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"The Introduction" Index

Anyway. Somewhere around the grate should be a trap door in the wall, used to let people in to clean out the wildlife nests and soot build up and other flammable stuff once in a while. They installed them after the spectacle of castle Ashbury a while back, burning inside the walls where nobody could get at it. Ah, there it was. With a little click, I slid out the latch, which fell to the ground on the other side. Soot and dust dislodged on me as I started to slide the door open. I felt my nose tickle and held still, fighting down a sneeze. That'd be a great way to let people know I was here.

When I felt safe again, well actually, when I couldn't hold my breath any more, I slid the door open the rest of the way and ducked out. The door let out behind a tapestry, like I'd spotted before, just down the hall from the display gallery where the fruits of looting and pillaging could be displayed. Unfortunately, no actual vents opened directly into it, so between the gallery and me were several guards and a big thick door with a large lock. Theoretically, I could have gotten somebody to whip up a magic doohickey for me, to go through the wall, but those are expensive, not subtle, and the gallery had wards, anyway. Besides, it's not like the door was that big a deal, anyway, I like locks.

Halfway through their shift, in the early hours after midnight, the guards shouldn't be very alert. That was the plan, anyway. I pocketed the ribbon and peeked around the edge of the tapestry. A pair of guards were standing by the door, batting a crumpled bit of paper back and forth with the butt ends of their pikes. A third was standing across the hall, by a bust of some dull-looking person on a pedestal, writing on a piece of paper held against the wall, using a graphite stick. The hallway was lit with torches, with just one small magical light over the door. Pretty cheap, considering that the permanent magic lights aren't THAT expensive or hard to make. But, hey, I shouldn't complain when people make my life easier.

Then, my nose started tickling again. I ducked behind the tapestry, which only made it worse. Damn moldy tapestries. People really should take better care of things. I tried to muffle the resultant sneeze, but it only made my head feel like it was going to explode.

"Did you hear something?" asked the closest guard.

"What?" replied one of the bored, ball-playing ones.

"The tapestry. It sneezed."

"You're hearing things," the other told him.

The damn dust was still tickling my nose, with predictable results.

"There, it did it again! You think it's an intruder?"

"No, tapestries sneeze all the time," put in the third guard.

"Really? Funny, I can't say I've heard them do that very much."

I could hear the bootsteps of approaching guards as I tried in vain to stop another sneeze and ducked back through the door.

"Gzundheit," commented the bust.

"Thank you," I called back to it.

"No problem."

"Now the bust's talking!" exclaimed the gullible guard.

"There's two of them!" one of the others yelled, and ran off and hit the alarm gong.

I was back in the heating system with the door shut and the latch carefully being replaced, at that point. That done, I dropped to my knees and started crawling toward the exit. I hadn't expected to (literally) run into somebody else down here.

"Oof!"

"Watch it!" the other intruder remarked, sounding just like the talking bust.

"Excuse me for not watching out for you in a dark passageway that nobody's supposed to be in anyway," I replied.

"Maybe I will, eventually. Now, please remove your elbow from my ribcage."

"Certainly, if you will remove your knee from my spleen."

Overhead, guards shouted and boots tromped on the floor. Discretion is the better part of valor, so once we were untangled, I suggested, "Perhaps we should continue this discussion elsewhere."

"Good idea. This way," the other said.

"But the exit's that way. And why would I follow you?"

"AN exit. And why not? Do you really want to leave without any souvenirs?"

A good point. I followed the voice, which lead upward through the heating system, finally coming out below one of the rainspouts carved to look like a gargoyle. A rope was hanging down near the end of the vent, which a small dark form quickly shimmied up. I followed, and ended up on one of the turreted roofs of a tower, then turned to see who had played a talking stone head.

Well, firstly, it was a she. Her black suit, similar to the one I was wearing, made that rather obvious. She was a bit taller than me, about average for ferrets, really. She had the body of a dancer or an acrobat. Or a thief. And there was something...familiar about her. She bemusedly watched me watching her, then struck a pose and grinned at me. "Well, are you done looking, or should I start charging?"

"Well," I said, "I can see why you chose a bust as your hiding place."

She laughed. "And then, what would you hiding behind a tapestry mean?"

"Oh, I know I've got hang-ups."

"Okay, I like you, you're silly. I forgive you for waking the whole castle up."

"Don't blame me, blame their lazy housekeeping staff," I told her.

"Their responsibility to keep the vents clean for the convenience of thieves then?" she asked, archly.

"I resent that. I am not a thief. I am a monetary relocation specialist. And what was a virtuous young lady such as yourself doing creeping about dusty ducts, anyway?"

"The same thing you were, trying to relieve an unworthy Duke of some of the stuff he'd stolen. And I'm not quite as young as you look, flatterer."

"Oh, that's all right then," I deadpanned.

"Speaking of which, don't think we can, now," I went on, "So might as well head home. Why'd you lead us up here, anyway? Have a flying carpet or something?"

"No," she replied, but I figured why give up, after all, there are windows into the gallery.

"Which are shuttered at night, and warded, I checked."

"And you can't open the shutters?"

"Not when they're inside the glass that will fry you if you break it, no," I pointed out.

"So, we wait for them to open the shutters," she suggested.

"Where? It's rather breezy up here."

