“I think it’s time we pushed on, don’t you?” The sellsword took a breath, steeled himself, and stood up wobbly. “The baron’s daughter is surely sick and tired of being locked up in her makeshift prison.”
Gredchen cleared her throat and nodded. She waited for Vanderjack to pick up the gnome, then followed him across the ballroom and through the doors.
The residential suite Gredchen had spoken of was really nothing more than a handful of rooms leading off a central curving corridor, ending with a sitting room. More windows, set with latticework, allowed the light from outside to illuminate the passage. Vanderjack put his face close to the glass to try and see outside, but it was milky-white with age.
“I have no idea what time of day it is,” he said, stepping back from the windows. “This could be daylight, but then again, Solinari’s in High Sanction at the moment, and it could just as well be moonlight.”
“Once we pass through these doors we’ll be near the balcony overlooking the entrance hall,” whispered Gredchen. “There’s a really large rose window, and you can see the Emerald Peaks through them if the weather’s cooperating.”
“Lovely,” Vanderjack said. “But I’d bet that balcony’s guarded.” He felt the absence of the Hunter, who would ordinarily be coming back to him at such a time to tell him all about the armed forces in the castle-where they were, what they looked like.
“Of course. Hand Theodenes to me, and you take a first look.” Gredchen held out her arms.
Vanderjack handed the gnome over as if he were a bundle of hearth logs and crept to the doors. He threw the latch and opened one door a crack.
Through the narrow gap, he could see the wide curve of the balcony sweeping around an open space. A flight of marble stairs led upward from a landing in the middle of the curve, and Vanderjack caught movement just out of sight: something large, silver, and dressed in red.
“Ackal’s Teeth,” he muttered.
“What is it?” asked Gredchen.
“Sivaks.”
“We can’t take on sivaks,” hissed Gredchen.
Vanderjack looked at Theo then at Gredchen, silently agreeing with her. “But I think I have an interesting idea,” he whispered, grinning.
“Not Theo!” she said, aghast, reading his mind.
“Why not? He’ll be useful. He likes being useful.”
“Absolutely not!”
Vanderjack looked at the door then back at her. “Well, if you’d prefer charging on out there and taking our chances with the sivaks …”
Lord Gilbert’s aide exhaled. “All right. What’s your plan?”
A few minutes later, after some poking around in the bedrooms in the residence suite, Vanderjack and Gredchen had gathered together an old footlocker, a child’s wagon with four wheels and a handle, several linen sheets, a length of thick silk cord from the curtains around a bed, and a three-pronged candelabra. The two of them carefully stood the gnome up on the footlocker, set it atop the wagon, threw a sheet over his head, and tied the candelabra in place on top of everything with the cord.
“This is never going to work,” said Gredchen, looking over the gnome.
“Sivaks, even the ones from the Red Watch, aren’t that smart,” said Vanderjack. “They may be tactical geniuses, masters at deception and infiltration, but drop something on them they weren’t expecting and most of the time, you’ve got the advantage.”
On the count of three, Gredchen pulled the door open all the way. Vanderjack gave the wagon-footlocker-gnome a mighty shove and it raced out across the balcony, banged twice on the railings, and slammed into the sivak standing on the central landing.
The draconian, as Vanderjack predicted, reacted with startlement. Leaping backward, the creature spread its wings outward to steady its balance and prevent it from falling down the staircase. The gnome ricocheted off the sivak and careened against the railing, sending it speeding off around the other side of the balcony area.
Vanderjack raced in while the draconian had his back to him. The horseshoe-shaped balcony allowed him to use the railing to gain altitude and leap toward the Sivak. Unfortunately he didn’t have a sword. All he had were his wiry, outstretched arms and what he hoped was a fearsome look on his face.
Gredchen, following hurriedly, watched as the sell-sword tackled the sivak around the neck, pinning the draconian’s enormous silver wings against his body. Already unbalanced, the sivak dropped immediately to the top three or four stairs of the grand stair.
Vanderjack hoped that surprising the bigger and stronger draconian would keep it from simply flexing its muscles and throwing him off. And it worked. The sivak flailed uselessly. Tightening the grip around the sivak’s neck, Vanderjack gave a mighty heave and felt the draconian’s neck snap.
Gredchen skirted the melee and ran to recover Theodenes, who was lying facedown under the sheet and candelabra on the far side of the balcony. She turned him over, dusted him off, and picked him up.
Vanderjack watched, amazed, as the body of the sivak shrank and shifted. Silver scales blended, darkened, and retreated in places. Where moments before had been a sivak draconian there lay a perfect copy of Vanderjack.
“Ackal’s Teeth,” the real Vanderjack said. “I never will get used to that.”
“Will it stay that way forever?” asked Gredchen, coming back around with Theo’s immobile body. “Cute. It looks just like you.”
He gave her a pained look. “After a long while, it’ll burn up and turn into ash. Meantime,” Vanderjack added, arranging the position of his doppelganger on the stairs, “the sight of my dead body should slow down anything that comes up from down there.” He pointed down the stairs to the entrance hall below, a marble and granite chamber dominated by the wide staircase and, as Gredchen had said, an enormous rose-shaped stained-glass window. “Come on. We’d better get moving.”
Gredchen handed Theodenes back to Vanderjack. The gnome twitched, once, and Vanderjack saw the bushy white eyebrows moving just a little, as if Theo were trying to form an angry expression and only his eyebrows would cooperate.
“The paralysis is starting to wear off,” he said, hefting the gnome over one shoulder and taking the stairs two at a time.
The stairs rose up into a small semicircular area, an anteroom or waiting room of some kind, at the far end of which was a pair of huge, ironbound wooden doors. To the left of them was a spiral staircase that continued upward. Suits of Solamnic plate armor stood on either side of the doors, bearing halberds. The armor looked purely decorative, but the halberds seemed very real.
“I sure need one of those,” Vanderjack said, indicating a halberd. “But how much do you want to bet that those suits of armor are ensorcelled? Odds are we’ll walk by them and they’ll animate and attack us viciously with polearms.”
Gredchen stared at him but couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “Impossible.”
Theodenes jerked again, and his eyelids closed and opened. Vanderjack suspected the gnome would go limp soon, then start to experience feeling in his limbs and extremities. The sellsword hadn’t been paralyzed by ghouls before, but he’d seen it often enough in the service of the dragonarmies.
“So up the stairs again, one more time,” he said.
Vanderjack shifted his hold on Theo so he could fit on the spiral staircase and went up. Gredchen took the rear, watching the ironbound doors as they ascended, but nothing burst forth or even so much as whispered from them.
At the top of the spiral stairs, the entrance hall and stained-glass windows were left behind. All that Vanderjack could see was a long hallway lined with rugs and animal skins, and bare white walls with unlit torches at regular intervals. At the far end, in total darkness, a single large, rectangular shape was dimly visible.
“There it is,” said Gredchen, fatigue and perspiration showing on her face.
“There’s what? I can’t see a thing. This gallery has no pictures in it at all.”
“They’re all in the baron’s manor now,” she replied. “All except one.” She crossed over to a large silk bellpull hanging from the ceiling. “Here, look.”