8. N #2
She could see the Tower across the courtyard, and knew rather less about his office or the location of the Gateroom.
Safest bet it is. The Tower. Best to scout a bit first.
She made her way between two lesser buildings, staying away from pools of light cast by the mage-lights.
She frowned. The mage-lights around the courtyard flickered and dimmed, behaving like candles caught in a breeze.
That’s odd. She paused and looked back to her own room, and the ’light next to it.
It had definitely dimmed as well. She wasn’t sure what was causing the lights to dim or why, but she was not about to waste the opportunity.
The ’light nearest her gutterred and dimmed, fading to a firefly’s strength.
She quickly crossed the courtyard, and scouted the portions on the far side, and away from the blocks where most of the household’s workers and lesser servants slept.
One of those buildings looked like it might have been stables, once …
but if the food situation was as dire as she’d been told, horses were a thing that ate stuff you could make directly into rations, and most of the time stayed idle in a stable or pasture.
You only needed horses if you were going long distances, or pulling heavy loads.
She scouted the stables … just on the off chance a fast horse or something like one had been stashed somewhere.
No luck. The stables had long since been emptied of animals.
Now, the stalls held pieces of broken equipment and castoffs.
There did appear a type of wagon contraption with a wheel and a high-seat.
She recalled Nora telling her about the drays, cargo-wagons moved by magic.
This looked to be something similar, though in truth enough strong backs together equaled a horse for moving heavy cargo
She concluded she had done enough scouting for one night. Time to get to the heart of matter, and start finding her way home.
She left the stable and retraced her path until she came around the corner of one dark building and saw the tower, its base deep in the shadows.
The clouds temporarily occluded the moon, and the mage-lights remained flickering ghosts.
She glanced upward. The topmost level of Haldeen’s Tower appeared dark.
No sign that he kept late hours there, at least not tonight.
She had never been one for patience. She fast-walked across the open ground, keeping to the shadows as much as she could.
Her heart hammered in her chest. No guard called out.
She crossed to the door near the base of the tower, and opened it.
She remembered the corridor from when she was taken up to Haldeen’s Tower, and that if she turned away, she could begin to retrace her steps to the room where she had awakened. I need a map to find it.
She cracked the door that gave access to the hallway that connected Haldeen’s Tower with the underground complex.
The hallway was dark now, though it had first been brightly lit when she had first been brought from the Gateroom.
She saw the mage-lights along the halls, all set in their sconces, and weakly flickering, so that instead of its steady illumination, it appeared lit by dying candles.
She was glad for the darkness in the hall, though she didn’t understand it.
She turned towards the tower and crept along the corridor that led up the stairs.
She didn’t recall whether there was a door at its base …
she had been too disoriented to pay much attention to that …
but felt relief when she came around a slight bend.
Haldeen’s Tower had a stout door to secure it.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Haldeen put his trust in stout locks, and good carpentry.
She would have worried more if the way had been open, with perhaps an inviting flight of stairs going up.
That arrangement would have certainly been defended by magical traps.
She wasn’t confident she could spot the local versions, much less disarm them.
Metal locks and wooden doors? Those, she could handle.
She studied the lock, and let out a vexed sort of sigh.
The door lock was different from the sort that worked best with her fibber-key, with smaller drums and a much tighter action.
She had worked with this kind, and could beat it, but it would take time.
She pulled one of the stronger hairpins Nora had so helpfully purchased and bent it straight, then wet it with her mouth.
Kneeling at the door, she slowly worked it into the lock, wetting it again to help her slip it inside the tumblers.
She used the most delicate of touches to feel the tumblers, the little cylinders that would align just so.
This lock gave her confidence she held to the right trail.
It proved to be one of the most complicated and difficult that she had ever worked.
Only a carefully guarded treasure would be put behind a device this complex.
How would her father have felt, if he had ever discovered that one of his daughter’s bodyguards had been teaching her lockpicking?
Even trade. I’d keep dropping him pretty baubles and saying I lost them, he’d teach me lockpicking and breaking and entering.
