Ore-Locks suddenly lurched back into Wynn. She grabbed his cloak again to keep herself from being knocked over. His jaw was clenched, and in the silence of the little room, Wynn heard the creak of another door out in the passage.
“This is ridiculous,” she whispered.
For the first time since Ore-Locks’s appearance, he looked truly infuriated. “Everything around you turns ridiculous!”
Wynn bit back a retort. After all, he wasn’t wrong.
Leesil managed the second lock quickly, now that he knew what to feel for. A click answered his manipulations. He tested the handle carefully, nudged the door just a little to see that it would open, looked up at Brot’an, and nodded. Then he hurried to gather his tools. As he stood up, Brot’an pocketed the crystal.
Leesil inched the door open, but upon looking out, he found himself staring up a long, empty passage. By its make and stonework, it should be part of the keep’s main building. He’d hoped to keep any encounters to a minimum, but even at this time of night he hadn’t expected to run into no one.
Had the city-guard captain called a curfew? Well, if so, then so much the better.
He shrugged at Brot’an, and they both stepped through the door.
Leesil led the way, and when they neared an intersection at the passage’s end, he flattened against the right wall as he slid forward. He watched to the left of the main passage, until he reached the corner, and then carefully turned to face into the wall. Tilting his head, he used only his left eye to peer to the right up the long, broad passage.
By the length of the last passage they’d entered, he guessed that this main corridor ran parallel to this building’s inner wall. The courtyard had to be beyond it, just outside.
A light halfway down spilled illumination into the long, broad passage, but he couldn’t see a lantern or lamp. There was some type of recess there on the left. Beyond it, the passage continued northward, too dark to clearly see its end. For as few lights as were here, perhaps that recess held a door out into the courtyard.
Leesil backed around the corner and whispered, “There’s a possible way out just up ahead.”
Brot’an nodded, urging him on, and Leesil rounded the corner.
Rodian reached the courtyard again as Angus and Jonah came out of the gatehouse’s inner northward tower. He waved them toward the keep’s main doors and then followed, sweeping the entire courtyard with his eyes.
Jonah reached the doors first, and both men paused and waited.
“I want a full search of the interior,” Rodian ordered. “Every room, as fast as we can move without missing anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jonah pulled the doors open and Angus stepped inside. Rodian was about to follow his men when a muffled shout stalled him.
“Sir!”
Turning, he spotted Lúcan half stumbling out a door in the northwest building ... and he was alone.
“Go!” Rodian ordered Angus and Jonah, and then trotted to meet his corporal.
Chane had just darted past the entryway to get away from its light, and he began to make his way up the main passage’s northward half with care. He was still uncertain if Rodian and Hawes were the only ones who had come into the main building.
If he could reach the kitchen and cut through its rear access, he would end up on the lower floor of the old granary and stables now used for storage and workshops. Once he’d reached its top floor, he might get a look across the courtyard to Wynn’s window. But he’d gone only few paces past the entryway when he heard a sound so quiet—almost nonexistent—that a living being might have missed it.
Flattening against the passage’s outer wall, he looked behind himself, southward along the main passage. Light spilling from the entryway made it hard to be certain, but beyond that glimmer he thought he saw the darkness move.
For one instant Chane thought of turning and running, and then it struck him that he would have more clearly heard a guard on patrol. In the dark beyond the entryway, Chane thought he saw a figure approaching, perhaps slightly crouched in stealth.
Something—someone—had covertly entered the keep.
Chane drew his sword but kept it out of sight at his side so it would not reflect any light. Whether an invader was after Wynn or something or someone else, he was not letting it remain here. Then he saw something more—another, much taller shape in the dark—coming up the passage as the first one drew near the entryway’s light.
The first one was half bent over, creeping. Of medium height, the figure’s face and hair were hidden by a long wrap of dark cloth. Chane glimpsed the same on the taller one; it was now clear that both were male.
Neither were guards or sages.
The first one froze, almost straightening, and stared up the passage, as if he saw Chane hiding beyond the entryway. Chane saw slanted, amber eyes; he was facing a pair of elves. What were any of the Lhoin’na doing here, sneaking in like thieves in the night?
Chane was not about to ask even as he stepped out from the wall, raising his sword.
All of the waiting and hiding and waiting was wearing on Wynn and turning her stomach into a knot. Wherever Chane was, he too had to be panicking by now. His simple plan had gone completely awry.
“We have to go!” she whispered. “If you don’t try the door again, I will.”
Ore-Locks grimaced, looking uncertainly at the door.
“If we’re caught in here together, it will look even worse for you,” she added.
With his mouth tight, Ore-Locks reached for the door, but his hand stopped halfway.
“Oh, what now?” Wynn whispered in frustration.
He pointed down at the floor, and for at least the fourth time tonight, Wynn wanted to groan. He must have felt something in the floor stones, yet another someone walking past outside in the passage.
Ore-Locks stood still, watching the door, even as he asked, “By the ancestors, how many of your people go wandering about in the dark? It is like one of my people’s tram stations out there, at the end of the workday!”
Wynn had no answer. Once again, he wasn’t wrong.
Leesil stopped before the entryway, seeing the cold lamp mounted above the broad and stout double doors in the recess halfway up the broad corridor. He was uncomfortably aware of being too exposed.
Something beyond the entryway in the passage’s other half caught his eye, something too light-colored to hide for long in the dark.
He fixed on a form flattened against the passage’s outer wall, and then he straightened just a little. He swung his left hand down, reaching for a winged blade strapped to his thigh. The form beyond the doors’ recess stepped away from the wall ... with a longsword in its hand.
Leesil heard the soft sound behind him of something sliding out of cloth. He knew Brot’an had drawn his blades. All Leesil’s plans drained away, like alley sludge into a city sewer under a downpour.
Killing had never been part of his plan. Whoever this other man was, he was neither a guard nor a sage and had no like compunction against bloodshed. And any noise would quickly draw attention from elsewhere.
The shadowed figure took a step, and the barest bit of light from the recess touched him.
Leesil saw pale features inside the cloak’s hood ... and then he couldn’t breathe.
The pale man with jaggedly cut red-brown hair hanging around his face just glared, slowly lifting the tip of a sword made of strangely mottled steel.
It was Chane.
Shock and hatred made Leesil break into a mild sweat. An undead, one of the worst he’d ever met, was inside the keep among all these defenseless sages, including ...