A few hours ter, I had another visitor. I heard the cnk of armored feet and the scream of tortured hinges as my cell door opened. Without any ceremony, a new group entered my prison: a veritable hag of an old woman, fnked by two guards whom I did not recognize.
The crone was a small hunched thing, clothed in robes the color of fresh-turned earth. She wore animal neckces and fetishes made of the bones, teeth, and cws of unidentified beasts around her neck. In her left hand was a walking stick made of gnarled wood, with bck feathers pced along its tip. Her hair was nk and light gray, and dribbled down across her face and shoulders. A hawk-like nose, thin narrow lips, and bck piercing eyes gave the overall impression of a shriveled, mystic raptor.
Her burly guards, cd in a mixture of unadorned pte, chainmail, and riding leathers, funneled past her. One of them carried a thick orange cloth rug of some sort, which he id across the middle of my cell. She indicated for her guards to position themselves behind her, standing to her left and right.
The guard to her right, who had a porcine face with a rge bulbous nose, idly explored the depths of one of his nasal cavities through his open-faced helm. Finding no treasure, he wiped his hand on his leather tassets before fixing me with a menacing gre. As he shot daggers at me, the woman hitched up the hem of her robe and, with a small cough, sat cross-legged on the rug.
I started to offer a half-hearted greeting, but she cut me off with a raised hand and gestured for me to sit. Timidly, I sat down on the rug across from her. She smiled at me in the way a snake eyes up a rabbit. Looking me directly in the eyes, she tried to greet me in a nguage that resembled Latin but was heavily accented. Confusion must have shown on my face as she switched back to her native nguage.
“Outnder,” accused the old crone in a lilting soprano voice that was surprisingly firm, belying her advanced age. She noticed the dawn of understanding written across my features. “Do you know why you are here?”
I began to mouth a reply, but she interrupted. “I am Navigator Oi of the Second Fleet. You have caused quite a stir and no end of trouble. Jongshoi accuses you of witchcraft, but from his tale, I deduced that you probably gleaned his name from his inane conversations with one of his father’s friends here. They gossip like little unmarried girls! Did you know the foolish boy begged and skipped one of his duties to view the strange outnder? We must move up the schedule for his Blooding, put a little bit of spine into the d.”
As I was ruminating about my failure with Jongshoi, one of her scrawny arms shot out like a snake and grabbed my face just under my chin with surprising strength. The guards moved their hands to the weapons at their hips as she tilted my head at a slight angle, examining me with cool, calcuting eyes.
“Too pale to be a Qisnian, and too short to be an Imperial,” she said, now looking at my soft, uncallused hands. “Perhaps a runaway house sve or some noble’s get? What possessed you to desecrate the shrine, break the Spear of the First Ancestor, and burn the words of the Covenant? And, to make matters worse, why did you kill the sacred Rain-Bringers and partake of their flesh?” Her fingers tapped my chest with each accusation.
“I didn’t…” I started, but the hag didn’t let me finish.
“You would deny this? Each of these crimes alone warrants death.” My face grew flushed, and one of her thin eyebrows arched as she continued. “You were the only intelligent being, and I use this term very loosely, in a day’s ride of the shrine. The Sea Council has come to a conclusion, despite your mysterious origins, to dispose of you—”
“I didn’t desecrate your shrine, and I didn’t break the spear. They were like that when I found them. Please, you have to understand!” I begged as I reached out to her.
The guards began to draw their weapons, but she raised her hand, stopping them mid-motion. “Your pronunciation is mentable. Like an Imperial dog farting out what it thinks is speech. And even if this were true,” she said in a softer voice, “what of your other crimes?”
My mind scrambled to make a pusible excuse in those precious few moments and drew a solid bnk at the trap she had id with her framing.
“I would have had you killed mercifully, by sharp bde or poison. We are not savages, after all. But the Commodore and the Captains are loath to waste resources, and they wish to make an example of you.” She sighed in tired resignation. “What is your name, young man, that we may announce during your sentence on the sands?”
I felt pins and needles in my brain in response to her innocent question. I wracked my mind, trying to remember my name, but no matter how hard I tried it eluded me, like trying to grasp motes of light. Panic was just beginning to set in before I remembered that this must be the part where my character got to choose their name. I quickly settled on one from my other world. His legend was that of the first hero, of which all others were but pale copies. His name would become legend in this world, too.
“Gilgamesh,” I said with a confidence that I hoped hid the quiver in my voice.
Out of one of the folds of her clothes, she drew a many-knotted cord of crimson the color of freshly spilled blood on snow. Running her hand along its length, as if reading, a lump formed in my throat as she pronounced my sentence in a distant, authoritative voice.
“Gilgamesh. You have been judged of crimes against the people. Their eyes have turned from you. Still, you have been granted a chance to redeem yourself of these vile deeds. When Sahel is at her highest tomorrow, you will be brought to the sands of the Winnowing. Your death will blood our next generation of Warriors. Should you find the favor of the gods, you will be allowed to live the life of a sve. May the divines watch over you.”
Her words lingered in my mind as she rose abruptly on creaking joints, shooing away her guards’ proffered aid. They departed as swiftly as they had arrived, abandoning the carpet on the ground. Though my ingrained sense of etiquette urged me to remind them of their forgetfulness, the bars of my cell closed with the finality of a judge’s gavel.
