Page 82 of Storm to Victory
Aaruk’s jaw hardened, his eyes filled with the haunted memories of what he had endured. “I’m sorry. Mongavaria?”
“Probably. Mongavarian agents have been hassling them for months now.” Fieran had to stuff his magic deep within his chest. “They must know Dacha and I are here. That my Uncle Edmund is here in Mongavaria. They must have seen it as their opportunity to strike.”
Surely Ellie and Tryndar would be all right. Dacha wasn’t there to help, but Mama could use Dacha’s magic. And Louise also had the magic of the ancient kings. She might not be the warrior that Adry or Fieran were, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t fierce when her family was threatened. The two of them would hunt these Mongavarian agents to the ends of the earth if necessary.
Fieran kept his focus on the road as he drove long into the night.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Pip tiptoed down the deserted hall following Jayna, both of them dressed in the black maid uniforms. That way if they were caught, Jayna could make up some reason for them being there. As long as they weren’t caught in the empress’s study, they’d be fine.
At least hemming the maid’s dress had kept Pip busy throughout the day. The sewing wasn’t that great, and it was a good thing it was dark right now. Otherwise, anyone would be able to see how crooked both the stitches and the hem were.
Besides sewing, Pip had also rigged up a length of wire she’d made by thinning some of the bars of the cells. The wire ran from Pip’s cell, along the ceiling, and attached to the main iron door at the top corner by the hinge where it wouldn’t be noticed. With the wire in place, Pip could lock or unlock the dungeon door without ever leaving her cell. Much safer than tiptoeing up and down the stairs, hoping she could get there and back without the door opening.
All of that had helped distract from the hours Prince Edmund had been gone, only to be returned even more bloody and battered than before.
Jayna held up a hand, and Pip halted. The two of them froze, pressed in the shadow along the wall, while two guards tromped down the connecting corridor. They didn’t even look down this side passageway, lulled into inattention by their familiar routine.
Once the sound of the footsteps faded, Jayna peeked around the corner before she led the way down the corridor in the wake of the guards.
Pip’s heart thumped in her throat as she crept after Jayna. Her fingers itched for a wrench in her hands, a mechanical project to tinker with. That was her comfortable place. Not all this sneaking and danger.
Jayna halted before a door, glanced around, and motioned to the door. “I’ve picked this before, but why don’t you make a key? Then I’ll have an easier time getting in and out in the future.”
Pip swallowed and pulled one of the small globs of iron from her pocket. Just like for the wire, she’d thinned several of the bars to arm herself with a pocketful of iron just in case. By the time she was done, there wouldn’t be much left of the iron bars in the castle dungeon.
She pressed it and her hand to the door latch. Closing her eyes, she sent her magic into the latch first until she had a good picture in her mind. After that, she sent the iron into the lock, forming it into the space so that it created a key for the door. Once that was done, she unlocked the door, pushed it open, and handed the key to Jayna.
Jayna grinned at her and slipped inside. She held the door open just long enough for Pip to step inside before she closed it softly.
Pip pressed her back to the door as she squinted into the darkness of the room. Only the light glowing underneath the door and the moonlight outside provided some visibility.
“You make breaking and entering almost too easy.” Jayna made her way across the room without any apparent trouble,despite the murky darkness. There was a clicking sound, then a creaking. “But I won’t need your skills for this door. The secret study hasn’t been a secret since Dacha discovered it nearly seventy years ago.”
“If the empress suspects that Prince Edmund knows, wouldn’t this be guarded?” Pip inched her way toward the sound of Jayna’s voice. As she neared, she discovered that a part of the wall next to the fireplace was cracked open.
“Empress Bella doesn’t trust her guards enough to actually share this secret with any of them.” Jayna opened it the rest of the way and vanished inside, her voice going slightly muffled. “There are supposed to be guards in the main study and by the outer door, but there seems to be a rather nasty stomach bug going around.”
By her tone, that stomach bug was Jayna’s fault. She must have slipped something in the guards’ food or drink.
Pip stumbled after her, keeping a hand on the fireplace to avoid running into anything.
The fireplace extended into the secret study on the other side, a reassuring solid presence in the pitch blackness.
There was a stirring of the air and another click as Jayna closed the door after her. Then, finally, a light flared.
Jayna held it up, showing that it was a small elven light. “Let’s get to work. I’ll search the desk if you want to get a start on the file cabinet over there. Pull out anything that looks like it might be useful for the Alliance to have in hand when the war ends.”
Pip pulled a second elven light from her pocket—one Jayna had brought for her—and set to work paging through the papers in the file cabinet. The first drawer she searched held nothing but tax reports and other innocuous internal communications. But when she started on the second drawer, it held reports on Mongavarian spying efforts in Escarland. Pip didn’t even tryto read more to figure out the details. She grabbed whole file folders, setting them in a stack on the floor next to her.
The Mongavarians were sure to notice someone had been in here stealing files the next time they opened this drawer. But it didn’t sound like she and Jayna were trying to hide their incursion.
As she glanced at the second set of files, the wordmagiccaught her eye. She halted, peering at the paper more closely.
A report of some kind of magical experiments. There weren’t that many details, but it seemed to have been compiled by a General Krellian.
