The Spacetime Pool (11 page)

“At least give me the
combination to release that wheel with the chain.” She suspected he would
refuse even if he thought she had a good point, to assert his control, but he
might let a guard bring her down if he could do it in the guise of denying her
request. After all, the guards already knew the combination. And the emperor
would want her in good enough shape for whatever he intended later.

Maximillian didn’t
take the bait, though. Instead he smiled with condescension. “You couldn’t
figure out the combination even if I gave you the key.”

She scowled at him. “Why
not?”

“You may be well
apportioned in certain aspects.” He looked over her body, while her face
heated. Then he said, “But I hardly imagine abstract thought is one of them.”

She had to make a
conscious effort to hold back the retort that hovered on her lips. His attitude
gave her another idea, though. If he thought she was stupid, he might respond
just to taunt her.

“As long as this key
doesn’t involve math,” she said, trying to look blank.

“What, you don’t like
numbers?”

She grimaced with
distaste. “They don’t like me.”

“Very well.” His
laugh grated. “The combination that releases the chain is the same as the
number of terminal zeros in 4089 factorial.”

What the blazes? She
understood what he meant, but it astounded her that he offered such a game of
number theory. It wasn’t something most people knew even in her own universe.

“You do know what a
factorial is?” he said.

“No,” she lied.

“Pity. Not that it
would help you. You could never multiply all those numbers together.” With
that, he motioned to his men. They strode from the cell, and the door slammed
shut, the rumble of its closing vibrating through her prison.

Janelle closed her
eyes, demoralized. Then she steeled herself. She had to escape. She didn’t know
what to think about this “key.” Of course he thought she couldn’t solve the
problem; to calculate 4089 factorial she had to multiply the first 4089 natural
numbers together. No way could she do it in her head. Except ... she didn’t
need the entire number to determine how many zeros it ended in; she needed only
to know how many factors of five it contained. Every five, when multiplied by
an even number, added a terminal zero. It was simple. She had done such
problems in middle school.

Janelle concentrated.
Dividing 4089 by 5 gave 817 plus a remainder she discarded. She divided by 52,
53, 54, and 55 and added the results. The first time she calculated 1018. So
4089 factorial ended in 1018 zeros—if she hadn’t made a mistake. She redid it
and got 1019. Again, for 1017. It took six tries to convince herself 1019 was
the answer. All that time, the pain in her arms and shoulders worsened.

“Now what?” she
muttered. She stared at the table where the whip lay, along with several spiked
implements she neither recognized nor wanted to. Flinching, she wondered if she
would pass out when Maximillian went to work on her. It would be
hours
until night—

No. It wouldn’t be
that long. She gritted her teeth. He had left her this way because he wanted
her to dwell on it. So she would think about something else. She craned her
neck to look around the cell. If she swung like a pendulum, she might reach the
walls and catch the chain where it stretched up the stone. From there, she
could stretch her leg down to the wheel.

She kicked her legs
to start swinging, which worked, but it also made her spin. Her clothes chimed,
creating far too much noise. The chain twisted until it could wind no tighter
and then unwound, faster and faster. When it finished, it twisted the other
way. It was agonizing on her wrists, and bile rose in her throat. As she came
to a rest, she closed her eyes and breathed slowly until her nausea receded.

Then she tried again.
This time she controlled her swings better. The chain still twisted, but less
than before. She finally managed a big enough arc to hook her foot on the chain
where it snaked up the wall. She jerked to a stop—and her foot slipped. With a
groan of frustration, she swung away, across the chamber.

Janelle slowed to a
stop and hung there, breathing hard. She strained to hear if anyone was
outside, but no sound penetrated the thick walls. That worked in her favor; she
doubted anyone could hear her bells ring, either. The Sun was low in the sky,
shining through a window, and she closed her eyes against the glare. She cursed
at Maximillian’s image in her mind—yet it was the same as the man who had
treated her so well the night before. No, it wasn’t the same. She would never
confuse the cruel lines etched into Maximillian’s visage with Dominick’s
starkly handsome face.

Wetness ran down her
arm. Looking up, she saw blood ooze out from under one shackle.
Deal with
it,
she thought, and kicked her legs to swing again.

On her fifth try, she
caught the chain and wedged her foot between it and the wall so she didn’t
swing away. Straining, she stretched her other leg to the wheel. Her big toe
barely scraped the lock, which consisted of five horizontal levers. She had no
idea how the levers corresponded to 1019, if they did at all. For lack of a
better idea, she assigned the digits 0 through 9 to the five levers, two for
each. Then she pressed out 1019 with her big toe. Each time she pushed a lever,
it snapped back up into place.

Nothing.

Gritting her teeth,
she reassigned the numbers and tried again. No success. Her third attempt fared
no better.

Janelle blew out a
gust of air. Holding herself by the chain on the wall eased the strain on her
wrists, but her foot ached and her leg was shaking. She scraped the levers with
her toe and noticed they tilted backward as well as forward. Maybe that was how
they accounted for ten digits. She assigned 0 through 9 to all the positions,
forward and backward, and retried the pattern.

Nothing.

Sweat ran into her
eyes. Maximillian had probably made up the damn combination. She couldn’t quit,
though. She switched numbers and pressed the combination—

The lock snapped
open.

