The Ikro Prison Escape

They said Ikro would never be broken. He aimed to changed that.

Photo by Igor Ladigin on Unsplash

Even on the day Thio arrived, he was contemplating escape.

The green ocean was temperate and the wind pleasant on the rolling farmlands of Thenvolo. Quiet cowfields, whispering orchards, craggy beaches, a peaceful scene to belie the bloody rebellion unfolding across the province. And to remind the Thenvolians of the conflict, Ikro Prison loomed but a quarter-mile offshore among the crashing waves, a mar upon the ocean’s horizon.

Its fortress covered the rocky island entirely, dark stone on dark stone, gulls and shearwaters rotating in the skies above. The lips of cannons peeked out upon the battlements — Ikro was both gun battery and prison. Punitive to those within, oppressive to those without.

Staring out at the fortress, Thio twisted his manacled hands. “Are we taking that skiff?”

“That’s only for emergencies,” his prison guard said. “Our path will be here soon; we’re a bit early.”

Ten minutes later, the tide fell enough that the stone path emerged from the surf: a narrow landbridge from the shore to the island prison. Then the water fell further and the landbridge seemed to rise above the tide, jagged but nearly flat on top.

The guard pushed Thio out.

The ocean was close. Hermit crabs scuttled before them. Algae clung limp and twisted to the rocks. Taller waves came tumbling over the ocean’s surface and ran about their ankles. Up ahead, the guns above Ikro’s gatehouse watched their approach. Thio noted the two corpses dangling to the right of the gates: their hanging ropes were payed out all the way to the base of the walls, and only their torsoes remained. “Sir Konistas?”

The guard started, surprised to have his name remembered. “Aye, ‘tis I.”

“Those hanged men… where are their legs?”

“Ah,” Konistas grinned. “Warden Skevaso likes them hanged low so at high tide the sharks can reach their legs.”

Thio searched the churning swells on either side for shark fins.

“Pondering a swim, Lord?”

“Nay. I prefer walking.”

***

Warden Skevaso hung up his coat and plumed hat, entered his office, and closed the door. He first placed a handful of personal documents on his desk, then went to the barred window and lit a charcoal brazier the size of a frying pan. Staring out at the ocean, he breathed deeply and spoke: “Welcome to Ikro Prison, Lord Thio Avena.”

Thio tried to take in his surroundings — wooden globe in the corner, medal from Ganth’s Patriarch in a glass case, ledgerbooks along the wall, pile of personal letters strewn upon the desk. He wanted to remember everything, but focus was difficult whilst restrained to a chair stark naked.

The Warden’s back was still turned, but Thio could see him placing something in the brazier. “I should warn you, you may find Ikro less safe than some other detentions. This prison houses offenders from your family’s rebellion, but half our inmates are incorrigibles from the Barric populace. Why, just last week, there was a riot between the Barrics and your Thenvolian rebels. Nine deaths!”

“And how many of those deaths were caused by your guards?”

“You take me for a murderer? The prisoners — your kinsmen — were rioting over food! But if you must know, we shot five of them. I was told my prison was overcrowded and could not support a noble such as yourself. How fortunate the food delays occurred when they did.”

Thio was not typically given to panic, but the weather was balmy; that brazier wasn’t being stoked for the Warden’s comfort.

“You must have questions.”

Thio did. Valuable noble prisoners were given house arrest, not sent to places like this.

“I customarily enjoy my prisoners’ names being known,” continued the Warden. “It helps remind your province who its true rulers are. But for you, I dispatched agents to disseminate rumors. By now, most of Thenvolo believes you dead. How does that feel, Lord Thio?”

“Underwhelming.” Wit was his typical response to fear. He could see a slender iron billot sitting in the brazier’s burning gullet.

“Oh? How did you imagine it?”

“Better clothed. Why am I here, Sir?”

“Ah, the question of the hour! Come, you tell me why you are here.”

“Because you paid to have me here, I presume.”

“I did more than that, but let us try again.” The Warden drew the billot from the fire and approached Thio. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“I don’t know.”

The Warden pressed the billot’s hot point against the young lord’s bare chest. Pain engulfed him and he screamed.

