She tried for a long time keeping her eyes closed so that she did not have to see the Sentinels that passed across the timber grate ceiling of her cell. When she did look at them, they were animals. She could think of them in no other way. They may have built a great civilization up here, existed for unknown hundreds or thousands of years to guard or protect the Sleeping God, and they did have human features. But they grunted and stank, bickered and spat. They stared into space with vapid eyes, and whatever they saw excited nothing in them. Theirs was a history she would have once loved to discover and unearth. But not now. Now they were just another animal, ready to rip her unborn child from her womb and hang it from a tree.

She sobbed and leaned back against the cool ground. Beko fell, and he smiled as she fell with him. For now, that was the best she could do.

THEY GAVE HER more food, dropping it through the grille above her. She caught what she could, and what she missed she kicked into the far corner where the bloodied mess lay. The pit floor stank, and she would not risk eating something that had touched it. Some of what they brought smelled and tasted foul, but there was a small orange fruit that was both rich and meaty in its taste, and several of those filled her to satisfaction. They brought meat as well. Nomi was thankful that it was dead when they dropped it, but none of it was cooked, and she was unsure whether her stomach would accept such basic fare again. If she had been able to identify the flesh, she would perhaps have taken the risk, but it came in small, stringy slabs, heavily laced with fat and still displaying clumsy cutting marks where it had been skinned or shelled. Try as she might she could not cleanse the blood from her skin. If it stained her like this on the outside, she did not trust it to eat.

The water they gave her tasted fresh, clear and clean. She sometimes used it to wash, and when they saw her doing that they would fetch more. The thought came briefly that she was an object of fascination rather than a prisoner, but then she remembered what they were going to do.

When none of the Sentinels watched from above, she touched her stomach. She felt nothing, sensed nothing, yet she was becoming fiercely protective of whatever might be inside her. She closed her eyes and saw Beko's smile as he fell, hoping that given time she would remember how it was to be alone with him.