The conscious guard shouted. "Hey! You there!" He changed his tactic to a warning to those below. "Intruder headed down! Enemy on the stairs!"
Nightfall landed with his usual cat lightness, the oath-bond too persistent to allow him to use his talent to further soften the fall. He crouched, assessing the scene at a glance. Two guards blocked the pathway between two sets of three cells flush with the wall. The cages’ barred sides rose into roofs that ended five hands’ lengths from the stone ceiling that served as the floor to the level above. After the last pair of cells, the pathway ended and shorter branchways headed off in each direction, in turn ending at the walls. Only one figure occupied a cell, the farthest one on the right. Nightfall did not pause long enough to conclusively identify the prisoner. He raced down the walk.
In response to their companions’ warning, the two guards in the dungeon rushed forward. Nightfall darted through the gap between them. Both grabbed for him at once. One missed cleanly. The other caught a grip on his cloak. Arching his shoulders, Nightfall let the fabric slip free and continued running. Behind him, he could hear the guards calling strategies that seemed obvious. They would prove far more hunched and ready for his escape than they had been for his sudden entrance. Nightfall did not care. The closer he got to the prisoner he felt certain was Edward Nargol, the more the pain faded. He skidded around the corner, peering through the bars.
Grimy hands clenched the steel, and sad, dark eyes peered back at Nightfall through the gaps. A man with limp, brown hair and an openmouthed expression shy several teeth seemed as surprised to see Nightfall as the squire to find a stranger where his master should stand. The oath-bond’s threat intensified with abrupt and suffocating intensity. For a moment, Nightfall froze, fighting back the pain enough to function. He glanced back around to the main pathway. Four guards swept it in two groups of two, moving with readied caution. Shortly, they would trap him against the wall.
Damn. Nightfall scarcely dared to believe he had cornered himself for an unknown hoodlum. He watched, calm, as the sentries came toward him. Nightfall still carried the last of his throwing daggers in addition to three others he had been given in Alyndar. Pain drove him to hurl himself upon the guards en masse, to bite, claw, and stab in a wild frenzy until they killed him. Nightfall delved deeper to the more familiar and personal part of his brain and the cold pocket of calculation he drew upon in times of desperation.
The guards turned the corner. Nightfall took a careful, backward step, aware one more would press his back to the wall. To his right, the farthest wall of the dungeon hemmed him. To his left, the bars of the prisoner’s cage loomed. He saw only one other route, a small and desperate possibility he could not ignore. As the guards charged him, Nightfall scrambled up the bars. He flung himself up and over the cell roofs, skittering from cage to cage in a dashing crawl.
"Hey!" a guard shouted. "Get him." Their footsteps pounded a wild cadence in pursuit. Nightfall leapt from the last cell, hit the floor running, and sprinted back up the tower steps. Heavy footfalls resounded through the turret, seeming to come from all directions at once. Lowering his head, Nightfall jumped over the moaning guard on the first landing, whipped up to the second floor, and caught the door handle. He ripped open the panel and raced through the corridor. The oath-bond tore and hammered at him.
This time, he found a young maid in his path. He swerved as he ran past, but his shoulder struck her, jolting her to her knees. She let out a short scream that impressed the need to work swiftly. Catching the latch to Willafrida’s room, he tripped it and pushed. The door slammed open, revealing the duchess-heir sitting alone on her bed. Nightfall closed the door. "He wasn’t there."
Willafrida stood. "I tried to tell you that. My father wouldn’t lock up a prince in a dungeon."
Every sinew in Nightfa1l’s body seemed stretched to the point of breaking, as if his body might explode to open his soul to the magic. "Where is he!"
"I don’t know exactly," Willafrida admitted. "Calm down. He’s safe."
Nightfall believed her, and the oath-bond settled to a persistent, but no longer excruciating, roar. "You’re sure they won’t hurt him?"
"And cause a war between Alyndar and Schiz? Are you insane?"
Nightfall forced himself to think through the dense fog of agony dampening logic. He suspected the maid’s scream would bring more soldiers or family soon, and Willafrida’s safety would be foremost in her father’s mind. The woman in the hall might have seen which room he entered and cue the pursuing guardsmen. "What will they do with him?"
"Keep him safe until they can get someone to vouch for him. They’ll send a message to Alyndar, probably."
Nightfall knew a sudden clutch of fear accompanied by a single, sharper thrust from the oath-bond that was mercifully short-lived. It would take at least a month for an envoy from Alyndar to travel, during which time Prince Edward would miss the Tylantian contests. Worse, they might have to return to Alyndar, the tenets of the oath-bond unfulfilled, Nightfall’s time limit wasted in waiting and travel.
Voices in the corridor warned Nightfall of approaching danger. He cleared the distance to the window in a single bound. "Please, when I get down, toss the grapple after me." Without awaiting confirmation, Nightfall sprang to the ledge and skittered down the rope ladder. A moment later, the grapple cut a gleaming are through the moonlight and thumped to the ground nearby. Grabbing it, Nightfall slipped beyond a tended hedge of leafy bushes, safe for the moment.
Willafrida’s certainty of Edward’s security appeased the oath-bond enough to allow Nightfall coherent thought, though it remained a generalized, gnawing ache. He had only one solution. He needed to affirm Prince Edward’s identity and intentions by himself, without the courtly breeding that might give him the words and knowledge he needed to succeed. He would have to play the situation by the moment and hope the right attitude would come naturally. The distracting, harassing throb of the oath-bond would only make his task more difficult.
First, Nightfall mow, he needed to look calm and in control, a competent representative of the country of Alyndar. He brushed dust from his clothing, using collected moisture on the branches to wash out streaks. He wrapped the rope in neat figure eights around the grapple, placing the package on the ground. He added all hut one of his knives, tucking that in a well camouflaged boot sheath. He had learned enough from Edwards lectures to know it would not do to visit a duke’s home armed. He emptied his pockets of assorted objects he carried without specific thought to what he might do with them until a problem arose. Long years of poverty and danger had encouraged such behavior. Breaking free a thorny branch, he combed his red-brown hair, arranging it neatly around his collar. He pushed all of his things beneath a bush, memorized the location, and rose. He gave his clothes one last pat, then headed boldly for the front of the duke’s citadel.
Nightfall tried t0 look official and confident, but pain turned his walk into a listing shuffle. Nevertheless, Nightfall kept his head high and his eyes alert as he wound along the cobbled walkway to the stone porch and knocked on the carved, oak door. Lanterns lit windows on every floor from rooms that had been dark when Edward and Nightfall had first arrived.
After several seconds, the door swung ajar to reveal a plump woman in a baggy dress and an apron. "Hello. What can l do for you, sir?" She seemed nervous for a servant attending a door, apparently aware of the excitement in the household but not wholly informed of its source. He understood rumors circulated quickly among house workers, but the events of moments ago surely had not yet dispersed widely.