CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
On second thought, this was not a good plan.
I had absolutely no idea how heavy steel armor actually is! It weighs as much as I do! It’s cumbersome, doesn’t move well, and is incredibly hot. I’m not sure if I can actually manage it, but my choices aren’t very expansive.
“What if I just go in my uniform and say I took my armor off while I went for a walk?”
Simon shakes his head. “No. Elites on-duty only take their armor off to sleep, and sometimes not even then. No one would believe you were ‘just going for a walk’. Also, without your armor, you look nothing at all like a muscular Elite. Third, Elites don’t wear a uniform under their armor. Fourth…”
Sigh. “I get it, Simon. Hey Kesn, what if there’s a way to bring Cap and His Excellency out to me?”
Kesn also shakes her head. “The Palace is on lockdown. No one in, no one out, everyone checked constantly. If you think that’s rough on everyone else, imagine how many eyes are on His Majesty, His Excellency, and your Captain. They can’t sneak to the washroom without an escort. I could never get them out of the Palace.”
Double sigh. “Can we get Lada or Gimmir out?”
She shakes her head again. “Those two won’t leave the sides of their charges since the lockdown. At least once that I was there for, the female physically sat on your Captain when he tried to leave a room without her.”
Triple sigh. “Sounds like Lada, alright. So, I can’t just walk in the front door, I can’t get them out to see me, the information has to be kept so secure that I can’t risk a com call where anyone could overhear, and if anyone from the Palace Guard realizes that I’m not supposed to be there, I’ll be killed on sight. It sounds like the armor is my only option.”
Kesn cocks her head. “Yeah. Sorry, Commander. I’d say you could wait another couple days for the lockdown to be lifted, but we need to get this information to them immediately. I think you’re stuck with wearing the armor over your uniform.”
Quadruple sigh. “Okay. I don’t know how convincing this is really going to be, but I’ll wear the armor. I’m going to try walking around to get used to it for a few minutes. Ambassador, can you tell me what we’ll expect when we get inside? Checkpoints and such?”
We start walking slowly, while Kesn talks. “The secret way happens to be a space between two of the out-buildings that Zaxn found when he was little. That path leads to a door no one uses, probably because it opens onto a blank wall and a tiny pathway between two out-buildings. That door leads to the cheese cellar, which is dark and contained.
“That cellar leads out into the kitchen staff quarters area, which is not patrolled during lockdown. The kitchen staff quarters area has a door that leads to the small dining room, which is almost never occupied. Behind that is a ballroom which hasn’t been used in years. In the corners of the ballroom are hidden alcoves for soldiers to watch without disturbing the guests. Those alcoves have tunnels which lead to the old guard barracks, which is also never used. From there, there are no checkpoints to the apartments or offices, but there will be two between us and His Majesty.”
That’s one heck of a route. I haven’t even made it across the room and I’m already tired wearing this armor. This isn’t going to work the way I’ve planned. Not that it was much of a plan anyway. Maybe I should just give up and make a com call. It won’t be secure, but maybe if I can get them to go somewhere private…
Somewhere private like the Ambassador’s office?
I stop and wait for Kesn to notice and turn back to me. “The offices are on the other side of the checkpoints? Ambassador, what are the chances you can get Cap and His Excellency to follow you to your office?”
She taps her finger on her chin as she ponders the idea. “If I just ask those two for a conference in my office, I could bring them through the checkpoints. It could work. Their guards are going to want to search it first, but none of the Palace guards should follow us that far.”
I nod. “Their guards will be Lada and Gimmir. I can work with that easily. We’ll try that. Can you wave Simon over to help me remove this steel?”
She waves, then looks at me seriously. “You do realize that you will be killed if you’re caught, right? And I can’t be caught with you, so I’ll have to always be a room ahead of you. You’ll basically be on your own.”
I smile. “Make sure I have directions to your office, and I’ll get myself there. All you have to do is get Cap and the Admiral to follow you to me. I’ll worry about myself.”
Simon starts unlacing the straps holding my armor on. I think this idea of sneaking into the Palace is easily the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, but my options are to either do it, or risk that the Black Tongues will be helpful and wait until the lockdown is ended before doing anything. I can’t risk that. Risking my own life is better than risking any other lives. Besides, it’s not the first time I had to sneak around a goblin world and risk losing my head. I just really need to stop making a habit of it.
Once the armor’s removed, I stretch and wipe my brow. I’m already sweating from that armor and I only wore it for a few minutes! Plan B is definitely a better idea than Plan A was, although neither of them are really great.
I roll my head and move my shoulders, then look at the goblins. “I guess we should get this started. Simon, take care of Zaxn for me. Kesn, let’s walk to your landcraft.”
Simon puts a hand on my shoulder. “Wait. Stupid elf. If you’re going to do something this dumb, then I need to give you something in case you screw it up like I figure you will. Follow me.”
