Egress
Left. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right. Left. Wait.
Right. Right. Right. Down. Right. Left. Wait. Wait.
He could smell the coriander and saffron of the street level through the octagonal windows of the palace. His jacket was beginning to stick to his forearms. The sweat was hot against his clammy skin. Just a few more turns. He was so close. The air was getting colder, and the thick musk of powdered stone mortar and lamp oil was burning inside his nose.
He stopped at the end of the corridor, but not before checking both directions for patrol guards. He checked his pack quickly, simultaneously incredulous and unsurprised at how seamlessly successful his plan had been. It was still there; the lilac, silk cloak was crumpled barbarically, shoved into the bottom of the bag beneath his tools and wand, all still warm from their recent contact with his shaking hands.
He was out of breath, but he was not winded yet. His three weeks of practice in breathing and cardiovascular activity ensured that his body was capable of the physical activity. He knew exactly how many guards served the caliphate in the late hours, and the exact probability that he would find a guard on a given floor as a function of time. Given all uncertainties, his calculations indicated that entering the palace an hour and forty-nine minutes past midnight, waiting to begin descending the stairways until thirty-seven minutes after that, and waiting to enter the dungeons for egress until thirty minutes before sunrise would take him on a timeline and path with the smallest probability of encountering a guard. This was assuming, of course, that he could descend the stairs before dawn began breaking.
Nineteen floors of living spaces, decorated stone palisades, and sitting rooms for elderly, rich and frequently inebriated aristocrats all begin to blur together when one uses all available effort to run as quickly and silently as possible. By all measures, he was precisely on schedule to reach the entrance to the dungeons at exactly the right time to enter them, and his view out the window of the purple sky confirmed the time he read on his pocket watch — dawn was breaking soon.
Left. Right. Left. Left.
With a few more staircases, he found himself facing the large stone door to the dungeon. He removed his watch and check the time. A half hour until dawn. He waited until he heard the commotion of running guards and clanging metal. Right on schedule. The first dawn patrols have noticed the missing relic. The guards have begun investigating the premises, but it would take them at least five minutes but no more than seven minutes to reach the bottom of the palace. Well, here we go!
In a puff of bright, blue smoke, the figure, holding his pack on the other side of his body, pressed his hand against the large sliding knob of the door. Muttering under his breath, the blue smoke coalesced into a beam of translucent, jagged ice. Waving away the smoke, he found the metallic latch covered in dark blue ice. They will undoubtedly know where I am now, he thought, as he leaned back and smashed the door with the heel of his boot. With a loud, painful ccrrraaack, the door swung open into the torch-lit dungeon.
Two more staircases and my trap door to freedom awaits. He was glad he had kept the schematics to this place after all these years of waiting. He knew the dungeons were a labyrinth, but he knew where to look for the doorways and ladders and hatches to the sewer entrance. He ran past the guard post, still empty from the patrol shift change, and made his way down the central passage, bars and thick, black and wooden planks showing the dappled shadows of the rising sun across their dusty surfaces. A voice from the cells halted him.
Stranger! Please, wait. Come here.
He hardly ever has things to worry about, but today, in the dungeon, his freedom just a few yards away, he felt the sweat between his shoulder blades drip down his back, and pour out of his hairline into his beard. He turned around quickly and saw a shape silhouetted by the light of dawn, the curves of a woman’s body bisected by the cell bars. She spoke to him silently.
Please, please take me with you. Let me out, please. Please. Wherever you are going, it is surely better than here. Take me with you. I’m begging you.
He pulled the wand out of his pack unconsciously, and with a whisper, the tip shone brightly with blue light. The woman squinted and help up her hand to shield her eyes. After a moment, the man held his wand at his waist, and approached the bars.
What is somebody like you doing in a place like this?
It doesn’t matter. I don’t belong here. Nobody does. Fuck this place and everybody in it. I’ll give you anything you want, just please, please let me out.
