Free Delusion by Laura L. Sullivan

of the Home Guard”—a lie in a good cause—“and my sister and my...my father will be coming in search of me.” Her voice, which had started out stage-strong, began to falter, and she felt like she was on the verge of tears.
Whatever happens,
she told herself,
I’ll never let them fall. If you can’t be brave, at least you can act like someone who is brave.
She’d acted like an executioner and a mer-girl and a snared fox and a queen onstage. Surely she could act like someone who felt no fear.
    She steeled herself as one of the men rose. It was the gentleman she’d met earlier, whose arm she’d taken so trustingly. Well, she had a thing or two to say to him!
    Unfortunately, with all those eyes on her in the flickering torchlight, she couldn’t quite recall what they were at the moment.
    “You are a resourceful girl,” he said, walking a step or two nearer but stopping when she made a motion with the sword. He turned to one of the men still seated. “I say, Barnaby, did you by any chance tie her up in the
Game Room?
” His tone was affable, but Phil noticed an edge to it.
    “It is the only room that’s never in use, Headmaster Rudyard, and I thought—”
    “You thought you’d put our prisoner in a ROOMFUL OF WEAPONS!” For a breath he looked furious, and most of the people in the room, including Phil, cringed, but the next moment he was all smiles and bonhomie again.
Like correcting a dog with a sharp word,
Phil thought. And like a dog, the man who had erred looked abashed but slavishly eager to please the next time.
    The Headmaster turned again to Phil. “You see, we are so unworldly here at Stour that we forget some of the subtleties of life. Such as, do not arm your enemy. Particularly when it may not be in your power to disarm her.”
    “I’m not your enemy,” Phil said.
    “No? Is not the mongoose the enemy of the krait? The little snake may bite and bite, but the mongoose is immune to its deadly venom, you see. Immune.” He let the word linger.
    “I just want to leave,” Phil said desperately, reaching back to try the door again. She knew she could pick the lock—doors or chains or handcuffs, it made no difference to her—but it would take her a few seconds at least, perhaps longer if it was a tricky device, and she couldn’t turn away from these men. Maybe she could do it one-handed behind her back, as she did the handcuffs and the simple padlocks they used onstage, but she couldn’t do it left-handed and didn’t dare shift her sword.
    “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, young lady. You’ve stumbled on a secret organization.”
    “Are you Nazis?” she gasped, electrified.
    The Headmaster frowned in puzzlement and bent to confer with one of the men in a brief whisper, then shook his head. “No, we are not Nazis. We are...something else.”
    “If this is an asylum, I understand you don’t want word to get out. Is this where the nobility sends their batty sons and crazy cousins? Fine, that’s none of my business. But surely you know that you can’t keep me here. I’m sorry I came onto your property, but the worst you can do is have me before the magistrate on trespassing charges.” She hoped that if everything she said was rational and practical, this might all somehow start to make sense.
    “We are not mad,” the Headmaster said, smiling gently within the shelter of his neat silver goatee. “It is only that we ought to kill you.”
    He said it so calmly, it actually slipped by her for a second.
Oh, well, if that’s all...
Then the full force of her dire situation struck her. Even if she was brave enough to hack through some of them, she’d be overpowered by sheer numbers. This was her finale, and she had to decide how to face it. This was the water tank escape in the third minute, when her lungs were burning and her brain was screaming
breathe!
and at any moment her mouth would obey and gulp in a deep breath of death.
    She gripped her tulwar tighter and narrowed her eyes