“Your family’s gold cache, Lord Thio. The cache by which your family is funding this whole damned rebellion. Tell me, Lord Thio: where does House Avena keep its gold?”

Thio knew, but would not say. A putrid scent was rising from his skin and permeating the office. “You’re entertaining fables! We have no gold!”

“Any Thenvolian prisoner can tell you it’s real. You are not the first I’ve questioned, but I am determined to make you the last.”

Down came the billot again, this time upon his thigh.

“Where? Where?! The Presbyter’s army has ransacked three of your family’s fortresses and found naught!” He aimed the billot close to Thio’s nose. “Tell me. Now.”

***

This happened daily. On the morn’s first low tide, the Warden would arrive and summon him. Stripping and restraining him, the Warden would hang his coat and plumed hat outside the door, then make Thio wait while he heated the billot in the brazier and read his documents and letters. Then commenced the torture. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes three. When the Warden grew too bored, tired, or frustrated, Thio was returned to Ikro’s prison yard.

The yard was two-hundred feet wide, surrounded on all sides by ramparted walls continually patrolled by guards. Thio immediately observed the yard’s invisible division: this half was for the Thenvolians, and that half for the Barrics. Any inmate could tell you whose side was whose, down to the flagstone. The only breaches to this territorial distribution occurred at mealtimes — which could be lowered from anywhere, such as during the riot — and at the privy which was a hole in the floor less than a foot wide tucked into a niche along one wall. Fully exposed, like the rest of the yard. No shelter from rain. No shade from the sun. The guards patrolled and the sky turned above him. And when Thio laid his head down each night, he could hear the midtide waves gurgle and echo through unseen passages below. The present fastness was built upon the bones of an older citadel, sunken below the waterline from a millennium or more of tremors and quakes, or so the inmates said. It brought the ocean so close that when he laid down to sleep he could feel it through his back. Some prisoners whispered that it wasn’t the ocean, but the ghosts of former residents doomed to drown with every tide.

And drowning was its own form of escape, he sometimes thought.

***

He thought the inmates would accept him, but two weeks later he was still being shunned. He learned why from an ancient, white-bearded inmate named Dolsithri: “They do not trust you, Lord.”

It came as a blow. “They are Thenvolians! I am one of them! Why would they not trust me?”

“We’re all rebel prisoners, Lord. They believe you’ll give away the location of your family’s gold and doom the cause.”

Thio looked around the yard. ‘Twas midmorning, the sun’s heat rising. Inmates slept, sang songs — the same songs every day. The Barrics on the opposite side played games of quarsk on the ground.

As Thio looked at the Thenvolians, several looked away. His ire was kindled and he stood:

“If I forfeited the Avena family’s gold today, how long do you think the Warden would let me live?!”

A few Barrics glanced over. A guard on the ramparts leaned against a parapet to watch. But all kept silence.

“Truly!” Thio pressed on. “Truly, how long? Five minutes? Two?”

“The Avenas would go to any lengths to realize their goals,” muttered one, a dark man named Nikko with a gash down his face and fingers removed during torture. They said he was resentful of the Avenas and blamed them for his incarceration.

“Well said,” Thio sneered and sat down.

The yard settled. The guard moved on. A shearwater cried above.

“Lord,” Dolsithri proffered, “perhaps if you join their amusements. Have you any new songs to share? We rarely learn new songs!”

“How do I escape this place?”

“Escape?” the old man trembled. “No! You cannot!”

“I can.”

“Lord, please… I have seen many attempts, all failed! If you survive, the guards will hang you from the walls! Better to find your place quietly here. I hated this place too when I first arrived. When those soldiers took my wife and daughters and… well, that’s in the past. I’ve built good will here. On Niddendays I am even permitted to clean the guardhouse for—”

“What about the privy?”

“The privy, Lord?”

“I can hear the ocean in the privy hole at high tide. That means there’s an outlet. Does it reach the old citadel?”

Dolsithri turned toward the privy.

A particularly large Barric was rising from a squat after disgracing that very hole with a monstrous, noisesome avoidance.

Dolsithri turned back toward Thio.

“Don’t look at me like that, man!” said Thio. “Come, surely someone’s tried.”

“No. Even Panges couldn’t fit.”

