The wooden soldiers tower over me. How did we construct such massive pieces?
I remember each of their grim faces, which appear sullen in the dim torchlight. They are still under whatever spell Laszlo is using to keep them at his beck and call. If only I had some way to break the hold he maintains over them, some way to get them to listen to me instead—but other than my blue moon lullaby, I possess no magic words.
Quickly, I take a step forward, to see what they’ll do. They hold their position steady, waiting. I take another. They stare, weapons held at the ready. The closer I get, the more they seem unsure of themselves, possibly recognizing me as one of their makers, yet fighting an internal directive not to let an intruder pass. The confusion within them rattles their joints, their arms trembling. I shuffle closer. They waver on their feet, but don’t advance on me.
If I can just get close enough to touch one of them, to hear their voices …
Cautiously, I reach out and grasp the middle one’s wrist, at the base of the carved fist where a sword handle has been tucked. The other two draw their swords on me in an instant and I am breathing hard, trapped in the middle of their blades. The soldier’s voice comes to me through the wood, vague and shallow, “Schützen consurgé! Guard and protect … rise up and protect … sister …”
Despite their spell, they recognize something in me that is like them, wood calling to wood.
“Let me pass,” I whisper. “Please, let your sister pass. I don’t wish to fight you.”
Slowly the shaking soldiers lower their swords, and I keep my hold on the middle one until I am sure they aren’t going to run me through.
“Thank you! Keep watch,” I tell them, willing my voice to bleed through their wooden ears into their hearts, into whatever part of them might still understand me. “Don’t let the others come after me.”
Then I drop the soldier’s hand and dart between them, running as fast as I dare now down to the end of the hall they were guarding. A stairwell!
I tear down the steps two at a time, clutching my key. I pass the first floor and continue down, down, until the twisted stairway runs out and I am forced to another door. Pressing my hand against it, I wait a moment, listening. I hear a faint clatter and scraping sounds from above.
I must go through.
I try the handle unsuccessfully.
Time to use the key. I probe the latch, the seconds passing like eons, waiting for the moment when it gives. The key slides around, but eventually, after some fearful wrangling, I feel it catch. Quietly as I can, I nudge the door open.
Large barrels tower in pillars on the other side, stacked three high. The weinkellar. I’ve got to be close.
I lock the door, hoping to slow down anyone coming behind, and quickly dash among the oaken barrels storing Wolfspire Hall’s supplies of ale and mead. I have to unlock the next door as well; it opens into another cave-like room lit by a single lantern, this one filled floor to ceiling with brimming baskets and crates. I discern tipsy piles of vegetables and overflowing heaps of fruit and sacks of grain from the lumpy shadows.
This is where he’s storing all the hoarded food, that greedy swine.
My instincts note that the cellars seem empty of what I imagine is the usual swarm of servants. This seems too easy, my gut warns. It’s far too quiet.
My eyes seek among the teeming shelves and baskets, searching for any sign of a guard or the kitchen porter. I see no one, though I can hear voices nearby. I move quickly, to keep the voices from catching up. Weaving my way through the maze of the rathskeller, I finally open a door that turns me out into a room with no light. It’s as dark as a tomb in here, but the smell of fresh cut wood is bracing. I breathe deep, comforted by the familiarity.
This supply of kindling and firewood must feed the great stoves and hearths. Once I shut the door behind me, the lantern light from the previous cellar fades and I am left to wander by touch through the stacks, looking for a door on the other side.
A hand strikes like an adder from the blackness, grabbing me.
I shriek, but my voice is muffled when I am pressed into a warm body and hugged tight.
“Piro, it’s me!” Bran whispers.
I melt into him, my heart a thunderstorm.
“How did you—”
“Shhh … I hoped you would try tonight. I’ve been waiting in here for hours. Marco let me in. Quickly, we have to keep moving,” he murmurs in my ear.
He takes my hand and I follow him into a low side passage that requires crouching.
“I take it you found the key?” he whispers.
“How’d you steal it?”
“Didn’t. Tiffin made it, from a mold of Nan’s clay,” he murmurs proudly. “It’s the steward’s skeleton key. Supposedly opens everything from the Margrave’s parlors to the cells in the Keep. She snuck a tile of wet clay to the kitchen porter, who managed to bump into the steward on his return from Brylov, carrying a tray full of food, knocking that vulture flat on his back and heaping him in hot parsnips. He keeps the key at his belt, on a long chain. Marco was nearly flawless, landing right atop him! The fall left an impression in the clay and the steward was never the wiser.”
He stops me short. “Here, this is where they bring in the kindling. When I open the door, be prepared to run.”
I squeeze his hand to show I understand.
“Piro, there’s so much I want to say to you, but there’s not time. It will have to wait. You ready?”
I nod, my stomach seething, knowing freedom