She smiled a bit, recalling that surprisingly smooth-faced rogue with his ever so full lips and long lashes.
She was suddenly struck by a wave of something she had never felt before, a sense of loss mixed with …
regret? It shook her for a moment, as if she had seen something she had been missing for a long time, only to have it slip from her grasp again.
She struggled to put a name to the feeling.
Nostalgia? It must be nostalgia. I couldn’t possibly miss him, the bastard.
She considered using her magic to aid her in feeling her way through the lock, but finally decided against it.
She had drained much of her reserves escaping from her room, and she still didn’t know how much magic she would need to use to get back.
Best to do this one the mundane way. Minutes passed, and she found she had to divide her attention in case someone came up behind her.
The slight bend and gloom would do much to conceal her unless someone came to check the door itself, but the metal on metal would carry some small distance and would doubtless draw the attention of a passing guard.
There would be no excuse she would make for her presence, kneeling at the lord’s door and picking the lock, but she would be damned if she would be taken unawares.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the tumblers fell into place and the lock yielded with a soft click.
She very carefully cracked the door open a finger’s width.
She then felt behind it for wires that might set alight a trap, alarm, or spell warning.
She risked a fine mage-light, a tiny blue flicker at the end of her finger to peer behind the door. Clear.
Strange … my mage-light glows fine. My illusions were fine as well.
She slipped inside the door, and saw the stairway up to the Tower.
She remembered the spiraling climb, and the stitch in her side it had given her when she made it to the top.
She took a deep breath, ensured she relocked the door and quietly closed it behind her.
Once secure, she sat on the stairs for several minutes resting, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
The stresses of the evening built and she worked through a wave of fear and anxiety.
I’m not used to this. I’m used to giving the orders.
After what felt like minutes the fear receded enough to continue.
She decided then that lying mostly nude on a couch in a diaphanous gown while fencing verbally with elven lords who alternated between leering at her and trying to steal her estate was altogether much less stressful than all this creeping and peeping.
She cupped her head in her hands, and pulled her hair back, before standing and shaking out her shoulders, and trying to ease the tension in her stomach.
She took a long look up the flight of stairs, dimly illuminated by flickering mage-lights, and sighed again as she remembered the climb.
This Gate is not going to open itself!
She crept up the stairs, using her tiny mage-light to provide a soft-tone glow of illumination for the steps …
little more than firefly’s glow, and just enough to see the risers ahead.
She proceeded, stopping often and listening carefully, in case she had been wrong, and that Haldeen was in fact in residence.
The pauses also gave her a chance to calm her hammering heart and catch her breath.
She was not in the best shape, and the winding stair had few holds or places to pause.
Sweat prickled on her skin, and she grew warm as she climbed.
She cursed silently when she realized she had forgotten to count the steps.
She had long since lost track of where she was in the tower, and only knew when she neared the top by the soft moon-glow shining dimly into the last turning before she reached the top.
The upper door was open and her mage-light, small as it was, spilled out into the room.
She quickly stilled the ’light, then bent forward, putting her hands on her knees to try and get more breath into her lungs.
The climb had left her winded and feeling a little ill.
Once her heart had slowed to something like normal, she slipped into the room, moving lightly on the balls of her feet. The small tower room seemed just as cramped with just her in it as it had when Haldeen had brought her here … was it two-ish weeks ago?
She dared not make another mage-light. She knew that even the tiniest flicker where none should be would give her away.
So, instead she relied on the fickle moon to give up his cloud lovers and shine into the room.
When he did, she could just see the piles of open books and manuscripts on Haldeen’s desk.
Triana smiled with anticipation and crossed to his desk.
It was a jumble of papers, books and drawings, and she hoped Haldeen was the sort who worked in clutter, rather than being the sort to know the precise location of each scrap.
She waited for the moon to shine through again, eager to begin her work.
The moon gave up his light, enough for her to see the papers clearly.
She felt the smile slip from her face. There were numbers there.
She recognized those, shaped a little differently, but basically the same in style and purpose as those she knew back home.