It had dripped when he had first woken in this room, it had dripped every day since then, and it dripped now. The dripping might very well break him before the beatings did.

Harry hunched a shoulder and dragged himself painfully upright against the wall. They held him in a tiny room. He thought it must have been at least a week since they’d taken him, but time was hard to judge here. And there were hours, maybe days, that he’d lost to insensibility. There was a window the size of a child’s head high on one wall, covered by a rusted iron grill. Outside, a few weeds poked through, so he knew the window was at ground level. It gave enough light to illuminate his cell when the sun was at a certain height. The walls were of damp stone, the floor of dirt. There was nothing else in the room save himself.

Well, usually, that is.

At night he could hear the scratching of tiny feet, scurrying here and there. Squeaks and rustlings would suddenly still and then begin again. Mice. Or perhaps rats.

Harry hated rats.

When he’d gone to the poorhouse in the city, he’d quickly figured out that he and Da would starve if he couldn’t fight off the others to keep their ration of food. So he’d learned to fight back, fast and ruthless. The other boys and men stayed away after that.

But the rats didn’t.

When dusk fell, they would come out. The wild creatures of the countryside feared people. Rats did not. They would creep right into a man’s pocket to steal his last bite of bread. They would nose through a boy’s hair, looking for crumbs. And if they couldn’t find any leavings, they’d make their own. If a man slept too deeply, whether from drink or sickness, the rats would take a nibble. From toes or fingers or ears. There were men in the poorhouse whose ears were ragged flowers. You knew those wouldn’t last much longer. And if a man died in his sleep, well, by morning sometimes you didn’t know his face.

You could kill the rats, of course, if you were quick enough. Some boys even roasted them over a fire and ate them. But however hungry Harry got—and there’d been days when his insides twisted with need—he could never imagine putting that meat in his mouth. There was an evil in rats that would surely transfer to your belly and infect the soul if you ate them. And no matter how many rats you killed, there were always more.

So now at night, Harry didn’t really sleep. Because there were rats out there and he knew what they could do to an injured man.