Chapter 25 #2
Even at this time of night, many of the windows remained lit. Government never truly slept.
Jayna padded from one shadow to the next, glancing at the various buildings until she reached one near the center of the complex. Halting beneath a dark window, she gestured upward at it. “Can you give us a boost?”
Pip created a shield beneath their feet, lifting them upward the three feet they needed for Jayna to reach the bottom of the window.
Pressing her hand against the wooden sash, Jayna eased some of her magic into it. A moment later, she wiggled her fingers beneath the lower window and boosted it upward, the lock remaining where it was at the bottom.
She crawled inside, and Pip followed, sticking her head through the opening, hanging by her waist for a moment before she wiggled the rest of the way inside. She released her shield once she was safely inside the darkness of what appeared to be some kind of office.
“Now we just need to locate General Krellian’s office.” Jayna tiptoed to the door, pressing her ear to it for a moment. “Or wherever they are keeping the records. They could be in a bank of file cabinets in a basement.”
Great. Pip’s skin already crawled with the need to get out of there. They were going to be caught for sure if they had to wander through this building for too long.
Jayna cracked the door open, peeked out, and led the way into the hallway. When she turned back to Pip, she pointed, her eyes crinkled as if she was grinning.
Pip glanced around, not sure what Jayna had seen, until Jayna leaned forward and tapped something on the door.
Oh. A brass plaque. It conveniently had the name of the Mongavarian officer who used this office. Even better, it had a symbol to denote which branch of the military he served. This office belonged to a colonel in the navy.
This would make finding General Krellian’s office easier.
Jayna set out down the hallway, Pip tiptoeing after her. They had to duck into other offices a couple of times as people strolled the corridor, but no one paused as if they’d seen or heard anything suspicious.
The corridor ended in a grand foyer done in wood paneling with an oak staircase rising to the second floor. Military flags hung above the doorways for the various corridors, denoting which military branch occupied each.
“Handy of them to make this building so easy to navigate.” Jayna grinned and headed across the way toward the hallway underneath what Pip assumed was the Mongavarian army’s flag. Unlike Jayna, she certainly didn’t recognize which flags belonged to which service.
This corridor had even more bustle than the previous one. Pip and Jayna had to duck into empty offices several times to avoid being seen.
Finally, they reached General Krellian’s office. It remained dark, as were the offices around it.
Pip used her magic to open the door, then she and Jayna slipped inside.
As they had in the empress’s study, Jayna took the desk while Pip perused the file cabinets.
The stuff contained in these files had her stomach churning. The men stationed in Groyria. The ogre villages wiped out.
And then a file had her pausing. It was all here in black-and-white, stark numbers.
A systematic rounding up of the ogres and holding them in various internment camps in Groyria near the border before group upon group was taken to the Ludin facility in southern Mongavaria for magical experimentation.
Pip closed the file and grabbed the whole thing. She pulled out a few more files before she turned to look for Jayna.
Jayna stood by the desk, a piece of paper gripped in her hands.
As if sensing Pip’s look, she half-turned to her, the paper trembling.
No, her fingers were trembling as they clutched it.
“This…this is a report that they captured Uncle Farrendel and Fieran. General Krellian gave the order to take their magic.”
“But they didn’t succeed. Your dacha said they were both fine.” Pip hugged the files to her chest, her heart thumping harder again.
She’d been trusting what Prince Edmund had told her.
But what if he was mistaken? After all, he was getting news of Fieran and Prince Farrendel from his heart bond with Princess Jalissa who was talking to Princess Elspeth who was communicating with Prince Farrendel through their heart bond.
It was a rather convoluted method of communication back and forth. Could something have been missed?
“They probably are.” Jayna sucked in a breath, her shoulders shuddering for a moment, before she straightened. “I don’t see any reports confirming that their magic has been taken. So that’s a good thing. Let’s grab this stuff and get out of here.”
That sounded good by Pip. They’d already stayed long enough as it was.
After gathering a few more files and papers, she and Jayna stuffed it all in a leather satchel they found stashed under the desk.
Then the two of them sneaked into the corridor and back the way they’d come, dodging patrols and various military men going about their late night duties.
