Sasha did not remember a time she'd been so angry.

The voices of the men outside floated in through the bars in their cage, but they barely registered except for one word: Caiven. Snake. Someone who slithered into coinpurses and registers and stole the coins inside when no one was looking.

"They want to know what a pretty girl like me is doing with a thief like you," Sasha said, her voice low and weary. 

"Oh." He didn't say anything after that.

That was it. Just Oh. There was more to the conversation the men were having, like how she'd wound up stuck with him to begin with or how someone like him even found a woman in the first place. They weren't even together, they were just traveling partners. Somehow that admission rankled her just as much as the stealing did. 

She could barely look at him, folded up in the other end of the tiny police cart. It made her face feel hot and her hands tremble to try, and whenever she did there was the briefest of impulses to slap him. That scared her even more than what was going to happen to them. She knew where they were going, if this place was anything like home. Soon enough they'd be shoved in a cell until someone felt like dealing with them, and there would be no escaping their fate after that.

Sasha didn't know what the punishment here for thieves was, but at home she'd seen enough people branded or with their fingers removed past the first knuckle to be scared. Her father had hated thieves, said they were worse than murderers. That murderers were awful because they stole life from the people they killed.

She gave a derisive snort. What had he stolen from her, then? Her freedom? Her confidence? More than that, but it was too painful to give attention to. The urge to grab Rannok's hand and try not to think of it anymore was overwhelming, but her anger was bigger and more immediate.

The silence hung in the air between them, until all Sasha could hear was the steady sound of her own breathing. 

"Why did you do something so stupid?" she asked, in a thin, watery voice, still not looking at him, though she could hear him shuffling around in the dark.

"We were running out of food," he said. More shuffling sounds. "What else was I supposed to do, Sasha? I can't work. I won't beg."

"Begging would have been better," she said mildly, wriggling her wrists in an attempt to get some feeling back through the bindings. Begging wouldn't have ended with them in a jail cell. Begging would have embarrassed him, but wouldn't have caught her up in it, too.

  "You wanted to stay inside so badly, just...I'm not even sure how we got caught, they were the same coins as everyone else uses." 

"People probably talk," Sasha said, a little more curtly than she needed to. Even up here in the mountains people had friends. They had pigeons with which to send letters. They hadn't even gone that far from the last village. Now she knew the reason the innkeeper had stared at them. It had nothing to do with what was inside their wallets. 

"I'm sorry," he said, the same empty words as before. It sent bile crawling up her throat, and she clenched her fists together. Her hands shook with that terrible desire to reach over and punch him across the nose. A lump of fear crawled its way up her throat, and she swallowed it back down and didn't answer him. 

The chains on the door rattled, and one of the men that had been talking hoisted Rannok up out of the cart. Another grabbed her shortly after. The sky outside had lightened enough to see by, but as far as she could tell there were no houses here. Just a run-down shack with barred windows that barely even counted as a jail cell.

"Stay," the man said, his accent so thick it was hard to understand even that one word. His eyes were small and hard, but he didn't meet her eyes as he cut her bindings, then pulled out a large key and locked the door. This was just his job, then. Nothing more. That didn't make her feel any better.

Inside the ground was littered with damp leaves, and the sunlight that flickered in through the barred windows was thin and filled with flecks of dust. She coughed as the smell of decay went up her nose. In the corner there was a small table, but no chairs. On top if it sat a bucket with a rag. Sasha didn't want to guess what it was for.

"How long do you think it's been since they used this place?" Rannok asked, wringing his hand around his wrists. Sasha shrugged and collapsed into the far corner, her eyes heavy with lack of sleep and too much anger. Clearly there weren't many criminals here, which probably made the situation worse instead of better. Either that or they usually dealt with them all quickly enough to not need a jail cell, which was somehow just more terrifying.  

"We wouldn't need to worry about when they'll come back if it weren't for you," she said quietly, holding a fist to her mouth. Rannok's shoulders deflated, and he turned away from her. 

"Yeah," he said. "You're right." He sat down on the opposite end of the shack, wings folded neatly behind him. "I can go off on my own, at the next port town we get to. If we get to a port town. I never meant to--"

"--Stop," Sasha said. "Just don't, Rannok. If you want to leave, just leave. We're just traveling together."

She regretted the words as soon as they'd left her mouth, leaving an empty, aching hollow in her stomach. She bit down on her knuckle again to keep from saying any more, to stop her frustration from bubbling out of her mouth as venom. She thought about him actually doing it--actually abandoning her and going off on his own--and cringed.

"Right," Rannok said, rubbing a hand across his face. Her heart sank.