Nora shifts her weight on the hard stone step, her small, delicate frame curling even tighter against the risers, trying to absorb every ounce of warmth from the blankets.
"The future is so completely uncertain, Gertrude," Nora sighs, her voice trembling with a sudden, icy fear that the warmth of the wool cannot dispel. She looks up at the high arrow slit, where the black rain is still lashing against the stone. "Every morning I wake up and my chest feels so tight. Back home, we used to plan out our lives—college, careers, what we'd do next weekend. Here? I don't know if the Duke will sell me to a southern trader to pay his gambling debts, or if the army will drag us into the logistics trenches to carry ammunition for his knights. I just... I hope our friendship will always remain strong, no matter where the system throws our bodies. Promise me you won't forget me if we are separated. Promise me you'll look for me."
Gertrude turns her head slowly, her dark eyes locking onto Nora's contrasting purple and red gaze with an intense, unyielding clarity that seems to pierce through the gloom. When she speaks, her voice is clear, sharp, and entirely devoid of the soft, submissive tone she is forced to use when standing before the nobles in the upper parlors. It is the voice of a free woman, spoken in the heart of a prison.
"Our lives, Nora... and the lives of many other women, as well as many other men on this miserable continent, have been completely, brutally disrupted by the greed of these lords," Gertrude says, her words cutting through the heavy sound of the rain like a bronze bell tolling in the night. "They tore us from our world, they inked our names into their property ledgers like common cargo, and they think they own the very blood that flows in our veins. They think they can buy our souls with a scrap of parchment."
She leans her back firmer against the rough stone staircase, the few steps separating her from Nora feeling less like a physical gap and more like a defensive trench line they are holding together against an invading army.
"But they don't own our minds," Gertrude continues, her voice rising with a sudden, controlled power that makes Nora's breath catch in her throat. She leans forward, her dark eyes blazing with an inner fire. "Listen to me, Nora. Yesterday afternoon, while I was waiting at the rear gate for the supply wagons, I discovered something incredible. I learned that Lourdes Renaud is still alive. She didn't die in the southern purge. She is operating right here, in the northern borderlands, not three days' ride from this very manor."
Nora blinks, her breath catching entirely, her purple and red eyes widening to their absolute limits. The name is a myth, a whisper spoken only in the darkest corners of the slave quarters.
"The... the French rebel?" Nora whispers, her voice filled with a mixture of awe and terror. "An Earthling?"
"Yes," Gertrude nods, her high cheekbones hardening under the gray moonlight that filters through the slit window. "Months ago, when I was cleaning the main parlor during the barons' councils—when they thought I was just a brainless statue holding a feather duster—I used to overhear the panicked, terrified whispers of the high nobles. They would sit around their golden wine tables, their hands shaking so hard the crystal clinked, as they discussed the 'La Meute' uprisings in the eastern sector. They spoke about her like she was a demon born from the mud, an unstoppable force of nature."
Gertrude's expression becomes animated, a rare, brilliant smile touching the edges of her lips as she recalls the memory.
"Ever since that day, I have methodically tracked every single rumor, every single scrap of gossip from the traveling merchants and the dirty wagon drivers who pass through the kitchens. I listened to the stories of the fierce French girl who refused to be a farm piece, who refused to let them brand her like cattle. She burned their massive grain storehouses to the ground. She fought the Federation's heavy legions head-on in the trenches, mud up to her waist, and she didn't run. She stood her ground and she cut them down."
Gertrude's eyes flash with a brilliant, fanatical light that seems to illuminate the entire dark stairwell, banishing the shadows of the mansion for a few fleeting moments. It was a look of pure, unadulterated hope, a dangerous thing in a place like this, but it burns with an undeniable intensity.
"To me, Nora... Lourdes is a living legend," Gertrude declares, her voice vibrating with an intense, deeply personal resolve that shakes Nora to her core. "She proved that an Earthling can strike back against the crown and win. She proved that the lords are just men, and that men can bleed. Every single time the head housekeeper beats me with the willow rods until my back is raw, every time my skin turns red and my muscles ache from the endless, backbreaking labor, I sit alone in the dark of the cellar and I remind myself: Lourdes Renaud bled far more than this on the battlefield, and she never once bowed her head to a master. She didn't break, so I won't break."
She reaches down, her strong hand coming to rest on Nora's shoulder, squeezing it with an intensity that communicates her entire soul.
"She is the only reason I refuse to let the cheap luxury or the horrific cruelty of the Duchy of Thromium corrupt my morals. I will not become like the other maids, hollowed out and waiting to die. I will stay clean. I will stay ready. When the time comes, and the plan is set, we will find her. We will join her."
Nora stares up at her friend, her purple and red eyes wide with a profound, quiet awe that borders on worship. The terror that had consumed her since she fled the upper floors seems to recede, chased away by the sheer force of Gertrude's conviction. She pulls her lavender-scented blanket even tighter around her small shoulders, her voice a soft, worshipful murmur in the dark.
"You are so incredibly strong, Gertrude," Nora says, her eyes shining with tears of admiration. "You are like an iron bar. Nothing they do to you ever seems to bend you. Sometimes I forget you came from Earth too, because you adapted so fast."
Gertrude does not smile at the praise. She does not take the statement as a compliment; instead, her rosy lips flatten back into a thin, serious line of grim reality. She shakes her head slowly, her dark eyes softening just a fraction as she looks down at the fragile girl below her.
"I am not the strongest, Nora," Gertrude answers flatly, her mind flashing to the image of a young man with a cold, unblinking, dead-fish gaze and pockets that seem to have no bottom when it came to silver coins. "There are others out there who are far more ruthless than I am. People who look at this entire world not with anger or hope, but like a math problem to be solved with steel and gold. They are the ones who will truly tear this system down. I am just holding the line until they do."
"Still," Nora whispers, her voice growing incredibly faint, her eyelids growing heavy as the luxurious warmth of the clean blankets finally begins to soothe her exhausted, aching muscles, neutralizing the chill of the stone steps. "You are my anchor, Gertrude. As long as you are standing on these stairs, as long as you are here with me, I know I can survive the morning. I know I can face the kitchen again."
Under the faint, watery moonlight—dimmed and fractured by the relentless, heavy sheets of summer rain hitting the narrow slit window high above—the two Earthling girls slowly close their eyes. The heavy, metallic roar of the downpour continues to thud against the manor, a defensive wall of sound that keeps the horrors of the upper floors at bay for a few short hours. The dark, ancient stairwell falls into an absolute, breathless silence, broken only by the steady breathing of the two companions.
Side by side, separated only by two cold stone steps, they drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep, their pale, exhausted faces resting against the gray stone, dreaming of a world where they will no longer be cattle.