A Dance of Cloaks - By Dalglish, David Page 0,32

did. She was so glad to be out of the tunnel, she let it slide.

Will was not far behind her. A bit of dirt had joined the gray paint on his face and hands, only improving the wight image she had of him.

“Where are we?” Kayla asked. With only darkness visible outside the lone window, she had nothing to go on but a vague sense of direction while crawling.

“A home Thren’s bought and hollowed out,” Senke explained. “We swing by occasionally to make sure no vagabonds take up residence. There’s also a few friends of mine that have the dreadfully difficult duty of pretending to live here every couple of days so no neighbors get curious.”

“Night’s moving,” Will said. “Shut up and move, Senke.”

Senke laughed. “Yes, milord.”

They slipped out and hurried north. Attached to the castle like an extra foot, the prison was a giant cube made of thick stone bricks. Only the top floor poked half above the ground, the rest stuck deep into the earth. Barred windows lined both sides, the cells of the lesser offenders. Kayla highly doubted they would find Robert Haern so easily. She doubted their plan almost as much.

Anxious, she ran the plan over in her mind. With just the three of them, brute force would not do, not with so many guards stationed throughout the dungeon. Even worse, it could provoke a far greater retaliation if they left a massive trail of bodies. They needed stealth, they needed quiet…and they needed a tiny bit of magic.

“I thought the castle was warded against magic,” she had asked when they explained the plan.

“The castle is,” Thren had said. “But the prison is not the castle.”

Kayla wondered how such stupidity could have come to pass. Most certainly it involved money. Whatever the reason, the weakness was their boon. They had procured a simple spellscroll, which Senke kept hidden in his cloak. When they reached the prison they would sneak around to the back, slip past any guards, and then use the scroll to enter the prison. Once inside, they would have about ten minutes before their exit vanished into the ether. The three had worked out a few strategies to distract, disable, and render unconscious any guards they might encounter. Picking Robert’s lock would be child’s play to someone like Senke. After that, it was a quick trip out of the prison and back to the safehouse.

“Why are we bringing Will?” Kayla had asked once she could pull Senke aside. “With his size, he cannot be an expert at silence and shadow.”

“That big lug?” Senke had laughed and then grinned at the giant man. “He’s coming with us in case stealth isn’t enough.”

As they neared the prison, she hoped that Will would be of no use to them whatsoever. Of course, she was in a doubtful mood. By night’s end, Will would crack a few heads. She had little doubt of that fact.

“I count only six,” Senke whispered as he and Kayla hunched around the corner of a home and watched the guards make their rounds. Will hung back, either not wanting to crowd them or not caring how many they faced.

“Three at the gates,” Kayla said, tracking the movements of them all. “Two more traveling around in a circle. Another is stationary at the southeast corner. We should assume another guard is out of sight at the northwest corner.”

“Seven, then. Still, far less than I was worried about.”

“The soldiers are inside,” said Will. When he first spoke, Kayla instinctively tensed, expecting his booming voice to alert guards for miles, but instead out came a controlled whisper, deep and quiet. She chastised herself for such naivety. Will had not risen to such high ranks within the Spider Guild by being foolish or unskilled. Big as he was, she started wondering if he would be better than her at stealth and hiding. Her pride said no, but a nagging voice of reason in her mind insisted otherwise.

“Far more men within,” Senke agreed. “Mostly bunched at entrances to all three of the lower floors. They’re far more afraid of people breaking out instead of breaking in. We must use that to our advantage, but also remember, the escaping may be much more difficult.”

They waited a few more minutes, counting how long it took the roving patrol to loop around.

“We’ll have maybe thirty seconds,” Kayla said. “Unless you want to take out the two guards.”

“Take them out, we gain another minute to get in,” Will said. “But then we