Sir Roland Brightshield's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Roland caught Theodora in the warm-up hall before she reached the drum stand. The steward had gone to fetch water. Lucien kept watch at the door. Roland took her wrist, not hard, and turned her toward the wall. "You read a second page," he said. "Tell me what was on it." Theodora's eyes went to his hand, then to his face. She did not pull away. "The east door on the third landing is bait," she said. "The nurse line is written in the same ink as the guard rotation. Fresh. The rest of the book is older. Someone wrote that entry today." Roland felt the drills drop out of his hands. Third landing, east door. He had run the numbers until they sat clean in his head, and the numbers were a trap. "Where is the child, then." "Two landings higher. West side. A locked room next to a cell." She met his eyes. "There is a prisoner in the cell. A scholar. His name is on the roster under kitchen deliveries, which is a lie. I know the name. I have been looking for him for two years." Roland let go of her wrist. "That was your list." "That was my list." She did not soften it. "I would have told you at the door. You would have gone straight to the east landing and died there, and I would have lost him too. So I waited until you could not go without me." Lucien whistled once from the doorway. Boots on the stair below. Roland thought fast. The east door had two guards outside and one in, all expecting a priest. If he walked past it and climbed, the guards would follow and call the hall. If he did not walk past it, the trap would know he knew. He looked at Theodora. "You dance on the third landing. Loud. Pull the two outside guards toward the rail. Lucien knocks on the east door as the acolyte and keeps the inside one talking. I climb past to the fifth. I open your scholar's cell. He tells me which room holds the child, and we leave together, or none of us leave." Theodora nodded once. "He will talk. He has been waiting to talk to someone." She unslung the drum. "After. You get us out with him." "After," Roland said. It was not a promise he liked making with the hour half gone and a fortress shifting posts above him, but it was the price of the truth she had just handed him, and he paid it. He pulled the hood up. The bell overhead struck the quarter. He started for the ladder with the real room in his head for the first time, and the trap behind him instead of in front.