With a squeal of
metal, the wheel jerked and the chain slid up the wall, rattling against the
stone. Janelle’s foot slipped and she swung into the center of the cell, all
the time dropping as the chain played out. Her feet smacked the ground and her
arms slammed down in front of her. As she sprawled onto her stomach, the clang
of the chain hitting the floor rang through the chamber.

For a moment she lay,
stunned. Then she sat up, shaking, praying no one had heard. Euphoria swept
over her, followed by an urge to cry, then to laugh. No time to hesitate. She
pried at the lock on one shackle, but it didn’t budge. With her muscles
protesting, she climbed to her feet and limped to the table, dragging the
chain. A belt studded with metal spikes lay near the whip. She blanched, hoping
she never found out why Maximillian had left it there. She had her own use for
it, though. She worked a spike into the shackle, and kept at it until, with a
loud snap, the lock clicked open.

As Janelle took off
the shackle, blood oozed over her wrist. Ignoring the queasy lurch of her stomach,
she went to work on her other wrist. As soon as she was free, she dropped the
chain and ran to the closest window. Rising on her toes, she peered through the
pane. It looked north, over the plains where Maximillian’s forces had camped,
thousands of men and biaquines, more even than she had seen in Dominick’s army.
They must have been coming in all day. If she climbed out on this side, anyone
down there could see her.

The east window also
faced the army. The south overlooked a garden with a fountain. Two women sat on
a bench, chatting and eating fruit. The west window faced another tower, and
the palace spread out below in a jumble of yards and crooked alleys. She
pressed close to the glass and squinted down at her tower. She was in its dome,
which curved out and down from the window to a ledge that circled the widest
point of the onion. The ledge didn’t look sturdy, but she saw no better
options.

The window, however,
wouldn’t open. Janelle ran to the table and lugged it across the chamber, her
sore arms protesting. She swung it hard at the glass, and the pane shattered
under the impact, shards flying into the air. She knocked off the jagged pieces
with one of the table legs, acutely aware Maximillian might return any moment.
Then she set the table under the window and climbed through the opening,
careful of the broken glass around the edges. Finally she was outside, sitting
on the slanting dome, balanced high above the world. Wind blew back her hair,
and for a heart-stopping instant she felt certain it would knock her off her
precarious perch and send her plummeting to the ground far below.

Breathe,
she thought. She waited until her pulse slowed. Still
sitting, she inched down the bulb, using friction from her soles to control her
descent. She started to slide anyway, until she feared she would hit the ledge
and flip into the air. She dragged her palms on the surface, and it burned her
skin, but it slowed her descent. With a jolt, her feet smacked the ledge, and
she crouched down, fighting for balance. Her heart was beating so hard, she
could feel it pumping.

A breeze clinked the
bells on her girdle. She held her breath until they quieted and her pulse
calmed. Then she inched along the ledge toward a bridge of scrolled grillwork
that arched from this dome to the next. Far below, an alley squeezed between
the towers.

After what felt like
eons, she reached the bridge and climbed onto it, keeping low behind its grill.
Then she crouched down, absorbing that she hadn’t fallen to her death.
And
now?
She was trapped in a place full of people with no reason to help her
and plenty not to. If she reentered the palace, she could be caught. She peered
between the scrolled bars of the bridge. The small courtyard below contained no
people, only a cart piled with rugs. No ladders descended any wall she could
see, but a flimsy trellis with vines and red flowers stretched up the other
tower.

Don’t look down.
She checked the doors at both ends of the span, but neither
opened from the outside. Finally she clambered over the bridge above the
trellis. Gripping the iron, she lowered herself until she was hanging from the
bottom of the grillwork. Her feet scraped the trellis. She concentrated on
finding a foothold and tried to ignore the trembling of her aching arms. But
she had hung too long in the cell; her arms gave away and she lost her grip.

With a gasp, Janelle
fell down the trellis. She managed to grab the framework and yank to a
shoulder-wrenching stop. Immediately she thrust her feet between the slats,
taking the weight off her arms, and then she clung there, gulping in air as if
it were a rarity she might never again experience. But she couldn’t stop.
Clenching her teeth, she resumed her descent. She closed her eyes, narrowing
her world to the lowering of her body inch by inch. She waited for the trellis
to break, for someone to discover her, for that shout of recognition—

Her foot touched the
ground.

Janelle collapsed
against the wall. But she had no time to rest; voices were coming from the
alley that curved around the tower. She darted into a recessed doorway and
knelt in a deep pool of shadow created by the building.

Two men entered the
yard carrying boxes. From their conversation, it sounded like they were taking
supplies to the monastery. They loaded the cart promptly, with no fuss, and
returned to the palace.

Janelle ran to the
cart and climbed in the back. She had no wish to end up at a monastery
supported by Maximillian, but this might at least get her out of the palace.
Working fast, she hollowed out a cavity under the rugs, then squeezed in and
hauled the rugs over her body, arranging them as much like before as she could
manage. Several sack of some goods and a crate poked into her cramped hideaway under
the rugs. Weighed down by carpets, buried in the sweltering heat, she waited.

The darkness grew
close, and the odor of dyed cloth was smothering. Any moment Maximillian would
discover her escape and search the area. If this cart hadn’t left by then, she
would be in serious trouble. She had been a fool to hide here. She should have
snuck into the palace, found some clothes, and pretended to be a servant.