David Dalglish - A Dance of Cloaks

“Laurie Keenan’s property might as well be a foreign nation,” Kayla whispered. “A smart call, though you have the courage of a lion to leap like you did. If your knee had buckled…”

“It didn’t,” Haern said. “Not until I landed.”

She pulled up his pant leg and looked. His knee had already turned a shade of blue, with the very center an ugly brown. When she touched it gently with her fingers, she could tell it was badly swollen.

“We need it wrapped and iced,” she whispered. “And you need to give it rest.”

Haern nodded.

“How long can we hide here?”

Kayla shrugged. “We pressing our luck as is, but if we stay away from the mansion we should be safe. I hear all his traps are within its halls.”

Haern leaned his head against a branch and closed his eyes.

“Don’t let me fall,” he said. “Please?”

“Sleep if you must,” she said, reattaching her belt. “I’ll keep us safe.”

Several hours passed. If she had any doubt to the boy’s identity, the tenacity of the soldiers’ search erased them. Carefully she pushed the blonde hair off his face and looked at his soft features.

There was no doubt he was Aaron Felhorn, and by his actions and his skill, he was most certainly his father’s son.

When the sun finally began to creep above the city walls, Kayla nudged him awake. He snapped his eyes open and stared at her without a word. It was as if now the danger was passed, he had grown inward and shy.

“Come, Aaron,” she said. “Let us get you home.”

“Haern,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “Call me Haern.”

“Why?” Kayla asked. “I know who you are; there is no need for pretenses.”

“Because when I am Haern…” He stopped and looked away. “When I am him, he is everything I am not.”

She wasn’t sure she understood, but she had a lot more pressing things to worry about than what name the Felhorn whelp wanted to be called.

“Should we head west?” she asked. He nodded. “I thought so, but we have a slight problem. How do we get over the gate?”

He didn’t know. It seemed when the hounds were at his heel, he was a fountain of ideas, but when things quieted down, the fountain ran dry. She almost smacked him upside the head and threatened to cut his throat if he didn’t produce an idea, but the thought was so absurd she laughed.

“I guess we wait,” Kayla said. Her stomach was rumbling, and she badly wanted someone to look at Aaron’s knee…Haern’s knee, she corrected. When she glanced about, she had little faith in the tree’s cover once the sun reached its fullest. If discovered, she would probably wish for the comfort of the noose. Keenan’s cruelty was legendary throughout not just Veldaren but all of Dezrel. Inside his compound, he ruled, not the king.

“What if someone else opens the gate?” Haern whispered. “Maybe we can run through.”

“Maybe,” she said absently. Maybe if whoever it was didn’t notice them hiding in the tree. Maybe if they weren’t stopped by guards on their frantic dash to the street. Maybe if archers located in windows didn’t feather them dead. If they were to do something, she realized, she needed to do it before the rest of the estate began their daily routines. If spotted, they didn’t have a beggar’s chance of convincing anyone they weren’t pawns of the thief guilds, sent to kill yet another lackey of the Trifect.

Kayla looked to Haern and held in a smile. Maybe if they were found, the boy might reveal another amazing skill. The kid could pull out nails with a thin knife and vault over fences like a mummer’s monkey. Who knew what he could do when cornered behind a locked gate.

Locked?

“Haern, look at me,” she said. “Can you pick a lock? Not some apprentice’s creation, I mean a true smith’s lock. I’ve never had the fingers for it, but could you?”

He looked away from her, angling his head so the sun no longer reached through the leaves to light his face. In the shadows, he seemed to grow more confident.

“Your daggers are thin, and I could try. I’d need something else, though, something even thinner.”

She handed him a dagger, then reached into her belt and pulled out a small spyglass. She used it when she needed to be absolutely certain who a person was, when guesswork and reliance on body structure, walk, and clothing would not be enough…or when naming the wrong name could get her killed by all parties involved.

The spyglass wasn’t what she wanted, though. What she wanted was the cord of wire wrapped around the middle to reinforce the fragile creation. Haern saw and nodded happily. He snatched the spyglass from her hands, unwound the wire, and handed the spyglass back.

“How long?” she asked.

“Master Jyr was my teacher,” he said. “When he left, he said I was his fastest student ever.”

Kayla shook her head.

“Not good enough. Tell me, how fast?”

Haern shrugged.

“Two minutes? Three if it’s expertly made.”

“Expect three minutes,” she said. Her blue-green eyes darted about. It wouldn’t be long before a servant or two headed out for the market to fetch fresh eggs and warm bread for when their master broke his fast. The sun had barely risen, perhaps they could go unnoticed. She had seen no guards, but that meant nothing. After five years of warfare, there were always guards.

“Pick the lock as fast as you can,” she told him. “If anyone tries to stop us, I’ll kill them.”

Haern nodded.

“I’ll do my best.”

The ground wasn’t far, but Kayla worried about Haern’s leg. Once they made it to the streets, they could lose themselves in the sea of merchants, tradesmen, and common folk that always swelled in the morning hours. Until then, they’d be horribly vulnerable.

“I’ll help you down,” she said. “Hurry, but don’t injure your knee any further. An open gate does us no good if you can’t walk through it.”

She guided him gently down to the grass. Limping like an old man, Haern approached the closed and barred front gate. Kayla remained hidden in the tree. She was close enough to intercept any guards that might spot him, and she hoped to surprise the first few that might try to stop the boy.

When Haern reached the gate, he knelt down on his good knee, cupped the lock in his hands, and examined it. After a moment, he glanced back to the tree and smiled.

Two minutes, she thought. The gods are kind.

She began counting in her head. At seventeen, she heard a cry of alarm. By twenty-nine, she saw several men run around the side of the estate, all wearing brightly-polished chainmail and brandishing curved longswords. They were five in all, and glumly Kayla checked the daggers at her belt. She had only three left. There would be no whittling them down before they reached her, and she knew veteran killers were underneath that armor. Not good, she thought.

“Up, down, sideways, and every way between…” she muttered. If Haern knew of their approach, he obeyed Kayla’s request and kept his back turned and his eyes focused. Twirling one of her few daggers in her fingers, the woman silently dropped to the grass. One good throw, and she could make it four to one. Her speed was good, so she might blind or wound another before they realized she was there. After that, she might distract them long enough for Haern to open the gates. Would he escape, limping on a busted knee with angry guards chasing after?

“Should have just let you run,” Kayla whispered as she began her sprint. “Easy money is never easy.”

The whole while, she had never stopped her counting.

…thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine…

She chose not to throw her extra dagger. An errant throw might alert them to her presence, and surprise was the only advantage she had. Her heart pounding in her ears, she angled toward them. If she was right, she’d slam into the pack only ten feet away from Haern.