She walked around the eastern wall to the back and found some stairs that led toward some upper apartments. Large apartments, she decided, too large for servants. One apartment was grand, and stood on columns that formed a portico. This would be Shadoath’s apartment. But there were smaller rooms on the other side-children’s apartments.
Myrrima had seen Shadoath’s son and daughter. They’d be sleeping up there. Would Jaz be sleeping with them?
Myrrima crept up the steps, knowing that a Runelord of Shadoath’s powers would hear the tiniest scuff of a shoe or rustle of cloth.
She gingerly pulled at the door. It too was barred from the inside.
Softly, she made her way back downstairs.
The servant’s quarters. That would be the only way that she might get in.
Sneaking along the outer wall, she came to a tiny room outside the kitchens, and found a window open, where some cook or maid sought to get a little fresh air. The window was in an apartment above the bakery, a room that would be hot here in this clime. Shadoath would have been outraged to see such a breach in security.
It was fourteen feet up to the window. Too far to jump.
Myrrima took off her boots and began to climb, her fingers and toes seeking purchase in the tiny cracks between the stone blocks of the building.
She controlled her breathing so that she did not pant, held her mouth so that she did not grunt. Even when she slid back a bit, breaking nails, she did not cry out.
In a few moments, she reached up over the windowsill and pulled herself inside.
A smelly baker lay on a dirty mattress with his wife and three kids. He snored so loudly that he wouldn’t have heard Myrrima if she’d started to dance.
She made her way across the room, carefully stepping over the little ones as if they were her own.
She thought about the guards that she had killed.
They may have wives and families, like my own, she told herself. I’ll have to be careful with them.
But she knew her duty.
When she opened the apartment door and found a corridor outside, with another guard-a powerful man, strong and handsome-she didn’t hesitate to rush in and stab him hard in the throat.
The man struggled fiercely as he died, reaching for his own blade, kicking at her. She wrestled him-until she stuck her blade in his throat once again, breaking his neck, and then laid him gently on the floor.
She waited for long moments, afraid that the sound of the struggle would have alerted Shadoath.
When she was certain that no one had heard, she followed the corridor upstairs to the royal apartments.
She moved as silently through the hallways as an apparition.
Just outside the queen’s quarters, she heard another guard pacing the floor. She ducked into an alcove as he walked downstairs, peering this way and that.
If he turned to his right, he’d stumble over the body of his dead comrade.
Myrrima’s heart hammered, and she silently prayed that he would turn to the left.
She studied the layout. There were only three doors-the queen’s apartment to her left, and the children’s rooms.
Myrrima went to the nearest of the children’s doors, tried the lock. It came open, the door creaking slightly. She stood for a long moment, fearing that Shadoath would have heard, that she’d come rushing out from her own room.
She stepped inside.
The apartment was large, with more than one room. A privy took up one small room, and down a short hallway, Myrrima found a bed.
The canopy above the bed was covered in golden samite, which glittered like gems in the wan light of the moon, which shone through a tiny window.
Lying in the bed was Shadoath’s daughter, the dark-haired girl that Myrrima had seen two days earlier, when she’d come to ransom the princes.
A third room beckoned around a corner. Myrrima quietly walked toward it, a loose board creaking under her weight, and peered in. It was only a wardrobe, filled with clothing and mirrors.
Myrrima heard a startled gasp, the rustling of clothing, and turned to see the girl peering at her, face pale from terror.
Myrrima flung herself across the room, dagger drawn, prepared to kill the girl. She threw one hand over the girl’s mouth, grabbed at her throat with the other, thinking to snap her neck.
But the girl didn’t squirm, didn’t fight. She just held her finger up, as if warning Myrrima to be quiet.
Taking the girl’s cue, Myrrima cautiously pulled her hand away. She could see the track of tears on the girl’s cheeks.
“Are you here for Fallion and Jaz?” she whispered so softly that she could almost not be heard.
Myrrima nodded.
“Take me with you?” she asked, even softer.
Myrrima was puzzled.
The girl hesitated. “Fallion said that he could save me. Will you save me?”
Save her from what? Myrrima wondered. But instinctively she knew: Shadoath. Even a dull child knows when her mother is evil.
Again, Myrrima nodded.
“Follow me,” the girl whispered.
Quietly, she crawled out of bed, wearing only her night clothes. She did not stop to grab a cloak or shoes. She went straight to the door and opened it, peered into the hallway, and led Myrrima back down two flights of stairs toward the kitchens.
At the bottom of the stairs, a single candle gave light.
Valya hesitated a moment, peering about as if searching for the guard, then headed down a hallway.
They neared the buttery, and Myrrima heard a big man sniffing and moving about, apparently raiding the leftovers from dinner. It was the missing guard. They crept past the buttery, went down two doors, and the girl stepped into a poorly lit room.
It was the kitchen. There, lying before the hearth where the only light came from dying coals, Jaz lay curled up in a large basket.
He’s sleeping on the kitchen floor like a dog, Myrrima realized to her dismay.
She rushed to him, peered down. He had not been taken from the prison long ago, she decided by the smell. He hadn’t even been bathed. He smelled of his own sweat and urine and feces.
But it seemed that he’d been fed. He was fast asleep, and a salve had been put on the wounds at his wrists, where the manacles had cut him.
“This way,” the girl whispered, and headed out a back door, quietly lifting the iron bar that locked it.
Myrrima gently picked up Jaz and carried him out in the back, where the moonlight shone down into a small herb garden.
The girl led Myrrima down a cobblestone path, under an archway, and Myrrima found herself on the west side of the palace.
She’d made it out alive!
Across the green, Myrrima saw Smoker leading two dozen souls out of the prison, many of them maimed. There was a woman with no hands, only bloody bandages. An old man scarred by hot tongs. A golath that limped about on one foot.
All of the women had bloated wombs, as if they were pregnant, and many of them looked pale and wounded; with mounting horror Myrrima realized that they carried strengi-saat young in them.
Smoker had Fallion in his arms, and he was leading his band of refugees out toward the front gate.
“This way,” the girl whispered at Myrrima’s back, and went racing for the front gates.
Myrrima followed in the dark, bearing Jaz.
Smoker and the others came after. As the prisoners exited, some could not stifle their sobs of relief or tears
