31 #2
Gathren followed the procession to its end, and she saw them take him inside a house that might as well have been a fortress. It was not one of the newer built houses, but something far more old, built with stone, and she did not see how she was going to get into it and get Iahir out.
She began to formulate a plan that she would simply have to wait until the execution, and then she could possibly do something.
Of course, she didn’t like that plan.
Too public. Too dangerous. Too many elves with swords or pistols or what-have-you.
She formed another plan, one that involved her going in with a row of loaded pistols, all at the ready, and she would simply use one, shoot an elf dead, toss aside the pistol, and pick up the other one. She’d do that until she shot her way to her lover.
But obviously she didn’t have that many pistols, and she couldn’t even imagine how long it would take to load that many pistols, and that plan was simply a fantasy.
By this time, it was late, and she knew that the execution might not be for days, for weeks, and she would have to come up with some other plan. For now, however, she had nowhere to sleep and she was in the elvish part of the city.
She was slinking off into the growing darkness to see if she could find some abandoned house where she could spend the night when she saw Katil, the woman from court who had told her that she was envious of Gathren’s freedom.
Katil looked a bit worse for wear, her hair no longer coiffed and braided but hanging free, her dress smudged and torn here and there. She seemed to be carrying buckets of water into the very house where Iahir was being kept.
Gathren tilted her head to one side, remembering this woman saying something about wanting an adventure. She supposed that Katil had probably had her fill of adventures now.
But that woman could get into the house.
How could Gathren use that?
Gathren watched Katil enter the house, and then she left.
She did find an abandoned house to bed down in, sleeping in the master’s bed on silken sheets and awakening to open the shutters onto the dawn and look out over the town, gleaming in the morning light.
What must it have been to be a lord of a house like this?
She went directly back to where Iahir was being kept, and she waited to see Katil.
But when Katil came out, sometime later, with empty water buckets, she was in the company of another elf lady, someone who Gathren remembered from court. This lady looked similarly disheveled. She and Katil walked together, their heads down.
Gathren waited throughout that day as well, but she never saw Katil again, and she began to think that she was going to have to think of something else.
But the next day, Katil came out in the morning on her own and Gathren followed her.
Katil seemed to be going to one of the public pumps in the city to fill her water bucket. Gathren wanted to catch her before she got there. It would not do to be an orc standing at a well—a place where people were wont to gather—in the elvish part of town.
So, Gathren felt as if she must show herself, and she did.
Katil looked up at her, eyes wide.
“Please,” said Gathren, holding up both of her hands to show she was not going to try anything, “don’t scream. I mean you no harm.”
Katil let out a whoosh of air.
“Do you remember me?” said Gathren. “My name is—”
“How could I possibly forget?” interrupted Katil. “That day, that day we talked and I said there could be no invasion. Did you know?”
Gathren shook her head. “I did not.”
“But you wouldn’t have told me if you did.”
Gathren knew this was likely true, but the conversation was getting off on the wrong foot. “I mean you no harm, my lady.”
“I’m not a lady, as I told you,” Katil said. “I suppose this is about Iahir.”
Ah, yes, Katil thought she had been Iahir’s lover back at court. “It is.”
“You are here to rescue him?” said Katil. Then she furrowed her brow. “Wait a moment, are you the reason he did it?”
Gathren sighed heavily.
“That’s rather romantic, isn’t it?” Katil peered off into the distance.
“You did not seem happy at court,” said Gathren. “And now, you seem… well, if you would help me free him, I could help you get somewhere else. Iahir has connections in Cirlahir, I think. Maybe there is something that could be done for you.”
Katil raised her eyebrows. “Oh, by the rosy fingers of the dawn, me? Help free Iahir?”
“I know it is a lot to ask, but you can come and go freely in the house. I don’t know where he is being kept, but if you could but leave a door open for him or something of that manner?”
Katil only gaped at her.
“Perhaps you leave a door open so I can get in, and that is all,” said Gathren, recalculating everything.
“I don’t know where he’s being kept either,” said Katil.
“But I can find out. Can we meet tomorrow here? I can tell you what I’ve discovered.
I do not know if I can be part of a mad escape plan, but…
” She laughed softly. “Perhaps.” She looked Gathren up and down.
“It is rather romantic, the two of you.”
“Oh, yes, it’s abundantly romantic how often I am saving his life,” muttered Gathren.
Katil laughed. “I don’t think he deserves you.”
“He definitely doesn’t,” said Gathren.