though that was probably too much to hope for.
Kellen approached Tavadon House through the mazelike network of back and side alleyways that ran between the great houses of the Mage Quarter. It was easy to get lost here—there were no signs, and nothing to distinguish one seamless Magecrafted stone wall from another, but Kellen had no difficulty in finding his way. He knew the back alleys of the Mage Quarter as well as any refuse hauler or rag-and-bone dealer did; the narrow streets were much used by those vendors and tradesmen whose business was not quite appropriate for the front doors—or even the main service entrance—of the imposing houses of Armethalieh's Mageborn aristocracy.
The Mageborn preferred that the messier aspects of life be tended to invisibly, and the noble and wealthy aped their habits. Kellen doubted that any of them had ever seen a refuse hauler in their lives.
But in his seventeen years of life Kellen had discovered, as many had before him, that there was no privacy to be had in a house full of servants, and if he did not want to alert everyone in House Tavadon to all of his comings and goings—most of which weren't supposed to be taking place in the first place—the best thing to do was to find a more private way in and out of the house. Though he could not use it too often without drawing attention to it, the small side door at the bottom of the kitchen garden, where the garbage from the kitchen was left every morning in neat bins, filled his needs nicely: he could let himself in and out whenever he wanted without alerting the servants, and if anyone missed him and wanted to make a fuss, who was to say he hadn't simply been somewhere in the formal garden—or the house—the whole time he'd been supposedly 'missing'?
Though of course the door was warded against intruders, as a son of the house, Kellen could pass through those wards without triggering them. And although it was kept locked from the inside, Kellen simply took the key with him when he went and left the door unlocked behind him. The servants rarely had business in the garden, and the gardener never bothered about anything that close to the house itself. So far his tampering had gone undiscovered, and Kellen had been able to come and go as he pleased.
He reached his destination—a nondescript (though, of course, costly and well-made) wooden door set into the tall, plaster-covered brick wall— and confidently gave it a shove, expecting it to swing inward, revealing the sere Tavadon garden.
The door didn't move.
Kellen tried again, pushing more slowly and with greater force. Still nothing. The door was locked. Sometime in the last several bells, some overzealous servant must have come down into the garden and locked it.
Well, that was all of a piece with the way his day had been going until now. Kellen sighed, reaching into his belt-pouch for his key, only to discover that his bad luck was still in full flower, and likely to get worse.
His key wasn't there.
Oh, no —
Now what was he to do? Never mind that Anigrel had virtually ordered him to go hare off on his own. Anigrel would be certain to deny it, and say he'd meant Kellen to go home and study, and certainly that was what an obedient son of House Tavadon would have done. If anyone found out he'd actually been wandering around the City until Evensong, he'd really be in for it!
Not yet in a panic, but not far from that state, Kellen spun around, gazing around the empty alley wildly, as though by some miracle the key to the garden door might suddenly materialize.
Think, you doudwit!
He was sure—he was almost sure—he'd had it with him when he'd left for his lesson with Anigrel this morning. Could he have dropped it somewhere? It was a big heavy brass key; he was certain he would have noticed the sudden absence of its weight from his pouch, or heard the noise it would have made when it fell to the street.
Unsurprisingly, the key was nowhere to be seen; after all, he hadn't left by this door. And retracing his steps—well, that was an exercise in futility; a key that big would have been found and picked up, for the value of the scrap metal if nothing else…
Kellen sighed gustily, running his hand through his disorderly mop of long brown curls distractedly. Where was the Light-forgotten thing?
All right. No need to get in a state. Nothing's going to happen just yet. If the garden door was locked, there was still the front door… but that meant going in past the mastiffs, and that would rouse the servants— there'd be no chance of sneaking in. And if his father or Anigrel had left instructions that he hadn't been here to receive… well, it would mean an unpleasant scene at the least. If his father found out he hadn't gone straight home from his morning's lesson, Lycaelon would want to know where he'd been, and if he couldn't think of something innocuous and impossible to disprove, he'd be in deeper trouble yet.
Why is it that everything I do ends up with me in trouble?
No. He'd find another way.
He looked up at the wall, gauging his chances of simply scaling the wall. But the wall had been plastered smooth to discourage just such a possibility, and the errant coil of bramble-rose vine that trailed down just above his head was far too slender—and prickly—to serve as a climbing rope. He couldn't use a cantrip to unlock the door
