California State Penitentiary
Bath swam
back to consciousness slowly, although there was no pain. Simply
layers of fluff on top of his brain. It was familiar from the
first time he'd been arrested in America, as were his surroundings.
Apparently they'd brought him right back to California State Penitentiary.
No doubt they were already preparing the electric chair they hadn't
been able to strap him in the last time he'd been here.
He wasn't
intending to let them use it this time either, but when he tried
to sit up he discovered that he was held to the hard bed with
straps at shoulder, ankle and waist. Further straps held his wrists
to the bed. He turned his head as far as possible, enough to determine
that he was in an individual cell, as expected. He hoped the others
were okay, but he had no memory after they'd been shut in the
truck and one of the guards had let off a gas grenade of some
sort. He'd been afraid they'd been intending to kill them all
there and then.
Still, he
wouldn't get very far like this. Attempting to wriggle out of
the restraints did no good, so he attempted to form the appropriate
gesture with his right hand to cast them off. Nothing happened,
as the straps were too tight for him to move his hand very much
at all.
He tried again,
and this time managed a bit more movement, but still nowhere near
enough to do anything useful.
'Well', he
muttered to himself, 'everybody always said I should have studied
more.' If he had, he might have been able to formulate an oral
spell to free himself. He ran through the small number of oral
spells he'd memorise. Few of them appeared even remotely useful,
especially not the spell to make toast fall butter side up which
his sister Puddlina had written him for his birthday when he was
fourteen. Similarly useless were the spells to clean shoes, something
he could do with gesture magic anyway, and the spell which summoned
a small imp to scratch one's itches.
Unless...
Reviewing
the words of the spell in his mind, Bath tried to remember what
little he had learned of oral spellcraft, something he hadn't
been particularly gifted at even when he'd tried to learn it.
Well, if he got out of here he would definitely be spending several
years doing nothing else. In the mean time...
Part of the
spell, he knew, regarded what the imp was bound to do. Give it
free rein and it would likely just go off for a drink, but perhaps
Bath could reduce those limits a bit, enough that it would be
able to do other things, but not so much that he wouldn't have
a tool with which to negotiate with the imp to do what he wanted.
He changed
what he thought were the right words to what he hoped were the
new right words, and after taking a deep breath, he incanted the
spell. There was a shimmering off to one side, which abruptly
coelesced into a large potted sunflower. Staring at it, Bath wondered
what had gone wrong. He incanted the banishing spell, modified
in the same way, and the sunflower vanished.
Not a moment
too soon, as it turned out, for a few seconds later the door flap
opened and a pair of eyes peered in. A few moments after that,
the door was opened and four burly guards came in and began releasing
the straps which held Bath to the bed.
'Where are
you taking me?' Bath asked as they pulled his hands behind him
and put handcuffs and leg irons on. Half-dragged out of his cell,
he flexed his fingers as much as he could. More hand freedom would
be useful, but there was certainly more of a chance with handcuffs
than tied to a bed. None of the guards said a word, simply dragging
him along with them. Bath felt along the handcuffs with his fingers,
hiding a grin. Last time he'd been arrested, he'd not had the
chance for making proper gestures until Agnes and Pord had turned
up, but this time, it seemed, they were being slightly more careless.
'Well, I don't
think much to the conversation here', Bill said. 'I'm not sure
why I should stay any longer.' Muttering a wish for luck, he flicked
his right hand.
Immediately,
he felt like he was stumbling through a layer of glue on the floor.
The guards clearly felt it as well, and moments later both they
and Bath were unable to lift their feet, their boots fixed firmly
to the smooth metal floor of the corridor. Bath gestured again,
and the guard who was already reaching for his weapon snatched
his hand away as it turned into a small kitten, which scampered
down the corridor, unaffected by the glue spell.
'Very clever',
the guard said as the other three's weapons also turned into kittens.
'But now what are you going to do?'
'You know',
Bath said. 'That's something I really should work out one day.
But what are you going to do? You might think you can wait here
until someone else comes along and forces me to release the spell...'
'That sounds
like a good plan to me', the guard interrupted. 'They won't be
long.'
'I'm sure
they won't', Bath said, 'but I can't actually take this spell
off when I'm handcuffed, and if they free my hands... who knows
what I could do?' He smiled slightly. 'Oh, and one other thing.
Any other guards who come close enough will also find themselves
stuck to the floor and armed with kittens.' He could do that,
now. Catching himself in the initial formation of the spell had
been unfortunate, but with his hands as they were, necessary.
'I hope you know some good word games.'
The guards
all looked at him with curious expressions somewhere between hatred
and fear, with a glimmer of wariness. Evidently they thought he
was insane, which, Bath reflected, he may very well be. Only a
little bit, though. Humming softly to himself, he suddenly remembered
the imp-summoning spell, and the potted sunflower. Perhaps he
could get it right if he tried again.
