AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I do, yes.”
“You take the lead, then.” His gaze dropped to the knife in my hand and he turned around to face the others. “For the love of the Great God, someone give my squire a sword! She’s not facing an armed insurrection with a fucking bread knife!”
One of the guards instantly offered me a sword, but I first used my knife to cut away the trailing length of my dress, so it now terminated mid-thigh. Nicolo was all business now, our dancefloor encounter forgotten, but he still took a moment to appreciate my bare legs as I grabbed the sword.
“This way, Master.”
He pulled his eyes from my thighs. “Yes. Good.”
We hurried through the tangle of corridors and rooms, filled with people, smoke and activity. Maids, with whom I’d shared a dormitory not so long ago, got out of our way, bobbing a curtsey as we hurried past. I wondered if they even recognized me now.
“How did you know he had an accomplice?” I asked, as we ran.
“Because anyone who got into the heart of the castle has planned their assassination carefully,” replied Nicolo, not even slightly out of breath. “And you don’t just kill a prince and run.”
“Hmm,” I said as he continued. “The Guild?” I asked, just to gauge his reaction.
“This isn’t a Guild job. The Guild would have gotten Balduin.” I kept my eyes straight out ahead of me as my heart sped up. “This is politics, not assassination.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as we turned a corner and continued to charge on.
“I mean… if you kill a prince and leave it at that, then the royal family will sort out a solution and nothing will change. If they’d succeeded then someone would have stepped in and the coup would be complete. That means there are more of them, probably right up to the ringleader.”
“Did someone run through this way?” I asked one of the maids when we entered the scullery. She nodded and pointed down the hall.
While running, I turned to face Nicolo, confusion in my gaze. “You know who it is?”
“I think so.” He looked away, his focus on the terminating hall in front of us. “But I hope I’m wrong.”
As we burst into one of the washing-up rooms, steam filling the air, a pair of arrows smacked into the door just above my head. If I’d been taller—Nicolo’s height—I’d have been dead.
“Down!” yelled Nicolo as he reached forward and slamming his hands on my shoulders, tried to push me behind him.
But I was already moving, ducking and rolling across the water-slicked floor. I’d seen where one of the arrows had come from and I came up hard into the archer’s face. As we grappled, another man started towards me, but Nicolo took him to the ground.
From out of the steam, more men appeared and the guards joined the fight. Maids screamed and dashed for the doors as swords were drawn and big piles of crockery crashed to the tiled floor.
“Leave them! Get clear!” A booming voice came out of the steam-shrouded doorway up ahead.
I tried to keep a hold of the archer, but there seemed to be more of them than us—it was hard to be sure in the steam—but he wriggled out of my grasp when I turned to deflect a well-placed kick from his friend.
As the assassin group fell back, we pressed forward, limited by the fact that we were pushing into unknown territory. We lost a man as he entered the next room carelessly and was cut down by another man stationed right beside the door.
“Wait for my command!” shouted Nicolo angrily. I couldn’t blame him—we needed all the men we could get.
We soon cottoned onto the enemy’s tactic; they left a single man in each room to cover the door, usually with arrow fire, while the bulk of the party fell back, forcing us to fight for every inch we could get. The adrenalin churned in my veins and I got a moment of sharp pleasure from the look of surprise on the face of one of the guards when I saved his life from a sword swing.
“They’re protecting their leader,” growled Nicolo as he momentarily faced the other guards and then brought his attention back to me, where it remained. “Trying to get him to safety.” He looked away for a second or so before turning back to face me. “Charlotte, where might they be heading?”
My mind raced, I hadn’t been a maid for long and there had been a lot to learn in a short time. Where was the best place someone could escape in this blasted place? And then it dawned on me. “There’s a culvert in the sub-basement that leads out to the pike—where all the waste water from the kitchens goes.”
“The culvert would take them beyond the castle walls?” Nicolo questioned. Clearly, he wasn’t at all familiar with the layout of this part of the castle and I supposed that made sense since this was the area of those less privileged.
I nodded.
“Do you know of another route?” he demanded. “A place we cut them off?”
“They’re taking the quickest way, but there is another way around…”
