Unlike proper cell windows, which should be large and airy and requiring only the removal of a few inconvenient iron bars to ensure the escape of any captives, this window was a slit six inches wide. Seven thousand years had taught the kings along the Djel that cells should be designed to keep prisoners in. The only way they could get out through this slit was in bits.
But there was a shadow against the pyramid light, and a voice said, 'Psst.'
She flattened herself against the wall and tried to reach up to the slit.
'Who are you?'
'I'm here to help you. Oh damn. Do they call this a window? Look, I'm lowering a rope.'
A thick silken cord, knotted at intervals, dropped past her shoulder. She stared at it for a second or two, and then kicked off her curly-toed shoes and climbed up it.
The face on the other side of the slit was half-concealed by a black hood, but she could just make out a worried expression.
'Don't despair,' it said.
'I wasn't despairing. I was trying to get some sleep.'
'Oh. Pardon me, I'm sure. I'll just go away and leave you, shall I?'
'But in the morning I shall wake up and then I'll despair. What are you standing on, demon?'
'Do you know what a crampon is?'
'No.'
'Well, it's two of them.'
They stared at each other in silence.
'Okay,' said the face at last. 'I'll have to go around and come in through the door. Don't go away.' And with that it vanished upwards.
Ptraci let herself slide back down to the chilly stones of the floor. Come in through the door! She wondered how it could manage that. Humans would need to open it first.
She crouched in the furthest corner of the cell, staring at the small rectangle of wood.
Long minutes went past. At one point she thought she heard a tiny noise, like a gasp.
A little later there was subtle clink of metal, so slight as to be almost beyond the range of hearing.
More time wound on to the spool of eternity and then the silence beyond the cell, which had been the silence caused by absence of sound, very slowly became the silence caused by someone making no noise.
She thought: It's right outside the door.
There was a pause in which Teppic oiled all the bolts and hinges so that, when he made the final assault, the door swished open in heart-gripping noiselessness.
'I say?' said a voice in the darkness.
Ptraci pressed herself still further into the corner.
'Look, I've come to rescue you.'
Now she could make out a blacker shadow in the flarelight. It stepped forward with rather more uncertainty than she would have expected from a demon.
'Are you coming or not?' it said. 'I've only knocked out the guards, it's not their fault, but we haven't got a lot of time.'
'I'm to be thrown to the crocodiles in the morning,' whispered Ptraci. 'The king himself decreed it.'
'He probably made a mistake.'