Clariel tore the button from her tunic. She almost started to scratch at the mortar in a brick in front of her, but a moment’s thought sent her over to the bed, in her enthusiasm going too quickly and running into it, barking her shins. Hopping and cursing, she levered the bed up on its end and pushed it against the wall. Then after removing the water jug and chamber pot, she slid the table against the vertical bed to hold it in place, and clambered up. It was difficult to judge how precarious it all was without being able to see, but it felt solid enough.

Clariel climbed on the table and then pulled herself up to crouch on the bedhead, now a kind of shelf seven feet up the wall. It shook a little but the table seemed to be holding it firm, so Clariel stood up.

With that head start, she began to scrape away at the mortar around a brick at waist-height. This would be her first toehold, she thought, and she would have to make fingerholds as high as she could reach. It would get much, much more difficult after that, because she would have to hold on and scrape one-handed, making small advances up the wall.

Even if she did get to the top, she might not be able to open the shutters, or the windows for that matter. But that was another problem, to be surmounted when she made the climb.

It was likely she would fall, she knew, but Clariel almost welcomed that. Better to die trying than to just lie in the dark, remembering what had happened over and over again.

chapter nineteen

a mouthful of earth

Clariel did fall. Twice. Both times she landed on the table, which was a small blessing compared with hitting the floor, though in the second fall she also struck one of the stumpy legs of the bed on the way down.

After the second fall, Clariel didn’t have the strength to start climbing again. Nursing her bruises, she dragged the table slowly back into place and tipped the bed back down. Sitting on it, she drank some water and dabbed a little on a strip of cloth torn from a bed sheet to wash her bloodied fingertips and toes. Then she used the chamber pot and laid down, the precious metal button under her pillow.

She didn’t mean to go to sleep, and would have thought it impossible, as her mind still grappled with the enormity of what had happened, with her parents’ deaths. But sleep did come, almost as soon as her head went on the pillow.

It was a restless sleep. Clariel woke several times, each time in panic, raised from a dream of death, her heart pounding with terror. It was made no better by waking in complete darkness. Each time, she calmed herself, following the breathing and mental exercises outlined in The Fury Within.