Free Prisoner of Conscience by Susan R. Matthews

burn him alive.
    They were Pyana; and Darmon and his fellow prisoners were in their power.
    As beaten down as Darmon was by everything they had suffered, this final shock was too much to comprehend. He let himself be gathered with the rest and pushed into the darkness of the cellars beneath the wall, packed into store-room spaces almost too many to a room to turn around. The bolts were shot, the locks engaged, the lights turned off; the jailers left.
    It was as silent as a tomb.
    He heard somebody start to shout or scream, as though one or two cells removed from this. He understood. They were hungry. They were thirsty. And they did not believe the Bench would treat them like animals, not even though the Bench was their enemy.
    He heard the shouting, and the lights came back on in the hall. He could see the thin edge of light shining in underneath the bottom of the cell door. The sound of heavy booted feet, Pyana jailers. Voices raised in angry obscenities, going away, as if into a room, coming out as though from a room, the sound of blows. And screams. And cries for help, and finally no cries, but only blows out in the corridor on the other side of the cell door.
    Then the lights went off again.
    And it was quiet.
    Young Farnim beside Darmon began to weep, and Darmon put his arms around him to comfort him. And keep him quiet.
    This was too horribly unreal.
    As terrible as it was to have been taken, as terrible as it was to lose their freedom, they had thought that they were to be bound over to a Bench relocation camp. Not to Pyana.
    Robis Darmon was a war-leader, though defeated; there was no dishonor in defeat against superior numbers with superior force of arms. If he had known that refugees were given to Pyana, he would have fought to the death. An honorable death in battle was to be preferred to a Pyana prison; but there had been no talk of the Domitt. They hadn’t known.
    He was too stunned to think.
    He held to young Farnim beside him and stared into the darkness, trying to make sense of what was happening.

    ###

    They stood there in the dark for untold eons before the lights came on and the door was flung open on its hinges. After so long in silence, the sound itself was almost like a blow. There were armed men outside, and some with shockrods, and they were prodded with shockrods and threatened with blows until they filed meekly from the cell and down the hall. It was hard to see. The lights were blinding, after having been held so long in the dark.
    There were toilets there, and a trestle-table, with food set out. They hadn’t so much as smelled food since the Fleet had signed them over to the Domitt Prison and gone away; they found their places eagerly and fell upon the food, and it wasn’t till Darmon had consumed the portion on his plate that he noticed that there were more prisoners than portions.
    Limited space, well, he could understand that. He should be sure to drink all that he could, thirst could be a worse enemy than hunger, but once he had drained his cup — and the one the man across from him had already abandoned, in his hurry to get to the toilet — Darmon stood up from his place so that the next man could sit down and have his portion.
    They didn’t put out any more portions.
    The men who hadn’t found a place were left to stand and stare, and were not fed, not even when the tables had been cleared of any food, not even when they had been pushed at the toilets one by one, not even when they were gathered up at the door to be taken back to the cell once again.
    Not even then.
    The rage among the prisoners was palpable, and there was a movement, a surge toward the Pyana who surrounded them. But there were too many Pyana. And they had the weapons; and one round served to stop more than one Nurail, fired at close range. Some were shot and some were clubbed, and one who seemed to have gained their attention was pinned to the floor by Pyana standing on his arms and legs and head and punished with