01 - The Price of Talent (48 page)

Chapter 27.

              That evening we decided to keep a low profile. We still went to the common room for dinner, but we kept to ourselves, finished quickly and headed back to our room. We waited in our room until almost midnight, then we collected our gear and left the inn. Meredith was carrying the rope and I had strapped on my sword just in case. Given I could just summon it to my side, it seemed silly, but I found comfort in having it on me. Besides, now that we were wearing our generic guards outfits, it wouldn’t seem all that out of place.

              Fortunately, no one at the inn gave us a second look, and once out on the street, we kept a low profile as we headed up towards the castle. There were only a few people on the street as we walked up. Most of them were in groups in various states of inebriation hanging around the inn common rooms and bars available around the city. We avoided these people as much as we could without being obvious about it. Once we got to within a street of the castle, we turned onto a side street and walked around to the back of the castle wall.

              The streets in this section of the city were mostly empty since it was all residential and the middle of the night. We eventually found a likely place to climb the wall behind a house whose windows were dark. The street was deserted and the castle wall seemed unpatrolled in this section. I was still nervous about flying so high in the air with a rope on my back. But then, it was the only plan we had.

              I settled myself as near to the wall as I could. Meredith was on lookout duty to warn me if anyone was coming up the street. Without a word between us, since we didn’t want to alert anyone to our presence, Meredith gave me a nod to indicate she was ready.

              I then started drawing in magical power deeply. Because it was a cold night, it took extra time to gather the huge amount of power I thought flying up the wall would need. I tried not to let the fact that this was all guesswork bother me. I could tell Meredith was impatient, since she was practically tapping her foot, but this was not something I was willing to rush.

              When I felt like I could draw in no more power, and had significantly lowered the temperature in the surrounding area, I began unleashing it as telekinetic force. It was slow going at first, I gained altitude foot after foot. I was scared the whole time I was ascending that someone would spot us. Fortunately, the higher I got, the more I could see of the dark city, and there didn’t seem to be anyone nearby.

              When I crested the top of the wall, I felt like I had run a very long distance, what with the forces I had been controlling. Still, I had enough energy left to flop down safely on the walkway of the wall. Again, looking around, it didn’t seem like there were any guards patrolling this section of the wall. This seemed both fortuitous and a little suspicious. I realized this town was quiet, but shouldn’t there still be guards here? Regardless, I had a job to do, so I tied the rope to a crenellation, then let it down for Meredith.

              Meredith, it turns out, is quite good at climbing. I would have been surprised, had I not raided the subbasements of the library in Caer Sud with her. I now knew better than to underestimate her abilities. It took her less time to climb the wall than it took me to fly up it. I was a little disheartened by that. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been. Flying is a lot more work than rope climbing.

              Once we were both on the walkway, and huddled in the shadow of the wall, we surveyed the area. We were on the wall at the back of the castle. The stables were just below us and the jail was across the yard from us. There were two small towers on either side of this back section of the wall, both had doors which led, we hoped, to stairways down. This part of the castle was extremely quiet. There did not appear to be anyone patrolling nearby. With this to bolster our courage, Meredith and I headed for the nearest tower so we could get off the wall after collecting the rope.

              Surprisingly, the door to this tower was unlocked. I guess they didn’t feel the need to lock the door on the top of the tower, likely the one at the bottom was locked, just like the small gate I had observed previously had been. Inside the tower there was just an unoccupied sitting area with a viewing window looking out onto the town, and a spiral stairway down. We descended the stairway as quietly as possible, practically on tiptoes. I think we were both unnerved by how easy this was. However, we shouldn’t have bothered. There was no one at the base of the stairs either. It was just two doors, one a heavily locked and reinforced door to the city, the other a regular door, like the one above, leading to the yard.

              As I had thought earlier, the door to the castle grounds was locked. Fortunately, Meredith was there with her small collection of lock picks. She made short work of this door. It was, apparently, not all that complicated a lock. Since it was just leading from the yard to the wall, and likely used only by guards, this made sense. After all, it’s not like there was anything on the wall that was going to get stolen.

              Once out in the yard, and having shut and relocked the door, Meredith and I followed the wall around the yard heading towards the outbuilding that contained the jail. The door we had exited was on the side of one of the guard towers on this section of wall. It was hidden off in a corner between the tower’s base and the wall, which explained why I hadn’t seen it on my previous visit.

              We kept to the shadows near the wall as we made our way around towards the jail. Once we were close to the jail, we could see that they still had just one guard at the door. This one had brought out a chair, and was sitting there and reading by torchlight.

              Seeing the guard, I grimaced, but realized what needed to happen. I reached over to draw my sword.

              Meredith saw this motion, and put a hand on my arm stopping me. She shook her head at me, then she turned and disappeared into the shadows. Well, perhaps disappeared is too strong a turn of phrase. What I mean in she crouched further into the shadows near the wall and headed towards the guard reading his book. Once she was near him, I felt her draw in a moderate amount of magical power.