“Which one is Panges?”

The old man gestured toward a strange little man sitting in the corner.

***

Panges was slight, with dark hair and wan eyes. His body showed evidence of starvation which made his age indeterminate. He would sit and hum to himself for hours each day whilst absently running a slender finger along the wall’s mortar joints. Most considered him touched.

Thio spent a week trying to engage him, marshalling the full strength of his charisma. The little man responded like an uninterested child. Thio changed tactics and began offering his food rations. Shockingly, Panges seemed to eat naught but air.

Thio was ready to give up, then it happened one night while he was using the privy. The rampart guard passed momentarily out of sight and Panges rushed to Thio’s side. “You oughtn’t speak so freely of escape, Lord!” the little man hissed.

“Steady on! My trousers are down!”

“Hush, Lord! When the guard finishes his tea he’ll be back! We’ve little time!”

“Time for what? Nigh a month you’ve ignored me, man!”

“Aye! Because the Warden was listening!” Panges took Thio’s arm, tugged him a few feet into the yard, and pointed. “There. He sits in a chair right there.”

Thio could not see. Panges pointed until he spotted the corner of the chair, a knob of wood poking above the rampart’s lip in the starlight. “Amazing…” Thio exclaimed.

Panges nodded, then soured. “Everyone here thinks me a fool. I’m no fool, Lord. I… I pay attention.”

Overwhelmed by his newfound companionship, Thio laughed aloud and embraced the fellow, but drew back when he felt the man stiffen. “I apologize…”

“Nay, Lord… I…” his eyes fell. “The last man who hugged me was shot by the guards.”

“My condolences.”

Panges’ lip was tightening as he gave voice to the memories long bottled. “He was my friend. He made it outside the walls but not off the island. His name was Sbyrido.”

“Who is Sbyrido?”

“Worry not. He was my friend, and they shot him when escaped the walls but not the island. His name was Sbyrido.”

“How did he escape the…?” Thio looked back at the privy hole. “Down there?”

“Aye, Lord. I distracted the guards. He crawled down.”

“Dolsithri said it was impossible!”

“Dolsithri’s an old pigeon, Lord. He became the Warden’s pet years ago. And he’ll be dead by winter, the guards say. Sick with something”

“If Dolsithri belongs to Thenvolo, then he belongs to me. I believe in him.”

Panges looked doubtful.

“You say Sbyrido made it out that way… but could you?”

“Nay, Lord. Too tight.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. Sbyrido — my friend — was a much smaller man than me.”

Thio found that hard to believe, but his heart fell nonetheless.

“That’s why I don’t eat, Lord. In a month or two l might fit down there, if someone can provide a distraction. But… ‘tisn’t enough. I can’t outswim the sharks, and I can’t outrun the cannons. I’ll end up like… like Sbyrido.”

Thio took him by the shoulders. “Panges, we shall use this. And I swear to you as an Avena unto God, I will do everything in my power to get you out of here!”

Panges threw his arms around the noble like a child to an older brother, then a moment later broke away. “The guards will be ‘round soon. Let’s lie down. Speak not during the day; we’ll meet at night.”

They left the privy and separated. Deep in the hole within the ancient fastness, the ocean echoed and sputtered.

***

The yard was mostly quiet for the next two months. Only two incidents occurred. The first was a late-evening scuffle between a Thenvolian and Barric. The offense seemed trivial, but it interrupted a Barric religious observance and escalated so quickly that the Warden was summoned from the Ganthic barracks several miles away, and had his man row him over by skiff rather than wait for low tide.

The second occurred after a rampart guard shared outside news of a failure in the Avenan rebellion. For that, Thio received a beating by his kinsmen, led by Nikko, the man with fingers missing. The guards had to intervene and three inmates were put in nooses and pushed from the walls. Nikko wasn’t seen with them, so avoided the sentence.

“Be more careful next time!” Warden Skevaso chastised his men in the privacy of his office.

“But you ordered us to share that news, Sir!”

“I wanted to sow division, not provoke them to murder the Avena!” He sighed and sat down at his desk. Idly thumbing through a few personal letters, he tossed them aside and rubbed his eyes. “Well? What else? What goes on in the yard?”