At the hallway they’d been in before, Jayna glanced at each of the doors.
One of the doors down the corridor opened, and a slim man in a Mongavarian uniform stepped out. His gaze flashed directly to Jayna and Pip standing there in their nondescript gray clothing.
Pip squeaked and jumped, her heart racing, as she clutched the satchel with all the incriminating papers to her chest.
Jayna ducked her head, grimaced, and shoved the door open. “That’s done it.” She all but shoved Pip into the room.
Pip stumbled but somehow managed to get her feet underneath her enough to scramble across the room. At the window, she grabbed the sash, swung her feet out, and dropped to the ground. The satchel banged against her, but she kept hold of it.
Jayna landed next to her. “Come on.”
The two of them raced through the buildings toward the wall. In the office behind them, the man shouted, raising the alarm.
They just had to get out of the complex, then they could disappear into the city streets.
More shouting rang out behind them. Then a gunshot cracked against the night.
Pip bit down on her squeal of fright and ran faster at Jayna’s heels. She didn’t dare use her magic. Not yet, anyway. At this point, the Mongavarians didn’t know a person with her kind of magic existed. At least, they didn’t know she was in Mongavaria.
But if they saw her magic, realized what she could do, and started putting the pieces together…
Then she and Prince Edmund would be in a lot of trouble.
At the wall, Jayna grasped the vine, her green magic blasting into it with such force that the whole thing glowed green for a moment.
The vine snatched Pip off the ground with such speed that her breath was squeezed out of her. She gasped as she was yanked upward, and it was all she could do to cling to the satchel and try to catch her breath.
“There they are!” The shout rang out just as they crested the top of the wall. For a moment, they hung, suspended and silhouetted against the night sky.
A gunshot rang out just as Pip was being yanked downward again. Pain sliced across her upper arm, and this time she cried out, slapping a hand to the spot.
Then she was below the wall, even as more gunshots blasted into the quietness of the night, the bullets zipping high overhead.
Her feet touched the ground in the relative safety on the other side of the wall. The vine released her before it slumped, already brown and dying.
“How badly are you hit?” Jayna appeared in front of her, her gaze searching.
“Not…not bad. I don’t think.” She was shaking as if caught by an extreme chill. Something hot squeezed between the fingers she had pressed over her upper arm.
Jayna’s gaze settled there as she tugged the handkerchief off her face. “Let me see.”
Pip gritted her teeth and lifted her hand. Her arm burned, and just shifting it enough for Jayna to get a better look had tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.
Jayna stepped closer and peered at Pip’s arm. “I think it is just a graze. But we can’t take time to deal with it now. We have to get moving.”
Then with a swift, almost ruthless movement, she wrapped the handkerchief around Pip’s arm and tied it tightly.
Pip kept her mouth shut around her cry of pain, forcing herself to take off her own handkerchief and hand it to Jayna.
Jayna tied that one around her arm too before she took the satchel from Pip. “Come on.”
The two of them briefly ducked into the carriage house, grabbed the bundles they’d made of their maid uniforms, then set out through the back garden of the next house over.
Thanks to all the commotion, lights were turning on in the townhouses, and people were peering out windows and opening doors to see what was going on.
Jayna kept them going through the back gardens until they reached an alley just as motorcars screeched around the corner of the main street, men shouting orders.
Pip stumbled in Jayna’s wake, following her lead as they ran through the streets of Landri. At one point they even used the train tracks to cut through a neighborhood without being seen.
Eventually, they found a sheltered spot near the castle where they changed back into their uniforms. The black fabric hid the blood that was still seeping through the two layers of handkerchiefs and dribbling down Pip’s arm.
Instead of heading for the door they’d gone out of, Jayna led them to a sheltered spot where she used her plant magic to lift them up and over a garden balustrade.
When the two of them finally stumbled their way through their back door into the dungeon and into the room they’d turned into their headquarters, Prince Edmund took one look at them and pushed off the bed where he’d been lounging. “What happened?”
“We were seen leaving. Pip was shot.” Jayna collapsed onto a chair, breathing hard, her face washed in a gray pallor.
“How bad?” Prince Edmund’s gaze focused on Pip as he shuffled toward her.