‘Two more to go,’ she said to herself. ‘Just another moment-’ She rose up on her elbows. ‘Now,’ her voice was harsh, ‘let’s go.’
Sallax was surprised when Brexan stood up and began running towards the palace gate. An iron fence, rusted nearly through, separated them from the stone archway and the shadowed doors beyond. If they could get inside the gate, the darkness beneath the arch would hide them until they determined if the door was unlocked, or if they had to try the window near the back of the building. Without slowing, Brexan pushed on the gate with all her strength, praying it wouldn’t creak and give them away – but it did grate, a long, whining squeal that made Sallax hold his breath. ‘Pissing demons, Brexan, stop!’ he whispered. ‘We don’t have to fit a grettan pack through here, you know.’
She stopped pushing, let him step through and then closed the gate, clenching her teeth at the piercing creak that rent the night and cried out for them to be captured and hanged right then and there. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.
‘No matter,’ he said, ‘none of them heard it. Look at them, scurrying about like mice!’ Some fought the burgeoning fire, while others brandished weapons and crept warily from shrub to shrub. ‘We’ll have to stay inside until all this quietens down again,’ he said.
‘We have about an aven before dawn,’ Brexan said. ‘That should be enough time.’
‘Let’s hope no one is posted inside the door.’ Sallax moved past her.
‘Why would there be with five standing sentry out here?’
‘To ruin my night.’
‘Try the latch,’ Brexan forced herself to whisper.
Silence. Then ‘It’s unlocked, thank all the gods of the Northern Forest.’ Sallax pulled the door open a crack and slipped through. Brexan followed. No one guarded the foyer.
They could see five smoothly worn stone steps leading to a landing and a second door, but there were no windows and when Sallax pulled the door closed behind them, they were left in total darkness. He felt his way up the steps and across the landing. ‘This is unlocked as well.’
A leather strap threaded through the door released the latch with a click! that echoed through the chamber. Brexan held her breath, waiting to hear the sound of boots clacking on the floor as guards came to investigate the noise.
Nothing.
Sallax opened the door just far enough for them to slip through into a long chamber with high buttressed ceilings and wooden support beams. The smooth floor was carpeted in places with the remnants of old rugs and tapestries the Barstag family had imported from Praga, though not nearly enough of them to mask the sound of two intruders moving through the hall. A lone torch burned in a sconce at the base of a stairwell.
‘That must lead up to the south wing,’ he breathed into Brexan’s ear.
‘Where Jacrys is staying,’ she answered.
‘It’s a good place to start looking.’
‘How are we going to get out of here afterwards?’
‘I’m working on it.’ He was already creeping on tiptoe towards the pool of light and the stairs to the upper floors of the south wing.
The wide stone stairs, like the main floor, were polished smooth from use, carpeted down the middle with a thin layer of woven wool. Brexan kept to the carpeted pathway, imagining generations of King Remond’s descendants walking up and down this same ribbon of fabric.
At the first landing a torch illuminated a few paces in either direction along a corridor lined with wooden doors. Sallax mimed soldiers sleeping in awkward gestures and Brexan nodded. Anything they did to call attention to themselves meant they would have to make their way down through a full platoon of groggy, upset soldiers. As if reading their minds, one of the far doors opened, and a half-dressed young man emerged carrying a chamber-pot.
They fell back into the shadows, watching as the soldier walked to a window at the end of the hall, opened it with a shoulder and emptied the pot into the shrubbery below. As soon as he disappeared back into his room, Sallax turned the corner and started up the next flight of stairs, which narrowed into darkness.
Uneasy at the sight of the narrow passageway, Brexan slipped back to the landing and lit her taper from the torch; it wasn’t much light, but it was better than nothing. Sallax nodded thanks and gestured that she lead the way upstairs.
As Brexan sidled past, she heard him slip his knife from its sheath. Sallax wore a rapier, compliments of Carpello, but that remained in its scabbard for the moment. Neither of them were keen on a sword-fight with Jacrys, who was obviously well trained with blade. They would be quite content just to knife the spy in his sleep, if only they could find him without waking the entire residence.
Brexan felt her pulse begin to throb in her temples. She had been nervous coming through the Malakasian encampment, nervous enough to make a potentially costly mistake with the wrought-iron gate, and although they’d been lucky, her failure to think of the rusty hinges haunted her. How had she been so stupid? Were her nerves clogging up her brain? She was desperately worried that she might be overlooking something lethal, right now.
She couldn’t hear anything above her heartbeat; she hoped Sallax wasn’t whispering anything to her. Even though he was just a pace behind, she was certain this was the loneliest she had ever felt. Despite the chill, Brexan started to sweat.
She turned the corner at the next landing and started up what she hoped was the final set of stairs. Ahead, she could see light from another torch illuminating a tiny landing, just wide enough for two or three people to stand together, with a wooden door at the back. Brexan hoped it led into Jacrys’ quarters.
She couldn’t see the torch, but assumed it was suspended above the stairwell – until she heard the sound of a wooden chair sliding across the floor above. Oh gods, a sentry! She held her breath; every muscle in her body was poised to take her back, but instead of bolting for the lower level, she stood frozen, paralysed by fear.
‘Who’s there? Who is that?’ The man had obviously been drowsing at his post and was fighting to sound official. The yawn ruined the effect.
Think of something. Think of something. Think of something. She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged, she couldn’t even gasp with any authority.
Then she felt Sallax reach for her, his hand firmly on her back. His touch calmed her enough that she was able to draw a stabilising breath.
‘Who is that?’
The torchlight flickered and the ancient sconce creaked as the sentry withdrew the burning bundle and brandished it down the stairwell.
‘Riders,’ she croaked and cleared her throat, feigning a coughing fit. ‘Who?’ the soldier interrupted.
‘Riders,’ she said again, ‘from General Oaklen.’ The old general’s name had stayed her execution once before; she prayed it would work again.
‘General Oaklen?’ the sentry asked, ‘he was just here a few days ago. What does he want?’
‘That’s none of your concern, you dumb rutter.’ Brexan would have welcomed a swift death at that moment. ‘We have a message for the spymaster Jacrys. We’ve been riding for two days.’ She was glad that they were both thoroughly covered in mud.
‘Why are you out of uniform?’
‘Good rutters, but they do station the dumbest soldiers here, don’t they?’
Sallax nodded in agreement.
‘We can’t ride through Falkan alone in uniform, you mule-kicked idiot!’ Brexan barked. ‘Now, are you going to stand aside and grant us entry, or shall we just wait here while you fetch your superior and explain to him why I have been delayed from carrying out the general’s command by some jumped-up little squaddie’s inability to UNDERSTAND ORDERS?’
The guard shuffled his feet; this would not look good on his record. The spymaster would be angry that someone had been allowed to reach this floor in the first place, and Captain Thadrake would slice him from groin to gullet if he knew that he’d fallen asleep at his post. The spy was already furious with the captain for allowing the partisans to escape; the captain had, in turn, taken his anger out on the entire third platoon, which was now reassigned to guard duty here. Any one of them would rather have been ordered to scrape the hull of every ship that passed through the harbour than take guard duty – and he’d had fallen asleep! Bleeding whores.