              While she had been creeping up on the guard I was becoming more and more nervous. But, wanting to trust her, and having seen her dispatch our assailants outside the stables in Caer Sud when we were escaping, I stayed put.

              This decision, it turned out, was a good one. She got close the guard nearly silently. This was impressive, but probably unnecessary, as the guard was not paying any attention. When she was near enough, I felt her release her pent up power. The guard started to slump forward into his book. As he did this, she crept up to him, and pushed him back into his chair. This left the guard looking like he was lounging on the chair, perhaps catching a quick nap.

              With the guard taken care of, I crept over to where Meredith was. During this time, Meredith was going through the guard’s pockets. She took both his keys and his money pouch. When I got near her, I raised my eyebrows at her for that. She just smiled a mischievous smile and pocketed the money. Then she walked over to the door, trying keys until one of them opened it.

              Not wanting to be any more obvious than we already were, we quickly went into the jail building and shut the door behind us. In this room, there was the guard’s station and fireplace. The embers of an old fire still glowed in ashes of the fireplace lighting the room with a low light. I could see a desk with papers, likely to document any prisoners dropped off at the jail, as well as another chair and a table with stools around it. Along the walls were a few shelves of paperwork, ledgers and documents.

              What there wasn’t was anyone inside. Still, this wasn’t where the cells were, so this didn’t bother me all that much. Not seeing any reason to dawdle, we headed to the back of the room where there was a stair leading down. On this next level there was a long row of cells. Unfortunately, and quite surprisingly, there was no one in any of them. Worse, as we came to the end of the cell block, there were no doors or stairways leading to more cells.

“Where the hell are they keeping him?!” Meredith said, breaking the silence and venting her frustration.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “The documents we saw in Caer Sud said he had been taken here for questioning and holding right? Maybe the records upstairs have some useful information in them.”

“Yeah, I think we better spend some time going through those papers…” Said Meredith.

              We headed back up to the first floor where the guard quarters and the paperwork were. We each then attacked a shelf of papers looking for prisoner records from the last two years. Unfortunately, we found nothing. Well, there were a ton of entries about local merchants getting arrested for not paying taxes, for drunks getting tossed in jail to sleep off their inebriation or for starting fights, but nothing on Meredith’s father.

“There’s no mention of your father in the shelves I’ve checked,” I finally said, after finishing my half of the records.

“God dammit!” She said. “There’s none in mine either. Did you check under his full name, Ambrose Blythe?”

“Ambrose?” I said, not having heard him ever referred to by his first name. “No, neither that nor any reference to a mayor of any town being locked up here…”

“Shit… Tyr, something is wrong here,” she said. “I think we need to head back to the inn and come up with another plan.”

“I agree, we’ve spent too much time here already,” I replied. “Besides, we don’t want to still be here when that guard shakes off your knockout spell.”

              All in agreement, we carefully put back everything we had been looking at as much as we could, and headed to the door. We carefully left the jail, relocked the door with the keys Meredith had taken, and then she put them back in the pocket of the still sleeping guard. We then went back to the shadows of the wall and headed back around towards the guard tower. Once we got there though, we were in for quite a surprise.

              “Tyr… Do you remember relocking the door to this tower?” Meredith asked after trying to open it.

              “Um… No…” I replied.

              Just then we heard the sound of another door opening, this one behind us. We both quickly turned around to see the door to the main part of the castle across the yard from us opening and armed guards walking out of it, crossbows at the ready.

              “Shit, it was a set-up!” I said.

              “How did they know we were coming here?” She asked.

              “Where else would we go?” I replied.

              “Shit!” She said.

              “Yeah, that about sums it up,” I replied.

              “Tyr, distract them while I work on this lock…” Meredith said, sounding near panic.

              So, while she crouched down in front of the locked door to the guard tower we had come in through, I took a few steps out into the yard and drew my sword. But, not wanting to get turned into a crossbow bolt pin cushion. I put the tip in the dirt and rested my hands on the pommel and waited to see what would happen.

              It only took the guards a minute or two to get into position. They were some 25 yards away from us, fanned out evenly on either side of the door they had come out of. Once in place, an older man in fancy church attire came walking out. His outfit was clean and sparkled in the firelight where gilt thread had been use, as did the cane he used to aid his walking, which was lacquered black with fancy gilt patterns on it.

“So… You must be Tyr…” He said after taking a position in the middle of the two wings of guards. “That means the woman crouched behind you working on the door is Meredith. I was surprised to hear that two of Claudius’s pupils had escaped from Caer Sud.”

“Well, since you know our names already,” I said, not feeling the need to hide anything from this man since he already knew who we were. “Why not share your name with us?”

“My name is Malvolio Hobius, and I am in charge of keeping order here in Caer Nord and Nordshire,” he responded. “I have known Claudius for most of his career, and am surprised he has grown sloppy enough to allow two such as yourselves to escape his clutches.”

“If it’s any consolation, our escape wasn’t easy,” I replied.