Bastien was in the outer ward. His daughter was in Heliqar, growing up in a city that still had no treaty, no protection, no one to tell her father's story if he died here. The other men had crossed the Red Sand Sea on my word. Every day I stayed in this cell was another day they stayed in those barracks, their diplomatic status revoked, their futures depending on a plan I had not yet finished building.
Despite that I chose to stay longer.
If I left tonight, I would take eleven men and four tuspaks through a gap in a guard rotation and into a desert with limited water, pursued by a fortress on full alert within the hour. We would probably not reach the spires in time. And Heliqar would have no treaty, no envoy, and no one who understood what Ruvuk was building or where it was going.
If I stayed, the Polemarch would come. I would get more insight into Ruvuk's plans and the workings of Spartova.
I hadn't abandoned the plan in my boot. It was still a work in progress. It was a contingency to be held in reserve for the moment when I ran out of options with Ruvuk.
I had come into this room thinking I might act soon. Now I understood that the correct action was to do nothing, and look like I was still weighing Ruvuk's argument.
Ruvuk dismissed the assembly. The scribes sealed the report. A courier, already waiting, took it at the door.
I was escorted back to my cell.
The water-skin was still under the cot. I retrieved it, dipped a fresh thread from the hem of my tunic, and pressed it into the mortar line in the eastern wall. The bubbles came slowly, then more slowly, then stopped. I sat for an hour watching the line before pressing the thread in again.
The mortar was nearly paste. The block would move with sufficient leverage. Waiting for the right time.
I put the water-skin back under the cot and lay down.
Sleep came faster than I expected. I had made a decision. Once made, even hard decisions tend to quiet the mind.