The long day and its stress had left me exhausted and I soon slipped into a wonderful sleep. That is, until a hand clapped over my mouth.
I let out a muffled scream and instinct told me to thrash. A strong arm wrapped around me and Tegan’s voice whispered in my ear. “Calm down. It’s just me.”
I stiffened before I whipped my head around and glared at him, or what I could see of him. He’d extinguished the candles and the fire had died to barely any embers. The light from the night sky was now blocked by the thick curtains. They’d been open when I went to sleep.
I wrenched his hand away from my mouth and hissed at him. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“No. I’m trying to give us a good chance to escape.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Escape? Escape from-”
Then I heard it. Loud voices downstairs and they weren’t friendly. The unfamiliar voices mixed with that of MacAlastair and his brood. “By order of the Key Senate, we’re to search all the inns for a man and woman.”
“I don’t care if the heavens sent you, you’re not searching the rooms without a royal script!” MacAlastair snapped at his new visitors.
“We’re only doing our jobs, sir,” came the reply.
“Damn your excuses! I want you out of my inn before you step foot on the second floor.”
I felt Tegan stiffen. “We need to go.”
I blinked at him. “What do you-”
He grasped my arms and practically yanked me out of bed. I stumbled along beside him as he moved over to the door. He set me against the wall like I was a cardboard cutout and peeked out into the hall. My heart pounded in my head as I waited to see shadowy figures loom over us. The light from the lamps, however, showed nothing same for their own flickering motions.
Tegan turned his head to me. “Follow me.”
The seriousness in his voice snapped me to attention. This wasn’t any time to chat or shuffle. Tegan slipped into the hall and I followed him. We turned a hard left and moved over to the last door in the hall. He opened it and revealed a small closet with a few old coats and a mess of cleaning supplies.
Tegan leapt inside and filled most of the space. I tried to look for a good spot to squeeze in, but he grabbed my hand and yanked me inside. Tegan silently closed the door behind us and I started back when he lit up his hand nearly in my face. The flame almost kissed my nose before he ducked down and started rummaging through all the mop buckets at the back of the closet.
My heart nearly stopped when I heard a half dozen heavy footsteps move up the stairs and proceed down the hall. “Check all the rooms,” the man from downstairs barked, and four pairs of feet scurried to obey.
Someone pounded on the hall floor and I wasn’t surprised to find MacAlastair’s voice attached to those feet. “Show me your writ or I’ll toss you out.”
The leader of the intruders scoffed. “You would be hard-pressed to do that, Mr. MacAlastair. All my men are well-trained Keys and Clasps.”
A soft exclamation from Tegan forced my attention to him. He had pressed his hand against one of the back wood panels and revealed a small crawlspace. He beckoned to me and jerked his head toward the hole. I dropped to my knees and scurried through the hole. The wall had hidden a narrow passage inside my room and hidden inside the window bench. I tamped down my rising claustrophobia and crawled on hands and knees to the end obscured by shadows.
A yelp escaped me when I neared the end as I dropped head-first down a twisting slide. The chute shot me through past the ground floor and into the cool interior of the earth. The chute ended with me crashing on top of a mattress laid out on an otherwise dirt-strewn floor.
A sharp hiss from above was my only warning before Tegan was ejected from the slide. I rolled out of the way and he toppled onto the mattress beside me.
“That was faster than I remember,” he murmured as he sat up and rubbed his chest. “And no splinters. MacAlastair must have finally finished the wood.”
I lifted myself onto my arms and saw that we lay in the basement of the inn. The single room extended the entire width and length of the establishment, and the space was broken only by a few load-bearing stone walls evenly spaced apart. A cluster of broken chairs, tables, old cookware, and other used goods were stacked in a haphazard manner according to dumping order. All of it was covered in a thin sheen of dirt that matched the floor. The walls had been covered in mud in some bygone era, but some of the stucco had broken loose and revealed the stones beneath the facade. A few windows at the top of the walls were too filthy to look out.
Tegan leapt to his feet and offered me his hand. “We’re not out of danger yet.”
I accepted his hand and he pulled me toward the pile of broken chairs. We turned and walked sideways through the mess to the rear wall. Tegan pushed on a revealed stone that looked like any other, but that particular rock gave way under the pressure. The wall slid back and to the side, and revealed a hidden doorway. We hurried inside and found ourselves in a small tunnel. Tegan lit his hand before he pressed on a stone inside the passage. The door behind us shut.
I used his light to squint down the tunnel. “How far does this go?”
“To the next street,” Tegan told me as he took my hand and guided me forward along the uneven ground. “MacAlastair’s great-grandfather built it after the great fire to hide their more authority-bashful clients.”
We soon reached an intersection where a new tunnel led leftward. “Where does that go?” I asked him.
“To the stables.”
We continued on our straightforward path to the street at the rear of the inn. The tunnel ended at a ladder that led up to a wooden hatch. Tegan stopped and tilted his head back to stare up at the exit.
I, too, strained my ears and heard the sounds of many feet scurrying here and there. Muffled voices shouted at each other. “What’s going on up there?” I whispered to my companion.
Tegan pursed his lips. “I can’t be sure, but I’m guessing the Senate isn’t wasting any resources in finding us. That’s a good sign.”
My mouth dropped open. “How is that a good sign?”
“It means they haven’t stalked us like Domini’s men, nor are our faces familiar enough that they can find us using my real name,” he pointed out.
“But how do we get out of here now?” I asked him.
He pursed his lips before he leaned back against one of the walls near the ladder. “We need to wait for the bustle to die down.”
“You think they’ll give up when the sun comes up?” I wondered.
He folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “It’s hard to tell. The senator was quite interested in your power, especially when you repelled her advances.”
I set myself down on the hard-packed earth and wrinkled my nose as the noises overhead failed to dim. “I wish she wasn’t. . .”
One of those many footsteps stopped nearly overhead and a clear voice could be heard shouting. “I found a trail, sir!”