Chapter 4: The palace

Fen sat atop the high, bare hill that lay just outside the city proper. He blessed the clear sky and bright moon overhead that allowed him to see down into the palace below him. Guards were moving sluggishly about, their gleaming spear points marking their location like beacons, but the rest of the complex was shockingly still for a place that had been broken into so recently.

Fen crouched there for a long time as he watched the movements of the guard formations around the grounds. Eventually he noticed a gap, and he kept watching until it was clear that the opening repeated fairly regularly.

The night was too clear for Fen to simply charge down the hill to the base of the palace wall, so he had to go back down the way he came and go round the base of the hill, hiding in the deep shadows at the bottom until he came to the palace wall.

The wall was made of large stones, unevenly stacked up to about twenty feet, and Fen knew from prior experience that there was a section near the hill that was scalable. He climbed nearly to the top and then waited, lurking in the darkness until he heard a group of several guards patrol past, sounding like a caravan of drums on the other side of the wall.

In a flash, Fen was over the wall, running across the grounds in a low crouch. He dove into a bush right as the next group of guards marched past.

The easy part was over, now Fen needed to figure out how to get into the palace. From what little information had been included in the dossier the King’s assistant had given him he understood that the burglars had busted in through the west door and then left the same way they came, leaving no trace of how they had gotten in. That area was off the table for Fen, they would undoubtedly have that quarter of the palace locked down tighter than a gassy priest’s butt hole at service.

So, not knowing much about the palace Fen headed for the roof, hoping to get a decent view in order to scope things out before he moved on with his investigation.

The wall of the palace structure itself was just as easy to scale as the boundary wall had been, but it was nearly twice as tall, so Fen crawled up to the wall where a balcony jutted out and scrambled up onto the lower structure to begin his climb.

His breath caught in his throat as he looked into the window. The room was unlit, so Fen had thought he would be safe, but he immediately noticed movement coming from inside the room. Movement and sound coming from the bed.

It took a few moments for Fen to process what his eyes were seeing, but the instant he did he looked away. He had just spied on the King in bed, and the fact that he didn’t recognize the face of the woman meant that it wasn’t the Queen.

Fen moved on as quick as he could, hoping that the occupants were too busy to notice him. It sent his mind spinning with the implications of the King’s infidelity, especially after the recent bout of firmly anti-adultery laws he had been sponsoring. It opened up Fen’s idea of what he might find in the ledger he was searching for.

Once he was on the roof Fen kept low, worried about being silhouetted against the moon bright sky. He had been right about the view up here, he could see far over the palace complex, and he immediately locked on to a tiny window on the east side of the roof, likely leading to an attic.

That was an easy solution to his problem, so Fen went over to the window. It was barred, and it was too dark inside for Fen to make out much. Fen picked the lock easily and wriggled his way into the room. He sat there in silence while his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

What he saw when he could finally see was very confusing. Instead of an attic store room it was a tiny little crawlspace, probably perched above even the attic, and the place wasn’t caked in the layers of dust he would have expected. It was a well maintained secret passage way leading right to a window.

Fen followed the crawlspace. There were several branching paths within it, following the complex shape of the roof, but Fen continued straight on, using the faint light from the interspersed windows to guide his steps. At the far end was a tight spiral staircase.

Fen started to grow nervous as he realized just how far in over his head he was. He was uncovering secrets that were far larger than he had bargained for, and now he was preparing to climb down stairs that he could hardly even see and that he hadn’t a clue where they led. Still, curiosity burned in his chest, pulling him on despite the massive risk he was taking.

So, Fen crept down the stairs. After the first couple rotations there was just a hint of light, and when he came down on a landing he could see just enough by the rays of light shining through the gaps in the door to tell that the stairs kept going down.

He peeked through one of the gaps in the door and had to suppress a gasp. This was a secret door leading to the King’s luxuriant closet. Luckily, the rooms were still empty, and well lit despite the late hour, so Fen peered in for a long moment, tempted to go into the room and snoop on the monarch himself. He decided against it, turning back to the stairs.

When the stairs bottomed out it was pitch black. Fen couldn’t even see a glimmer of light from above, so he waited for a while, breathing as quietly as possible and listening for any sounds from the darkness. The way his breath echoed off the walls made Fen think the room opened up in front of him, but he was the only source of noise.

Fen grabbed a small lantern from his pouch and lit it as quietly as he could.

The narrow beam of light revealed a closet sized room burrowed right into the stone, clearly predating the relatively new palace. It was full of shelves containing all manner of documents and plinths with various pieces of art.

A sinking feeling came over Fen as he crept forward and perused the shelves. As he glanced over the papers he saw that it was all manners of incriminating evidence, and the art was all famous relics from all over the country.

Fen was surprised to find the ledger he’d been hired to hunt, bound in black leather and sealed with the King’s seal. He had totally forgotten about that with all the strange things he’d already found.

The implications of this spun around in Fen’s head as he stuffed as many papers as he could into a sack alongside the ledger. Was this the King? The Queen? What kind of conspiracy had he just uncovered?

He calmed his boiling thoughts as he snuck his way back out of the palace the way he had come.