She sniffed the air. "Smell that?"

I did, actually. Baking bread and other cooking smells. Probably preparing food for the servants and of course the Duke's fancy breakfast.

"C'mon," she said, "let's find the kitchen chimney, then kill time and not starve by acquiring some food."

The kitchen wasn't difficult to find, we just followed our noses. Luckily, it was right against one of the castle walls, so getting down to its roof wasn't hard. I peeked over the edge of the roof. "There's a window right below us," I reported, "and somebody's humming."

The hummer approached the window and placed some bread on the sill. Fresh bread, as I could easily smell. "Be right back."

I crept down the wall and stabbed two loaves of bread on my belt dagger, then headed back up. "Hold these," I said, peeping up over the top of the roof and handing them to her, "I saw some apples back there."

I peeked upside down through the window and saw the cooks were still on the other side of the kitchen. The basket of apples was right beside the windows, so I impaled a few then scurried back to the roof. "Part of a nutritious breakfast," I noted.

The sunrise was nice to watch over the castle walls; not even the outraged squawking of the cook who noticed the missing bread could distract us from it. But that was nothing compared to the commotion in the kitchen a little bit later. "He wants his breakfast in the gallery?" one of the cooks shouted, in disbelief.

Someone slammed a metal tray of some sort down on the table inside the window beneath us, and she got a big grin on her face. "Wait here, I'm going to check something," she said, slipping over the edge.

I finished my apple and dropped the core down the chimney. Moments later, she returned, and offered me half of a roasted pheasant. "I was wrong, neither of us would have fit under the lid on the tray. So, I just borrowed the Duke's breakfast."

"Thanks. You know, if he's eating in the gallery, they've probably opened the shutters," I said.

"Good point. Let's go."

"Well, they're open."

"Yes, but he's in there, with his guards and very shortly probably some unlucky page. And there's still some nasty wards on the windows, I replied.

"Why are you suddenly a pessimist?" she asked.

"I'm not, I'm pointing out obstacles."

"Well, she said, looking up, "I have a plan."

I followed her gaze up to the gargoyle shaped rainspout above.

I tapped the gargoyle on the head once more. "Hello?" just to make sure it wasn't alive. You never can tell, with some people.

I looked at the rope tied around it's waist, then followed it up to her. "You sure this will hold?" I asked her.

"Of course. Now help me push," she said.

With a creak of stone on stone, the gargoyle slid over the edge. We peered over after it, watching as the rope went taut. The gargoyle arced inward, right into the window. The glass shattered and we both had to squint as there was a flash of light. Confused yells came from inside, then there was another flash as the gargoyle swung back out, blackened and the rope smoldering. In. Flash. Out. Flash. In. Flash. Out. Flash. Snap. Thud. The confused yells from inside continued, including a yelp of fear as an unwary guard stuck a pike through the window, setting off the wards again and lopping the head from the pike.

"Shut it down! Shut it down!" someone ordered.

"Sounds like our cue," I said.

The expressions on the guards' faces as we swung in over their heads was priceless. She let go of her rope and landed daintily on the far side of the room. I landed not quite so daintily on top of a precarious pile of metal plates, which tipped over with a crash. "I meant to do that!"

The guards were staring at us, from over by the window. The Duke was turned around, over in front of a cupboard. A page was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the ex-breakfast tray, which now had a remarkably good impression of the gargoyle in the middle of it. The Duke turned around and saw us. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! Ninjas! Ninjas! Please don't kill me! Please!" he yelled.

"Ninjas? Cool! Where?" I asked, craning my head around to look.

"He means us, dummy," she whispered to me.

"Oh. Yes. Right. That's us, Master Ninjas." I struck a ninja pose, arms up in the air, leg in front of me. "Hiya! Ha! Hadoken!"

"We won't kill you, if you give us what we want," she told the Duke.

I jumped around, chopping at air and kicking imaginary enemies. "Don't move, or I'll kill him with my secret ninja moves!" I warned the guards, "Hiya! No, I used that one...Sushi! Toyota! Tamogachi!"

The Duke was still screaming. "AAAH! Do whatever they say! Don't let the midget ninjas kill me! Please! I'm too beautiful to die!"

While I continued to threaten the very confused guards with my grasp of martial arts and foreign tongues, my new buddy was busy filling a sack with the best loot from the gallery. "I think that's it..." she began.

"Wait!" I yelled, "you must also give us...your toupee!"

"My toupee? How DARE you..." cried the Duke.

I jumped onto the desk and landed on both feet, then waved my hands threateningly at him and yelled, "Fuji Godzilla Voltron Bolshevik!"

He squealed and dropped the toupee on the desk, while the girl whispered "Bolshevik?" at me.

I triumphantly grabbed the toupee and held it over my head in both hands as we headed to the ropes. The guards moved warily out of our way, then the two of us grabbed the ropes and jumped out the window, while I left them a parting gift of a smoke bomb. We slid down the ropes to the ground and vanished into the forest while they were still confused.

Further away, in the safety of the trees, we were splitting up the loot when something struck me. It was just an acorn, falling out of the tree, but the distraction reminded me of something. "You know," I said, " I don't even know your name."

She smiled a bit, then said, "You can call me...Erin."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Forsyth."

"A pleasure."