“The same every day, but they sing new songs.”

“Aye,” echoed another guard, “new songs, but sung over and over. Drives us mad.”

“Any meetings?” the Warden demanded. “Does he huddle with anyone or trade rations?”

“No, Sir.”

“He’s planning something. Look harder.”

“Sir… what if he doesn’t know where the gold is?”

“He does. I can see it in his eyes. But I’ll tend to that. You lot tend to the rest.”

***

More weeks passed. The clouds above shifted as summer waned and autumn woke.

On one day that was like any other Thio was released into the yard with a winestain burn running from cheek to ear. The Warden had apparently had a fight with his mistress the night before and had released his frustration on Thio, blistering his face.

The ocean breeze stung his burn. A line of men stood waiting by the privy. Inmates lounged about playing games or singing their favorite new ditty: “Along the rocks of Roggia, away the Way of Waspos, towards the twain tracks and down Dalaphi’s dock...”

On the Barric side, several men were playing quarsk.

Thio inhaled, and walked thither.

Everything turned deathly silent. Every eye was on him. A few Barricmen stood to regard him.

A guard on the ramparts spotted the shift and immediately sent for the Warden.

Into the lion pit Thio walked. His face looked desperate and frayed as he quietly sat down opposite the largest Barric in the yard, a man named Hovhan, with naught but a quarsk board betwixt. “Shall we play?”

Hovhan’s expression was unreadable. As the de facto leader of the Barrics, he could at a nod have Thio killed, but instead reached down and made the first move.

Thio reciprocated. Several Barrics encircled him. He could no longer flee, but cared not. That morning’s abuse had made him reckless.

Warden Skevaso reached the ramparts, but seeing no violence paused and sat down in his chair to listen.

“Do you speak Ganthic?” Thio asked quietly.

Hovhan did not, but a man nearby did and interpreted.

“I need your help. I need all your help. To escape.”

Hovhan smirked and asked what Thio knew of escape.

“I know about your little scupper.”

Hovhan’s hand froze mid-move. The other Barrics drew in closer.

Thio sensed he’d made a mistake and tried to smile. “I’ll say naught.”

Hovhan looked down again. If you wish to break the yard, relayed the interpreter, you’ll need a key.

Up above, the Warden leaned forward. “I can’t hear them,” he hissed. “What are they saying?”

“If I get a key,” said Thio, “will you help me?”

Hovhan growled. He had seen what the rebellion had wrought. He’d no interest in being a disposable unit for Thenvolo, much less Thio.

Thio set down his piece. His head fell to his chest. His voice fell to nearly a whisper. “Tell him…” he said to the interpreter, “tell him that I swear unto God… that if he and the rest of you join my cause, and risk yourselves for all our freedoms… then I shall make you among the first to escape this place. And to prove it, I shall be the last man to cross that bridge on our exit.”

Hovhan received this, scratched his beard in consideration, and spoke at length to the interpreter.

Thio waited.

Eventually they nodded to one another. Then Hovhan made a cracked-tooth smile, and lunged across the board, wrapping his hands around Thio’s neck.

Thenvolians rushed in to help. The Barrics resisted. Men screamed and a terrific skirmish arose.

“Go! Go!” cried the Warden, but the guards would never make it in time. Hovhan had Thio in a throttle grip and both faces were reddening when suddenly out of the melee loyal Panges leaped onto Hovhan’s back and the smallest inmate grappled against the largest. Hovhan tore the scrawny man away, gripped his arm, and wrenched as though it were a roast chicken’s leg. Panges’ shoulder made a terrible pop and he screamed.

The guards unlocked the yett and rushed in. The inmates fled to the corners.

Warden Skevaso strode in and stood over Thio brandishing sword and pistol and head raised imperiously. “You can stop this, you know,” he said to the noble.

Thio only coughed.

Panges lay whimpering nearby, holding a limp arm that dangled forward out of its socket. The Warden raised a pistol at him.

“No!” cried the aged Dosithri, but a guard threatened to strike him.

“Tell me,” the Warden said quietly to Thio. “Tell me, and this can all be over.”

Panges shivered.

Thio stared up at the Warden, then dropped his head.