The female figure approached the bars, and the man, still shrouded in the darkness of the dungeon, got his first good luck at her. Her skin was the color of polished azurite, her hair the color of inferno, and she was angelic, and not in the way common folk refer to beautiful things — though she was beautiful in a way that made you blink feverishly. Not in her dignity, which she wore like a dress on her shoulders and hips, and deep in the lines on her ageless features. Not even in her radiance, which seemed potent enough to cast shadows in the darkness of her cell. She was angelic by definition; like a creature that never seemed to belong to the reality it was stuck in, she was meant for a higher existence that the shackles of mortality prevented her from experiencing. He must give her freedom. It wasn’t a desire. It was his duty now.
With a few minutes of searching, he found cell keys under the contents of a desk drawer in the front room. Those guards think they are so clever. As he celebrated his discovery, he heard the thunder of footsteps in the outer halls of the palace. Bollocks.
He ran back to the woman’s cell, and after clumsily jostling the keys for a few moments, turned the key in the cell door, and was surprised to see that the woman did not run from the cell to escape or thank him. Looking closer, he noticed for the first time the shackles and bruises on the woman’s arms, as well as the chains from the back wall tethering her to the palace. With only moments to spare, he found the right key for the lock, whilst discovering that they were arcane in nature. As soon as he detached them, the woman ran for the entrance to the cell, and peered down the hallway.
Come. We need to leave, now. We only have a few moments.
My dear woman-freed! At least tell me your name before you begin running off on me! By my count, we have at least 15 seconds before they make it to our location. What do they call you, strange girl?
The woman rolls her eyes, and with an outstretched hand, looks away from her rescuer and introduces herself.
Keffra. Keffra Septonem.
The man looks up to her from the pile of chains at his feet and stands to full height, making him only an inch or so taller than Keffra. As a devilish grin plays across his tan, well-groomed and bearded face, he brushes the hair out of his eyes and tucks his wand behind his ear like a draftsmen’s pencil. As he bows and takes her hand, he introduces himself.
My name is Caldwell Fleetstone – Scholar, Explorer, Procurer, and Luminary. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Septonem.
At that moment, they hear the doors to the dungeon slam open as what must have been twenty guards, armed with scimitars and spears, came charging into the hallway. With an eyebrow cocked and a grin on her face, Keffra nods towards the exit. Caldwell concurs, and they make a break for the escape route, with Caldwell leading the way. They make it a few stairways before Keffra realizes that they need to create more distance.
They’re going to overtake us, Caldwell. We need to slow them down or we aren’t going to get out of here.
Right you are, love. I have just the thing. Just a moment . . .
Caldwell takes the wand out from behind his ear, and after waiting a moment to think of the words, he mutters a few incantations and begins shaking his wand as if he were wrestling the cork out of a champagne bottle. With a loud, echoing pop, Caldwell places his thumb over the end of the wand and sprays dark, ichorous grease over the stairway, coating it in the gross fluid until it was unavoidably covering the length of the staircase. Picking up on the course of action, Keffra doubles Caldwell’s plan by gently gesturing up the staircase as blue-green plants began to spill out of the cracks and grooves in the bricks and masonry, effectively reducing the width of the stairway tenfold.
Right-o. Let’s be on our way, shall we?
As they made their way through the last hallway, Caldwell reaches into his pack and pulls out a crudely-drawn map. After a moment, they hear the thuds and clashes of suits of armor on stone, and as the clanging stops, Caldwell points to a room at the end of the hallway, and they run forward.
In the back room, under a cot and a rug, they find a wooden hatch. As they opened it, the smell of the sewer hit their noses and made their eyes water. As the footsteps approached them again, Caldwell indicated to the entrance for Keffra to jump in. Once she had disappeared into the abyss below, he began climbing into the hatchway, but not before pulling out his wand one more time to seal off their escape.
Tracing a circular sigil into the air, and with a flourish, the symbol began spinning and rotating horizontally. Focusing intently, he flicks the wand three times, and with each motion, the spinning sigil shoots out a crimson bolt of fire in a fast arc down the hallway. Colliding with wooden furniture and curtains, the scorching projectiles cause the hallway to burst into flames and begin to smoke.
Once he was satisfied with his work, Caldwell catches up with Keffra in the sewer tunnel below, pulling the hatch shut behind him. After a half hour of navigating the subterranean labyrinth, they make their way to the docks, and Caldwell completely empties his pockets to pay passage for himself and his new friend to life in Akroma.