Lark and Wren

There was no way of telling time in the thick, stuffy darkness. She thought she heard Gwyna breathing just ahead of her, and the occasional scuff of a toe against the stone of the stair, but that was all. She couldn't have seen her hand if it was right in front of her face, rather than feeling the wall. She counted twenty steps-thirty-began to wonder if there was going to be an end to them. Maybe this was all a dream-or worse yet, maybe they were all really dead, killed protecting Kestrel, and this was their own private little hell, to descend this staircase forever and ever and never come to the bottom of it-

But before she managed to give herself a case of the horrors, her questing foot found only a flat surface, and she bumped into Gwyna.

Talaysen held his breath for a moment, and pressed his ear against the crack that marked the door into the linen closet. He heard nothing.

Good.

The King never expected any serious threat from above-so the guard on this stair was really one of the guards that patrolled the hallway beyond. And if what he had been told-under the influence of a 'trust me' spell on another of the guards-was true, the guard stationed here was more in case someone broke in through one of the windows. He never checked in with anyone, from the moment he went on station, to the moment he turned his watch over to the next guard.

Talaysen eased the door open, slowly-this one, thank God, had been better taken care of than the one above. It opened with scarcely a squeak.

Now there was light; outlining the door at the other end of the closet. He motioned to the others to stay where they were, and eased himself up to kneel beside it, pressing his ear against the gap between door and frame.

There-there were the steps, slow, and steady, of the guard. He began to hum under his breath, timing his magic so that the guard would begin to feel sleepy just about when he reached the door to the linen closet.

The footsteps receded-then neared, and began to falter a little. He heard a yawn, quickly stifled, then another.

He hummed a little louder, concentrating with all his might. He would have to overcome the will of a stubborn, trained man-one who knew his duty was to stay awake, and would fight the magic, although he didn't know what he was fighting.

Another yawn; a stumble. A gasp-

The sound of a heavy body falling against the wall beside the door, and sliding to the floor.

He flung open the door, quickly, squinting against light that was painful after the darkness of the stairway. A man in guard-uniform sprawled untidily on the dark wooden floor, his brow creased as if he was still trying to fight off the effects of the spell. With a quick gesture, Talaysen summoned Kestrel, and together they pulled the guard into the closet.

In a few moments, as the women sent him deeper into sleep, they had stripped him of weapons, bound and gagged him, and muffled him in a pile of sheets and comforters. Talaysen took his sword; while he wasn't an expert, he knew the use of one. Kestrel, who hadn't held a sword since childhood, seized the knife. With a quick glance up and down the hall to be certain they were unobserved, they stole out and headed for the King's private study at the end of the suite-the one place they knew they had a chance of catching the King alone. That had been the last bit of information they'd gotten on their scouting foray. No one entered that room without Rolend's express permission, not even servants-and Rolend always went there directly after dinner.

It was a rather ordinary room, when they finally found it. Talaysen had been expecting something much grander; this place looked to have been a kind of heated storage closet before Rolend had taken it over. A single lantern burned on the desk; the rest of the light came from a cheerful blaze in the tiny fireplace. There were no windows; the walls were lined with bookshelves, and the only furniture was a scratched and dented desk, and three comfortable-looking chairs. It was an odd-shaped room as well, with a little niche behind the door, just large enough for all four of them to squeeze into without having the door hit them in the faces when it opened. Which was exactly what they did.

Rune tapped his shoulder once they were in place, with Kestrel, as the youngest and most agile, at the front of the group. He leaned over so that she could put her lips right up against his ear and whisper.

'It would be just our luck that he decided to go straight to bed, wouldn't it?' she said.

Silently he begged God and the Gypsy's Lady that Rune wouldn't prove to be a prophet.

They huddled there long enough for him, at least, to start feeling stiff and cramped, and more than long enough for him to begin to think about all the possible things that could go wrong with the plan. . . .

Footsteps.

They stiffened as one, and he held his breath, listening. Someone was coming this way; someone with the slow, heavy gait of the middle-aged-someone wearing men's boots-

Someone who saw no need to carry a candle; someone who knew there would be light and a fire waiting in here.

The door opened; closed again. Before them was the back of a large, powerful man. Kestrel struck, like his falcon-namesake.

Sheer youth and desperation gave him the reflexes to overwhelm a man who had fought for most of his life; he had a knife across his uncle's throat in a heartbeat, and Talaysen was right behind him. As the older man whirled, his first instinct to throw his attacker off, he found himself facing the point of one of his guard's swords in the hands of someone he didn't recognize.

'I wouldn't shout if I were you,' Talaysen whispered quietly. 'Between us, Sional and I can take out your throat before you could utter a single sound.'

The man's eyes widened at Sional's name, and the blood drained from his face, leaving it pasty and white. His eyes went dead, and Talaysen sensed that he expected to die in the next few moments.

That, and the family resemblance to Sional, convinced him that they had the right man. That had been a possibility he hadn't mentioned to anyone-that someone else might be caught in their little trap.