one who'd thrown me in prison for no good reason.
Well, no more. It was time Easie Damasco started trusting his instincts again.
Or so I tried to tell myself. As I shuffled out and drew the door closed behind me — I couldn't put it past Alvantes to shout out to the guard — it was all I could do to keep my hands from shaking. Because the truth I didn't dare admit was that the odds of my even getting out of the dungeons, let alone making it to the Castovalian border intact, were just below non-existent.
I couldn't afford to think like that. One step at a time.
The first step was clear, at any rate. To my left, the passage ended in unbroken wall. That meant I was going right — which, inevitably, took me past the sleeping guard.
The knack to sneaking has little to do with trying to be quiet. Trying to be quiet makes noise, however slight, and of exactly the irregular kind that draws unconscious attention. I'd do better to move smoothly and swiftly, making sounds that would be easy for a barely aware mind to dismiss, forgotten even before they were acknowledged.
Knowing the theory didn't make the practise less intimidating. I sucked in a deep breath and started walking.
Thirty or so light, easy strides took me to the end of the corridor. If the guard heard me on any level, it didn't register enough to break the rhythm of his snores. I'd made it — that far, at least.
I paused to take the measure of the adjoining corridor. It ran both ways for a considerable distance, ending in each direction at further junctions. Every so often, cell doors punctuated the stone-blocked walls. I'd no way to tell which, if any, were occupied.
Though bronze cressets hung at regular intervals from the ceiling, only one in three was lit, leaving the intervening spaces swathed in thick shadow. That suited me. It wasn't enough to hide in if anyone should pass by, but it would suffice to make them doubt their eyes if they caught a fleeting glimpse at a distance.
From the point of finding a way out, however, the corridors were less promising. There might only be two choices, but I had nothing to base my direction on. Our journey down here had been long and meandering, and my thoughts had hardly been on memorising the route. Perhaps either way was as good as the other, yet the risk of heading deeper into the prison's depths was enough to give me pause.
Once more, I reminded myself I couldn't afford to think like that. To the right, the passage looked fractionally gloomier. With nothing else to go on, that would have to decide it.
I ducked out and scurried that way, taking care to crouch whenever I passed a window grille — in case there were other prisoners like Alvantes who frowned on escape attempts. I was nearly at the end of the corridor when I heard a sound. It was vague and muffled, impossible to identity — but it was still more than enough to chill my blood. It had come from somewhere ahead of me. More than that, I couldn't say.
I thought about turning back, but uncertainty had me in its grip. I froze instead, and strained my ears. I dreaded a further noise, yet at the same time almost craved it, just to break the tension building like a drumbeat in my mind.
When it came, it was so soft that anyone else would certainly have missed it. Another advantage of knowing how to move quietly — once you were familiar with the tricks, it was a thousand times easier to notice those hardly existent sounds that marked a stealthy approach.
This was only the faintest swish, as of light cloth brushing skin. Once I'd identified it, however, I could follow it — impossibly quiet, but steady, rhythmic. Someone else was sneaking through these passageways; someone with a tread so close to silent that if I hadn't been concentrating with all my attention, if I hadn't known exactly what to listen for, I could never have heard them. And now that I'd caught the minuscule noises giving them away, I was sure of something else as well. They were heading my way.
I thought about retreating towards the cell. But my advantage cut both ways. Odds were that anyone so proficiently furtive would identify my tread just as I had theirs. Whoever they were, the fact that they were sneaking at all made me doubt I'd want to make their acquaintance. Who knew what went on in the dungeons of a mad king? Who could say what types might stalk its mazy depths?
I glanced around for an alternative. To my astonishment, luck was on my side. I'd passed the last cell door, but between me and the next junction was another entrance, a wooden gate with no grille or lock. I guessed it was a storage cupboard or some such, since no light showed from the wide gap at its base.
Sure enough, when I opened the gate it revealed a small alcove. The walls were lined with wide shelves, empty but for a few bags and loose bric-a-brac; the remaining space looked just big enough to contain me. I slipped inside, drew the gate closed. Sure enough, there was ample room. So long as no one happened to glance at the gap beneath the door, I'd be perfectly safe.
Unless this cupboard was exactly where the approaching steps were headed.
Trapped in that close darkness, I felt sure of it. Poised perfectly still, listening to that negligible rasp of cloth on flesh drawing nearer, I convinced myself beyond question that I'd concealed myself in the most dangerous place imaginable. Only the tiniest voice of doubt kept me from running as the near-inaudible steps drew closer, closer…
And passed.
They continued down the passage. They began to fade. Soon I doubted whether I could hear them at all.
Still, I waited. I stayed motionless — determined to catch even the minutest sound. Even when I was sure beyond doubt there was nothing to hear I continued to listen, until the very silence itself began to roar like distant surf.
It took all the strength of will I had to force myself back into life. Maybe the steps had passed and maybe they hadn't. Either way I didn't intend to starve to death in a closet.
At the last moment, it struck me that the alcove might contain something useful to my escape attempt. By the dim light from beneath the door, I appraised the contents of the shelves. Mostly, they were almost empty, but high on the shelf behind me three bags were piled together. They looked oddly familiar — and taking one down, I realised why. It was my own.
Once I got over my initial surprise, I realised it made sense. The alcove could only be a temporary store for prisoners' goods. Everything was as I'd last seen it; my pack didn't appear to have been so much as opened. Even my coin bag was there, and judging from its heft as I slipped it into a pocket, undiminished. Whatever the royal guards might lack in competence, they were at least honest. I reclaimed my cloak and boots and drew them on. I slung my pack over one shoulder. I was about to slip back into the corridor when my brain caught up with what had been staring me in the face the whole time.
Two saddlebags.
Alvantes's saddlebags.
Alvantes's apparently undisturbed saddlebags.
Which meant…
Instinct took over, the force of a lifetime's habit, so powerful that I couldn't have resisted even had I wanted to. In the darkness it was hard to judge which bag was the one I wanted, so I dragged a couple of shirts from one, spread them over the stone floor to mask the sound and emptied both out. That done, I found the false bottom easily by touch. It had been carefully stitched in place, but I wasn't in any mood for niceties. I prised my fingers through the seam and pulled with all my strength. It held for just a moment and then began to tear, with the ping of individual stitches reaching crescendo with one steady, brutal rip.
Too excited by then even to heed the noise I was making, I tossed the scrap of fabric onto the clutter of Alvantes's belongings and reached into the freshly revealed portion. My fingers closed around metal — perfectly smooth, not at all cold to the touch. I drew it out. It was splendid, so refined and elegant in design that it was hard to believe it had ever sat on fat, fop pish Panchetto's head. Yet I hardly glanced at it. Instead, I shrugged off my cloak, wrapped the crown in it, crammed both together into my pack and slung the pack back across my shoulders.
Just as I was about to leave once more, I noticed something amidst the heap of Alvantes's turned out possessions. It was a tube of metal, catching the scant light from beneath the door. I recognised it as the telescope — the one I'd used outside Altapasaeda, the one I'd coveted until its existence had been crammed from my mind by the events that followed.
I reached down. Now it was mine, after all.
