, and eventually they found themselves in a dining room.  The lighting in here was surprisingly good, revealing a room that was painted- walls, floor and ceiling- the same shade of dark red.  Ketchup red.  Tomato-soup red.

The High Priest sat at a table that looked as if it was carved from a big block of black marble, next to a woman covered in diamonds- a tiara in her hair (golden ringlets, obviously), bracelets all the way up to her elbows, necklaces from under her chin to halfway down her chest.  Rube didn’t need anyone to tell them that this was Lady Sameander.

She inspected each shirt closely, squinting at the stitches and holding it up to the light.  Eventually, she sighed.  “Well, I’ll take it, but it wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

Rube wasn’t sure what she was expected to say to that.  “Right…”

“This is a sacrifice for me.”  Lady Sameander gave Rube a plaintive look.

Rube was getting quite good at staring blankly and not apologising. 

Lady Sameander’s brow creased, and she turned to the servants.  “Put them to work in the garden.”

(To be continued)