Page 73 of Bosse
Alifair should be carrying a bucket of guilt over being angry at the clan, but she was more disheartened than anything.
So many ifs and maybes to hang a risky plan on was like building a house with a deck of torn cards. It could work if no one came along and touched a weak card.
When her workday finally ended, she paced her room, ready to leave. She wore her coat in case she did not make it back to the room. When the time came, and the castle slept, she snuck around corners, keeping her body plastered to the dark shadows crowding the corridor the thin woman had taken. Once in that hallway, Alifair hurried past the door she prayed would take her to the upstairs and found a place at the end of the hall to kneel out of sight.
Minutes ticked by as sweat pebbled on her forehead, disregarding the chilly air surrounding her.
The woman who had food stuffed in her apron showed up around what Alifair estimated to be two or two-thirty in the morning. Kylie carried a flashlight that beamed on her hand and the key as she unlocked the hallway door. As she entered, Alifair rushed to catch the door before it closed completely and held her breath, but the woman had not paused to lock it.
Was that because it would lock on its own?
She counted to twenty, then pushed the door open a tiny bit and caught sight of the flashlight glow as Kylie moved higher up the stairwell.
This had to be the right place.
Alifair quickly pulled out the tiny strip of material she’d torn from the hem of her work dress and stuffed it deep into the hole where the bolt latch would insert. She filled most of the hole and allowed the door to close. She had initially hoped to follow the woman inside and find a place to hide while waiting on her to leave, but there was nowhere to hide at the bottom landing of the stairs inside this doorway.
Going back to her little hidey-hole, Alifair crouched. It wasn’t long before the woman stepped through the doorway and allowed the door to shut behind her. She used a key to lock it but had trouble getting it to engage.
No, no, no. If a guard were called, they’d assign someone to watch the door until it could be fixed. Then, the person fixing it would find the material stuffed into the slot.
Every second of watching ticked up Alifair’s pulse to a faster pace.
Her heart couldn’t take much more.
Giving the knob a little turn back and forth, the woman finally seemed content that it was working. Too content. Maybe the cloth had failed.
Again, too many maybes to depend upon.
Allowing five minutes to pass first, Alifair tiptoed over and tried the door lock. It was set. Crud. She pulled out a hairpin she’d had fabricated by a metal worker in her clan that was sturdier than most pins. Within thirty seconds, she had the door unlocked and opened. She checked the cloth stuffed in the doorjamb.
It had held up, but the latch was fitted so well that it only needed an eighth of an inch to keep the door locked. She pulled the cloth out, stuffed it in a pocket, and headed up the stairs.
At the top, she opened another door into a wide hallway with what must have been beautiful walls at one time. Candle sconces gave the area a warmth not found in the lower level of this castle. Tall walls were covered in gold-and-gray-striped wallpaper. Carved four-foot-square wooden murals of people riding horses and dogs as if on a hunt hung between four towering doors along the corridor.
Those might shield bedrooms or a library.
Could Krol read?
Maybe he had a library filled with picture books.
Yes, she was feeling mean, and he deserved her disdain.
She checked every door carefully, finding perfectly neat bedrooms behind two and an office area behind one. That jerk had a very old computer and tall cabinets filled with things like batteries, a flashlight, and tools. What powered the computer? She followed a cord from the computer to a door that opened into a large storage room with a generator. This room smelled of gas. With no internet service, based on what she’d heard from the servants, she didn’t want to see what a sicko like him had on his dilapidated computer. Closing that door, she did a visual scope of the office. Framed pictures of different sizes covered the walls.
All were of Krol. Of course.
The last door hid a library of sorts. Only half of the lovely dark wood bookcases held any books. Most of them had different types of medieval weapons displayed. Swords and a metal ball with spikes had her shaking her head.
What a lunatic.
She stepped back into the hallway. Was there another level above this one? Rushing from one end to the other, she found no additional door hiding a stairwell. She would have noticed one in his office. Then again, maybe one of the bookcases doubled as a secret entry into a hidden room.
While still in the library, she checked every bookcase. Nope.
Time stood on her shoulders, warning her it would soon abandon her at the worst moment.
Moving faster, she searched the two bedrooms. Nothing.