The Warden lowered his pistol and looked at the sky. “Three days. If you do not cooperate in three days, I will begin killing prisoners. Yes. Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

***

It happened the next day. Dolsithri was caught in an escape attempt.

He’d been cleaning the guards’ quarters when they found him with a stolen keyring. Upon discovery he panicked and flung it out the window where it sank into the ocean.

The Warden was furious. He’d enjoyed Dolsithri’s obsequiousness for years, and felt this attempt personally. He took the old man to the rampart where the whole yard could see, noosed his neck, and demanded a confession.

“Aye,” Dolsithri wept, “I confess my cowardice… my complacency in the face of the Patriarch’s unlawful oppression! I have kept outward silence these years, but my heart has been loud! It has cried, ‘Freedom! For Thenvolo, for our sovereigns the Avenas, and—’”

The Warden shoved him off the walls. The rope went taut and even the yard heard the snap of the old man’s neck. A mercy, for he would not feel when the sharks came for his legs.

Then the Warden stared straight at Thio, whose eyes were filled with tears.

That night was a full moon, and by its light a Thenvolian approached Thio and kicked him awake. ‘Twas Nikko. “That was you, aye?”

Thio stared up.

“Dolsithri. You told him to get you the key.”

A guard on the walls called out, telling Nikko to lie back down.

“Well? Well?! Did you?!”

Thio sighed. “Aye. I did.”

The guard shouted again, but Nikko remained. “We’re just tools to you, aren’t we? You purchase your aspirations with our blood.”

The guard’s pistol ticked. Last warning.

Nikko spat and went to rest. But Thio lay awake.

Hours passed. Ikro slept. Waves struck the rocks outside where the lantern moon spilled a rippled yellow column on the sea. Tide high, but falling. Full moon on the horizon.

Thio was still awake, as was the inmate next to him who stared up at the stars and struggled to recite their favorite ditty: “Along the rocks of Roggia, away the Way of Waspos, down the dock of… no, no…”

Some quiet anguish lay upon the young lord, rising with the moon. His gaze was ragged and his jaw clenched.

“Along the rocks of Roggia, away the Way of Waspos, towards the twain tracks and down Dalaphi’s dock… I got it. I got it, Lord!”

He looked proudly at Thio but received no answer, so rolled over and shut his eyes.

Thio sighed, stood, and walked to the yard’s center. “Ho there, Sir Konistas?” He hailed the guard patrolling the rampart.

The guard stopped and looked down like a phantom come to judge this mortal.

“I thought it was you! I’ve a message for the Warden. Please inform him that I am ready to speak about gold.”

Many inmates looked up.

The guard shuffled a moment, then went running for the yett in a panic.

“You…” Nikko muttered, rising from where he lay in the corner. “You bastard. You bastard!”

“As you said, Nikko,” Thio sighed, “the Avenas will go to any lengths to realize our goals.”

Several more Thenvolians were approaching. Nikko was enraged. “I’ll kill you!”

The guards got in first and dragged Thio to safety. A half-dozen Thenvolians converged on the yett with more joining the outrage.

Two guards escorted Thio to the office. Another three cried for the mob to stand down. Still another was heading for the gatehouse to send a signal to the Warden onshore. Not one of them was on the ramparts. Not one of them was watching Panges.

***

Now that his shoulder was dislocated, he could fit.

Down, down he went, snaking naked and upside-down into this blackened passage. His head filled with blood and his breath echoed and the ocean slurped and sputtered somewhere below. Scents of salt, ammonia, and effluence. Walls slippery with excrement and caked with mold.

He stopped a dozen feet down. He couldn’t see the water, but could hear, smell, feel it roiling six inches from his crown. Here he would wait for the tide to fall.

A larger wave. He could hear it gaining momentum through the passages, summoning its fury. Then it surged up and swallowed his head and took his hearing and breath. He choked and felt the rock wall tighten for one second, two seconds, but then it fell and left him with eyes burned and nostrils salted and his own gasps echoing back at him.

Naked, upside-down in the pitch blackness, covered in feces, Panges hummed to himself.

***

Shadows danced on the office walls. Thio frowned down at himself. “Am I overdressed? I feel overdressed.”

