Foot­steps and scream­ing from the staircase—one of the voices sounds famil­iar.

Gil hears a loud smack!

A few sec­onds later, he sees a huge armored guard car­ry­ing a flail­ing, squirm­ing, kick­ing, punch­ing Kiddu in his arms. Two more hoplites fol­low him with shields and spears. The three of them man­age to open the gate to the native woman’s cell and throw Kiddu bod­ily onto its stone floor.

The gate slams shut, and the fat guard cra­dles his fore­arm. It’s ooz­ing blood from bite marks. The guard gri­maces at Kiddu through his hel­met.

From the other cell, Gil hears Kiddu spit loudly.

Gil watches through his bars as the two smaller hoplites try to restrain the huge one, rag­ing now, still cradling his swollen fore­arm. Even­tu­ally they suc­ceed in push­ing their com­rade back up the stair­well. His curses echo through the stone cor­ri­dor.

He hears a com­mo­tion on the other side of the wall. He for­gets about the native woman’s request and looks through the peep­hole. Kiddu’s big green eye stares back at him.

Her nose is drip­ping blood. She sniffs.

Her eye dis­ap­pears from the peep­hole. Gil notices now that the veiled woman is still sit­ting on her bed read­ing her book, as if noth­ing at all had just hap­pened. Kiddu turns to her with her hands on her hips.

The woman does not answer or even acknowl­edge the ques­tion.

Through the peep­hole, Gil watches Kiddu pace around the room, trac­ing the grooves along the old stone walls.

She takes off her dark cloak. Under­neath she wears a short robe. Her arms and thighs look smooth and soft in the flick­er­ing orange torch­light.

Sud­denly, Gil’s vision through the peep­hole goes blank.