Excerpt: All Wars Are Sacred

“All right, in the cell with you.”

A tall, blonde man strolled casually into a jail cell, the police officer escorting him slamming the door behind him and locking it.

It wasn’t the first time he had been here, and he doubted if it would be the last. He didn’t think he had been in this particular cell before, but it was so similar to every other cell that it was almost impossible to tell. Three stone walls and a wall of metal bars, a metal slab with a thin mattress on it for a bed and a hole in the far corner to use as a toilet. Luckily, the hole had a stone cover over it, to keep the majority of the smell out. One time, the cover had been missing from one of the cells he was in… that had been just awful. The worst three days of his life. He was pretty sure he remembered vomiting at least twice because of the smell.

“Two days,” the officer said bluntly. “Someone will be down with food and water shortly.” He turned on his heel, mumbling to himself under his breath. “Not like you deserve it.”

“Yes, yes, I’m a menace to society!” the blonde man said with a laugh, as the officer disappeared around a corner. “Whatever. Free food is free food, right?” he said, sitting down on the hard prison bed.

“Ander? That you?” came a voice from the cell across from him.

“Yeah.” Ander stood back up and walked over to the cell bars, peering across to the other person. “Jath! You’re here too? Now that I think about it, I guess some of the guys were saying they hadn’t seen you recently.”

“What are you in for this time, Ander?” Jath asked with a laugh.

“Not much out of the ordinary, really. Got caught vandalizing Dencarte Manor again.”

“What is with your obsession with that place? It seems like every time I turn around you’ve broken their windows or torn up their garden or kidnapped that weird little mop of a dog that’s always yipping out the window at everyone. Thing gives me a headache….”

“Ever seen their daughter? Lida?”

“You mean the girl who’s always carrying that little mop around? With the doe eyes and the fair skin, who looks like she’d faint if you’d look at her cross-eyed?” Jath asked.

“Well, that might be a slightly harsh analysis of her,” Ander said, wincing.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got a thing for her! That’s why you’re always messing with their place? What, you think that’s going to get her attention?”

“It might! She sees me out her window sometimes, I know she does.”

“Does she promptly call the guards afterwards?”

“Well… yes. But-”

“There’s no ‘but, Ander. You kidnapped her dog!”

“Only once!” Ander protested.

Jath snorted, rolling his eyes. “What, you think that she’s going to see you out her window one day, ruining her mother’s prized violets or whatever it is you do, decide ‘that’s the man for me!’ and then slide down a rope made from her bedsheets in order to be with you forever?”

“Well, I was kind of thinking that maybe I’d serenade her a little bit first….”

“You’ve been reading too many of those romance novels, Ander.”

“That’s not fair,” Ander said, pouting. “You know I can’t read.”

Jath just laughed, the sound bouncing off the stone walls of the prison.

“So what about you, Jath? What are you in here for? Seems like I heard about you going missing a few days ago, so you’ve been in a while, right?”

“They said I was ‘instigating,’ and since I’ve already got a record they decided I needed to be in here a fortnight to teach me a lesson.” Jath sighed, sitting down on his bed and resting against the wall.

“Wow, that long? That’s rough.”

“Yeah, well, what was it you said? Free food is free food, right? Can’t complain too much. The guards give me dirty looks, but that’s about the extent of it. Otherwise, bread and cheese every day, and soup at night. And water too, of course. I could use a bath, though,” he added as an afterthought.

“No kidding. I can smell you from over here,” Ander joked.

“Oh, you can not.” Ander could practically hear Jath rolling his eyes.

“It’s kind of funny though, isn’t it?” Jath said after a moment of silence, sounding thoughtful. “The only time the king ever takes care of people like us is when we’ve done something wrong. You can work hard your whole life, toiling day in and day out, and not have a damn thing to show for it. You can still end up destitute, scraping by on the streets. But as soon as you tear up a flower garden, boom, you’ve got a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, and food in your belly. Why is that?”

“No wonder they arrested you for instigating, Jath.” Ander laughed. “You talk like that, of course they’re going to lock you up.”

“I’m just saying, I think it’s interesting, is all.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure they-”

Ander cut off when he heard the sound of footsteps down the hall. The two men fell silent. A moment later, a couple of large guards came down the hall, carrying trays of food and water.

“Get back,” one of the guards ordered, when he reached Ander’s cell. Ander backed up to the wall obediently. He’d been through this drill before. Like hell he was going to try and assault one of those guards - he wasn’t stupid.

The guard pulled the cell door open just enough to slip the bowl and pitcher inside, then pulled it shut and locked it again. Ander grabbed the bowl once the guard had moved on. A few chunks of potatoes and meat floated sadly in a thin broth.

“For some reason, I always remember prison food as being a little better than it actually is,” Ander said with a sigh. “Maybe because it’s better than what I normally eat.”

“Hey, free food is free food, right?”