David Brin - The Practice Effect

A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out and bowed. If Dennis had not seen Stivyung Sigel only moments before, back at the prisoners’ shed, he would have sworn it was his friend up there, advancing on the slender Princess. The big man’s clothes were as fine as Linnora’s, though clearly made for rougher use. Dennis heard his deep voice but could make out no words.

The L’Toff Princess shook her head slowly. The man grew angry. He stepped toward her, shaking something in his hand. She retreated at first, but then stood her ground rather than suffer the indignity of backing against the wall.

Dennis’s heart beat faster. He had a wild thought to rush to her aid…as if she were anything to him but another of this world’s enigmas. Only the knowledge that it would be perfectly useless restrained him.

The. big man’s words grew imperious. He threatened the girl angrily. Then he threw something to the floor and swiveled about to leave the way he had come. The curtains blew in his wake.

Linnora looked after him for a time, then stooped to pick up what he had dropped. She walked through a small doorway at the left end of her balcony, leaving her instrument to shine alone in the moonlight.

Dennis stayed in the shadows by the wall, hoping she would return.

When she finally came back, though, he felt consternation, for she went to the bars of her parapet and looked down into the prison yard in his direction. She had a bundle in her hands, and cast about as if looking for something or someone in the darkness below.

Dennis couldn’t help himself. He stepped from the shadows into the pale moonlight. She looked directly at him and smiled faintly, as if she had expected him all along.

The Princess put her arm through the bars and threw the bundle. It sailed over the lower parapets, barely missing the bottom railing, and landed at his feet.

Dennis bent to pick up the torn remnant of one of his belt pouches, tied with a loop of string. Inside he found some of the things that had been taken from him. Several had been broken in clumsy efforts to find out how they worked. The crystal of his compass had been smashed, vials of medicine were spilled.

With the items was a note in flowing Coylian script. While the girl picked up her instrument and played softly, Dennis concentrated on what he had learned from Stivyung, and slowly read the message.

He is mystified. I could not tell him what these things are, even if I would. He has lost patience, and next will ask you himself. Tomorrow you are to be tortured to tell what you know. Especially about the terrible weapon that kills at a touch. If you are, indeed, an emissary from the realm of Lifemakers, flee now. And speak Linnora’s name aloud in the open hills.

There was a sweeping, cursive signature at the end. Dennis looked back up at her, his mind full of questions he could not ask and of sympathy and thanks he could not tell her.

The sad song ended. Linnora stood up. Lifting her hand once in farewell, she turned to go inside.

Dennis watched the breeze toss the curtains for long moments after that.

“Get up!” He shook Arth. Nearby, Stivyung Sigel was quietly awakening Gath, Mishwa Qan, and Perth, the other members of the escape committee.

“Wha, wha?” The little thief came erect swiftly, a sharpened piece of stone in his hand.

Arth claimed to have come from a long line of men who had served as bodyguards for Zuslik’s old dukes—before Kremer’s father had taken over the region in an act of treachery. The small man had a wiry strength that belied his size. He blinked for a moment, then nodded and got up, swiftly and silently.

The conspirators gathered by the stockade wall.

“We haven’t time to prepare any further,” he told them. “The moons have just set, and tonight’s the night.”

“But you said the saw wasn’t good enough yet!” Gath protested “And we had other things to get ready!”

Dennis shook his head. “It’s tonight or never. I can’t explain, but you’ll have to believe me. Arth, you’d better go steal the tools.”

The little thief grinned and sped off to the shed where the gardening tools were kept, not far from the lighted window of the guard shack. It wouldn’t take Arth long to swipe quietly a few items to use as weapons, should that become necessary. Dennis fervently hoped it wouldn’t.

“Give me the saw.”

Gath carefully handed over the onetime zipper. Dennis held it up to look at it. The teeth shone even here, and felt very sharp.

From his coveralls he took a spool of dental floss that, along with his toothbrush, had been in his pocket and not in his pack when he was captured. He tied two premeasured lengths firmly to the ends of the saw.

“All right,” he whispered, “here goes.”

Dennis was glad these people at least understood ropes and lassos. Stivyung Sigel took the saw from Dennis and stepped back to swing it over his head, playing out more and more line as the loop grew.

The guards routinely searched prisoners for weapons, cutting tools, and any sort of twine that might be practiced into a climbing rope. But the floss had been missed completely. For two days he had tugged at it in his spare time, practicing it up for this attempt.

The strand wasn’t going to be used for climbing. Dennis doubted it could be done. Besides, he had a better idea.

Sigel swung one more time and let go. The loop sailed up over the sharpened end of one of the stockade logs. Dennis took the ends of line from him and tugged them straight.

He whispered, “To positions!” The thief Perth scuttled off to watch for patrols and to distract the guards, if necessary. Stivyung, Gath, and Mishwa took to the shadows, leaving Dennis to take the first shift with the saw.

He was sweating before he was even certain he had the teeth facing the right way. He wrapped rough cloth around his hands, then several loops of line, and began pulling gently back and forth—working it like a piece of floss rubbing slowly down the sides of a tooth. If he had oriented it right, the saw should be cutting away at the leather and mud bindings that held the log to its neighbors.

The cutting would begin at the weakest spot—the top, which had had the least “wall practice.” As it worked its way down, the saw should get better, and the weight of the log itself should put stress on the remaining ties.

At least he hoped that much physics still applied in this crazy place. Dennis crouched low to the ground and applied gradually greater pressure as the saw bit into the seams. As he fell into a rhythm he had time to think—to worry about guard patrols, and to wonder about the girl on the parapet.

How had she known he would be there, below in the darkness? What had Stivyung meant when he implied that the Princess of the L’Toff was not quite human?

There were no answers in the still muggy night. Dennis wondered if he would ever have the chance to ask the right questions.

He tried to concentrate on the job at hand, thinking hard about cutting. Although some scoffed at the idea, others claimed that a focused mind tended to make practice go faster.

He sawed until his arms ached and he knew fatigue was making him inefficient. By now he had confidence in the new tensile strength of the floss and was willing to trust someone else with the cutting. He signaled Sigel to take over. The big man hurried forth to help him unwrap his hands.

Dennis grimaced in pain as circulation returned. He envied Stivyung his rough farmer’s calluses. He stumbled over into the deep shadows by the wall, where Gath and Mishwa waited.

They sat together for a time in silence, watching the farmer patiently pull the line back and forth. Sigel looked like a lump in the darkness. It was amazing how well he blended in.