The Warden was not amused. “I left my bed… and had to suffer rocky seas on that damned skiff rather than wait for the tide…”

“I know.”

“Then do not waste my time.”

“Very well. But first I need assurances.”

“You get none.”

“Be realistic, Skevaso. The instant you toss me back in there they’ll gut me like a gull. I need to know I’ll be safe.”

The Warden’s leather glove squelched as he balled his fist. “What did you have in mind?”

Thio smiled. “First a drink, if you will. This may take a spell.”

***

For the next ten minutes, the Thenvolians protested and Thio negotiated in circles while far below them a wretched, naked pygmy was being born from stone and delivered underground.

Panges had breached the drowned citadel. He stood in its blackness, listening to the echo of water, the drip of walls, the skitter of things unseen.

Round each of his thighs was a strip of cloth lashing supplies to insides of his shanks — sharpened rock, bit of steel, two wooden planks. He reached down and carefully untied, then took the rock and steel and struck. A yellow spark was born.

For a breath’s span only the room lit, gleaming and wet and overgrown with algae and jet black barnacles. Crustaceans were fleeing. A few furnishings reduced to driftwood lay where ten-thousand tides and more had left them. Floors and walls slanted or fractured by tremors.

The spark died. Dark again.

He took the planks and cloth and lashed them to his feet as protection against the razor barnacles, struck the steel again to get a bearing, and set out through that temple of blades.

The path was perilous, but he did not fall. He felt the hands of ghosts reaching for him and he shook with cold and fear. But Sbyrido had done this without light. Panges could, too.

A glow ahead. He tread carefully. Driftwood clattered against his legs like old bones. He turned the corner and spied the outlet, and the ocean, and clambered out beneath the open sky.

Moonlight whispered on the quiet fields and orchards of Thenvolo. The tides susurred on the rocks.

Sbyrido must have come out here, too. He must have sat right here, looking out at his home. He’d made it all this way and caught sight of the mainland, only to be trapped and shot.

Panges began to weep.

No. Time was limited.

Out along the edge of Ikro Island below the saltburned walls he crept. He could hear the inmates shouting, but no guards were on the ramparts.

Just around the corner, a figure turned in the air like a revenant. Dolsithri, hanged, his legs already gone, flesh dangling ragged and blanched.

Panges went to the corpse and, gripping its shirt, pulled it toward the wall. “Thank you, old pigeon,” he whispered, and punched the knife into the dead man’s baggy, putrid gut.

The whole bag tore. Panges caught the innards, then ran his hands along the slippery ropes and sacs until he felt the hard object within.

A key. A key that Dolsithri had removed from the keyring and swallowed just before throwing the rest out the window.

***

“Damn you!” harangued Nikko. “Give us the traitor! A whole week’s worth of rations for the traitor!”

“Away from the gates!” shouted the guards, but more Thenvolians were joining the protest.

“They won’t relent!” shouted one guard to another. “What says the Warden?”

“The Warden’s busy. Let them bawl, and come away the yett; they can’t get out, and if they get too vexed we’ll shoot a few of them.”

Outside the walls, Panges clambered up the boulders. Coming to a crack in the wall’s base, he found a small rope, tied it around the key, and gave three light tugs.

The key vanished into the hole and was pulled into the yard.

A moment later, on the other side, Hovhan walked cooly past three-dozen Thenvolians. Using the key, he unlocked the yett.

***

Now the escape was in full effect. Hovhan and Nikko seized a table and raising it against the shoulders like a shield charged down the corridors into pistolfire and sent guards toppling. The horde of inmates who followed managed the rest with weapons from the dead men and other more improvised blades.

“What’s going on out there?” the Warden stood, hearing shots produced. He fetched and loaded his own pistol.

His office door shook on its locked bolt. “Hail, Warden!” called a prisoner outside. “We’ve come for that bastard noble! Give him to us!”

The Warden’s face went sheet white. He aimed his pistol at the door, then everywhere, then Thio. “You! Tell them to stop!”

“You think I can stop them? Whose head are they crying for, man?!”

The Warden was about to hand Thio over in attempts to curb the raiders’ rampage, but a cannon blasted above. He smiled. “That was a swivel! Which means my men have secured the gatehouse. Good lads! The prisoners will never make it ‘cross the bridge!”

