It's dark and cold, nearly all the fires extinguished for the night, though Clarke's sure that the one in Nia's bedroom still burns brightly. Her own bedroom doesn't even have a fire. She's decided that if she's caught, her excuse will be that she was cold, so she was trying to find somewhere that has a fire, and thought the dining room would.
For possibly the first time since they arrived here, there's no one with her. Ontari has been following her everywhere, eyes burning into the back of Clarke's neck. She's not sure if Ontari's strange obsession with her is because of what the girl believes about her relationship with Lexa, or if she's just enjoying the control she has over Clarke's life. She doesn't even think there's necessarily anything sexual in it, and there's certainly nothing romantic – it just seems like Ontari enjoys the effect she has on Clarke, enjoys trying to cause her discomfort.
But Nia ordered Ontari to do some extreme training today, pitting her against gona after gona apparently just for the amusement of it, and as a result Ontari crashed pretty early. This is her chance.
She limps as quietly as possible towards the door Gustus is behind, the clack of her walking stick making her wince. Then she pauses, eye caught by something that she hadn't seen before – when the torches were lit, she hadn't been able to see the carving on the grip of the intricately carved bow hanging above the door, since it had been in shadow.
It's a cogwheel. The cogwheel Lexa wears.
It's creepy that Nia has something with that patterned on it, Clarke decides. But then, what about this place isn't creepy? A hidden palace in a mountain, an oppressive ruler, and a tortured guy as a centrepiece. And she thought Cage seemed like a Bond villain.
She pulls the door open as softly as she can. Gustus is slumped against his chains, sleeping uneasily, but he stirs at the noise. His eyes blink open. For a second he looks panicked, but then relaxes as he notices there's no one behind her. Clarke reaches her hands through the bars and manages to loosen and pull down his gag.
"Mochof," he says, voice raw.
"Pro," she says, not sure what else to say. For a long moment she just stares at him. His right hand is still somewhat mangled – well, all of him is still mangled – and he looks even thinner than the last time she saw him. Remembering, she reaches inside her bulky jacket and pulls out some hard bread. "It's not much," she says quietly, holding it out, "But it's something."
She holds it steady as he tears at it and swallows it painfully. He's missing a couple of teeth, she notes, and feels her heart ache in her chest.
"Heda?" he manages to say after he's swallowed all of it. "Do you know -"
"I haven't seen Lexa since they took me," Clarke tells him. "But when they did, she was healthy and safe. I don't know what they've told you, but we took down the Mountain -"
"I can hear things sometimes," he says. "Even through the door. Not much though." He grimaces painfully. "It is good to know the Maunon are gone."
"What she said about Lexa -"
"Is a lie," he says firmly, before lowering his voice again. "Her lie, or her son's lie... it does not matter. Roan could not kill Heda. She is a marvel, and he is a branwada, a weakling, a worm. He is nothing to her and he could never kill her."
Clarke breathes deeply, drawing strength from his certainty. "Yeah. I know." There's a long pause, then she says, "We need to find a way out of here. Do you know where the keys to this cage are? The keys to your chains?"
"The keys to the cage are held by the gona, so they may enter whenever they need to," he says, face twisting. "But knowing the Azplana, she would not keep the keys to the shackles on her person, or give them to her gona. Probably they are hidden somewhere. When they shackled my right wrist again, it took some time for them to find the key for the chains. But that does not matter. You must not try and free me. You must leave without me."
"I can't," Clarke says, quietly but flatly. "I have a broken ankle and no experience surviving in these temperatures, especially alone. They'd catch me within an hour." She pauses, then asks him, "When you helped me before. When you threw that thing at Nia's head. How did you know I'd need the distraction?"
"Perhaps I merely wished to throw something at her," Gustus counters. She just stares at him, and then he admits, "You spoke of 'going home in a box'. I know what you were speaking of. You would not know of Costia if the Commander did not care for you. And I have known Heda a very long time – I saw the change in her, when she met you, though I did not immediately recognise it for what it was." He smiles again, thinly. "I knew what Nia planned to tell you and I wished to judge your reaction without her having a chance to judge it."
Clarke smiles back at him, a little shakily. "Well, when you did that, you saved me. Even if I could get out alone, I wouldn't. I'm not going to leave someone Lexa cares about so much be starved and tortured to death, not when I can do something about it."
"You cannot do something about it," Gustus says flatly.
"Don't count me out yet," Clarke tells him. "You'd be surprised what I can do." She thinks. "This looks like very old steel," Clarke says, looking at the lock, though she knows she's not an expert. Raven would probably tell her that you can't tell whether metal's strong just by looking. "If I get snow from outside and pack the lock and the weakest point on your chains with it so they went brittle, and I got something to shatter them with, like a hammer, I might be able to do it. Failing that, I have a knife, I might be able to pick the locks – I've never tried, but I know the basic idea." Neither of those ideas sound great, she has to admit. "Or I'll come up with something else. There's lots of possibilities."
