She trudged through the next set of doors with her bucket and mop and shuffled through the maze of halls. She’d memorized a map before the very first time she’d come here, and now she didn’t even have to count hallways. She didn’t pause when she passed the dead-bolted doors leading into the mage’s wing where Ward must be, though she wanted to. That wasn’t her assignment today.

At long last she stopped in front of the solid door of a cell that looked just like the one next to it, except for the number over the door. Setting her bucket down, she pushed the bar up out of its cups. Several doors from her, a guard watched. As long as she didn’t scream, or the patient didn’t barrel out of the door, he wouldn’t interfere.

She left her mop beside the bucket and got a flimsy wooden hay rake down from the wall in the hallway and entered the cell. The little room had nothing a patient could hurt himself on, but that was the only resemblance between it and the “show” cells near the entrance. The floor was strewn with straw rather than carpets. A hard wooden bench was attached to the wall. It was, barely, wide enough to sleep on if the patient were careful. There was no discreet chamber pot under the bed here.

Tisala, her nose already hardened to the smell of the Asylum, raked out the foul hay. She found little difference between this and mucking out stalls—though she knew that the man who lay on the bench with his back to her didn’t feel the same way. Rosem made certain that everyone who came to visit this cell knew how this inmate felt, and behaved accordingly.

She did a good job, piling the soiled hay in the center of the hallway, where she or another cleaner would collect it later. That done, she took her mop and bucket and shut the door behind her while she wiped down the floors. She heard the dull thud as the guard barred the door, sealing her in.

The man didn’t stir, so she started to scrub the floor, ridding the room of the smell of human waste. Finally he sat up, but she didn’t stop cleaning until he spoke.

“Tisala, I was glad to hear that you weren’t dead.”

She put the mop down and dropped to her knees before the bedraggled, rag-clothed, painfully thin man who sat cross-legged on the bench.

“Your majesty.” This man was the truth of the rebellion. It was Jakoven’s younger brother, Kellen, whom Alizon worked to put on the throne.