He was right. Four terrified guards had managed to rotate a cannon toward the spiral stair entryway and blown apart a charging Barric. The guards now had control of the portcullis while the other cannons still watched the landbridge. “Now what?” asked a younger one who had soiled his trousers.

The one named Konistas was sponging the still-smoking swivel. “We’ll have to signal the shore. Wait, wasn’t Coila on mainland duty? He should have heard that shot—”

“Coila rowed the Warden here! Nobody’s on mainland!”

“But surely the barracks heard us! Will they send reinforcements?”

The more experienced guards knew they never would. Given the garrison’s cruelty, shots reported from Ikro with frequency.

“Wait, is the Warden downstairs? Where…”

Then they all saw it: the Warden’s skiff rowing out on the moonstained water.

“They’re escaping! Shoot them! Shoot!”

“Hold, you damned fool! Look who’s within!”

Three men were within: one was at the oars, another was wearing the Warden’s unmistakable coat and hat. The third, Panges, held the Warden at knifepoint. “Open the portcullis,” he cried, “or Warden Skevaso goes to the sharks!”

A minute later, the portcullis rose. And out the front entrance walked all of Ikro’s prisoners, Thenvolian and Barric alike. Slowly, fearfully, then at a manic, gleeful run, out upon the slender stone bridge toward their homes and freedom.

The only prisoner left was Thio.

***

“Forgive us, Sir!” cried the guard outside the office. “They tricked us!”

“I won’t open until you’re sure the Island is secure!”

“It’s secure,” said Thio.

The Warden started.

“But,” Thio continued, “you must listen to me carefully…”

“What have you done?”

“Please, you haven’t much time.”

The Warden stepped to him and struck him hard. He fell and the Warden bent over him and smote him savagely, even as Thio tried to speak.

“Sir!” cried the guard. “Please listen! The prisoners aren’t running!”

The Warden stopped. His knuckle burned above Thio’s ruined face.

“Sir! Are you there? What should we do? They’re over there now, just watching us!”

Thio stared up. One of his eyelids was a rotten grape and his tongue ran over a broken tooth. “They’re waiting for me, Skevaso. And you have perhaps ten minutes left to release me.”

“You’ll die,” the Warden snarled and cocked his fist.

“Celbo!” shouted Thio. “Your dog, Celbo, who sleeps at your daughter’s feet in your apartment beside Dalaphi’s dock! Your clerk whose office is on Waspos! Your mistress in Roggia!”

Skevaso stared down, stupefied.

Thio sang: “‘Along the rocks of Roggia, away the Way of Waspos, towards the twain tracks and down Dalaphi’s dock…’”

“How… how do you know…”

“‘Tis all over your desk! Every time you tortured me here! All those letters, you left them out! I know all your affairs! I know everything!”

He spat blood and glared through his undamaged eye.

“And… so does every man who just escaped. They learned them like children’s rhymes. And if you don’t release me before the next high tide, they will set forth and commence a slaughter. Your daughter, your clerk, even your dog… they’ll all be dead before dawn.”

“You… you fiend! You monster!”

Thio laughed, but gone was all his mirth. “Monster. You come from Ganth as an oppressor, but this is our home. Our families are here. Our flesh is that soil. You fight for gold, but we fight for freedom. One man swallows a key and permits himself to be hanged. Another crawls down a privy. Still more die fighting your guards and armed with sticks and stones. And I present myself, unarmed, in submission to your wrath and sadistic appetite again and again.”

Waves of the rising tide were beating upon Ikro’s stones outside. The guard was still knocking. Thio waited.

***

Thenvolians and Barrics stood side-by-side onshore. Waiting. Watching the water rise.

Nikko held a broken hand. Hovhan prayed in his Barric tongue. Panges hummed in anxiety, then suddenly pointed and exclaimed, “Look!”

A single figure stepped out the prison gates. The tide already covered the landbridge by a few inches, making it invisible to the inmates. Thio looked a magical figure, unhurriedly approaching upon the ocean’s disturbed surface, walking on water, the last inmate to leave Ikro Prison.

As he stepped onto the shores of Thenvolo, his men embraced him.

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