Unsurprisingly, this speech doesn't reassure him. "You are determined not to leave without me?" he says eventually, gruffly, eyes wide and unbelieving. "What about the Fleimkepa? He is of more importance -"
"No," Clarke says flatly. "No, he's not."
"He has no apprentice since the last was killed, and he is necessary for the Commander's spirit to pass on," Gustus explains.
"If I can get him out too, I will, but you're my priority," Clarke tells him quietly. She doesn't comment on the stupidity of Titus not having an apprentice. It's not like she had a high opinion of Titus to start with. "Screw the Flame. Lexa's not dead, remember? You're what matters."
"Why?" he croaks.
"Because Lexa loves you," Clarke says simply. "She loves you, and I love her, and we are getting out of here. Together. Understood?" She doesn't wait for a reply. "I'll start collecting supplies and find a place to hide them. We'll both try and listen for information. I'll sneak you whatever food and water I can to keep your strength up. I'll need to see if there's any chance of freeing the Fleimkepa as well, and figure out how to get out past the gona, and all that kind of thing – so it'll take time. But we can do this."
He stares at her. Then, eventually, he says, almost grudgingly, "I know someone in a village not too far to the south. They work for Heda. They will hide us."
She notes that he doesn't tell her what village or anything else about the person, just in case. It's paranoid, but in this case maybe that's understandable. "All right," she says softly. "We need to get back to Lexa. If nothing else, we can tell her where Nia's hidden." Now that she's seen the entrance, she thinks that without a guide there's no way anyone will be able to find it. "We can keep our ears open while we're here, get an idea of who's loyal to the Azplana and who's not." She gives him the edge of a smile. "And if there's the slightest chance she'll listen to my advice – or even deliberately go contrary to my advice – then I'm sure I can keep myself occupied until it's time to go."
He gives her the same kind of brittle smile. "I can see why Heda likes you," he comments.
"Thanks, I think," Clarke says. "I'll be back as soon as I can. So I can give you some more food."
"And so I can give you information," he says, "In case you must leave without me."
He means in case he dies, Clarke thinks. Not just that – she suspects if he thinks that his death will be more useful to Lexa's cause than his life, he'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. "Hey, I need you," she tells him fiercely. "I can't get back to her without you." That's the truth, she probably can't get back to Lexa alone. But even if she could, she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to see Lexa again and have to tell her that another person she loves is dead. "I'll see you soon."
The cold has numbed her hands and feet, but it doesn't feel like it's done anything for her ankle. Broken bones take so long to heal, and even though it was a smooth break from what she can tell, it's only since they got here that she's really been able to stop using it. Nia's preferred approach to strategy seems to mostly involve waiting so far – which is understandable to an extent, since she seems to believe they have months and she wants to see what the alliance will do, but Clarke can't help but feel that Lexa would already have multiple plans and back-up plans.
There's someone in her room. She knows just by the change in the air and nearly reaches to pull out the knife in her – increasingly messy – braids, but manages to stop herself in time. "Couldn't find your own room, Ontari?" she says into the darkness. She manages to find the long cord that pulls back the curtains surrounding her sleeping area and pulls at it, drawing them back. There's much less light here than there was in the large dining room, but she's sure it has to be Ontari.
"Oh, I could," Ontari's voice drifts over. "But clearly you could not, Clarke kom Skaikru, Destroyer of the Mountain. It is nearly morning. Do you wish to explain where you've been?"
"I was cold, so I went looking for a fire," Clarke says, her eyes already adapting to the lack of light. Ontari's leaning against the wall, just staring at her in that creepy way she has. "I didn't realise I was out past my curfew. In fact, I don't think I have a curfew. I'm working with Nia, not for her."
"Oh, you're working for her," Ontari sneers, "You just don't seem to have realised that yet."
"I guess not," Clarke says sweetly, "Let me know how long it takes to adapt to being a lapdog. Did it take you a month? A year?"
Ontari moves so swiftly she's a blur and then her knife is pressed against Clarke's throat. "Just give me an excuse," she spits out the words coldly.
"An excuse to what? To ruin the Azplana's plans? I think you should take a step back," Clarke says, just as coldly. "We wouldn't want Nia to give you any more scars, would we?"
Ontari hisses like a snake and steps back. "She'll realise you're a liar soon enough," she says, voice filled with hatred. "And when that happens, maybe I'll get a lapdog of my own. I look forward to teaching you to beg." She turns and leaves.
Well, that's incredibly disturbing, Clarke thinks. She wonders if there's any way she can lock her room, because otherwise she feels like it will be another sleepless night.