I follow him into the armory, around a corner, and to a crate. He grabs a nearby belt and passes it to me. As I buckle it, I see that it has two small pouches on it. Opening the crate, he pulls out a box and hands it to me. I move to open the box, but he lays his hand on it. “These darts are coated with sleeping poison. If you end up in trouble, jab one in their neck and they’ll fall in two seconds. Don’t stick yourself with them, or you’ll fall instead. They’ll be asleep for two days, and they’ll be missed, so only use one if you absolutely have to, or use all of them and get the hell out of there. Got it?”
“Got it. Thanks Simon.” I open the box and see the darts, painted black with black tips. Assassin weapons, basically. I carefully pull them out one at a time, and stick them in the belt pouches. Once I have about eight of them, I hand the box back.
We walk to the desk at the front of the armory, and I find a piece of parchment and pen, which I hand to Kesn to write directions on. Once I have those and am sure I can read them right, we leave the ship and head for the landcraft storage. She pulls a key charm from her pocket and points to a small two-seat vehicle, which we get in.
During the ride to the Palace, Kesn turns to me. “Commander, thank you for finding out all these details and figuring out my world is in danger. If not for you and your Ambassador, we wouldn’t have any idea about the attack, and many folk could have been killed. You’ve saved a lot of lives today, even if we haven’t yet finished everything. Stenchstone thanks you, and I thank you.”
That makes me smile. “Thank you for the kind words, Ambassador. There’s still a lot of hard work to go, though, and I’m relying on you to manage the Stenchstone side of that deal while I and my crew do what we can. Many of us will deserve equal thanks when everything is said and done.”
The ride to the Palace doesn’t take long, and as we get close I start seeing all of the squads of Palace Guard that have taken up positions around the grounds. Every door we pass has a guard squad positioned outside of it, and probably another squad directly on the inside. I slowly slide down in my seat, hoping none of them see the landcraft with an elf inside of it getting closer.
We turn at a side of the building and ride to the back, where a large storage area is. There aren’t any guards back here. I guess they don’t feel the need to worry about landcraft if they’re checki
ng everyone who comes into and leaves from any one of the regularly-used Palace doors. They probably assume that folk will come to the Palace, not be able to get in and will then leave. When all this is done, I hope Kesn says something to them about their security holes, but right now I’m glad for them.
Exiting the vehicle, I follow Kesn around a corner towards some outbuildings which appear to be simple storage sheds. Everything is still made of red clay and only one level tall, and I’m suddenly grateful that I don’t have to climb anything! The outbuildings all have space between them, just wide enough for a single goblin or elf to walk through.
We come to two at the end of a line and stop between them. Turning, we walk between the buildings until we reach a door halfway through. The door was obviously put here when this building was the last one in the row, and then the new building was added making the door a bit useless. Kesn wiggles the old style handle, and the door slowly creaks open.
I follow Kesn through the door and pull it behind me, immediately dropping the interior into darkness. I feel Kesn’s hand on my arm and take it in mine. She leads me through the darkness carefully. A set of stairs takes us down under the building, then we twist and turn through a small room. We stumble a few times while she tries to remember the way through the darkness, but we eventually find another stairway leading up. At the top, we come to a stop and I hear her working another door handle. The door cracks open, and some light spills into the room.
She turns to me and gives me a smile that I assume is supposed to be comforting, but the obvious worry and fear in her eyes colors it a bit. “Good luck, Commander. I’ll go ahead of you. Wait about a minute before you follow. I’ll see you in my office.” She quickly steps outside the door and pulls it until it’s mostly closed.
Looking through the open space, I see her walk down the passageway a short ways, stop at the third door, and go through it. That matches what she wrote for my directions. I wait for a minute or so, check that the passageway is still empty, then step outside and close the door behind me. Walking quickly, I reach the third door, open it a little, shift inside the room and close it.
The small dining room is large enough that I’d call it the ‘large dining room’, so I can only wonder how large the ‘large dining room’ actually is. I’m standing behind a tapestry meant to shield the kitchen staff door from the diners, and see a pathway around the room behind more tapestries for staff to walk unnoticed. I follow that around to another door and open it, stepping quickly inside.
I can tell this ballroom used to be fairly extravagant, but has fallen into disrepair. The large wooden dancing floor is covered with a many-years-old layer of dust, and the tapestries on the walls have holes in them. The doorway between these two rooms wasn’t covered, probably for the guests to go between the dining room and the ballroom during parties.
I notice some footprints in the dust to my left, probably from Kesn and Zaxn as they passed through. I follow the footprints to a corner, where a small guard post exists. It’s large enough for one guard with a crossbow to stand behind the arrow slit and monitor the room. I step inside and see a wooden door situated behind where the guard would be standing. I push it and it swings easily, opening into a small passageway.
The small passage comes to a stairway down, leading under the other rooms. I find other passageways connecting to this one – probably from the other ballroom corners – but continue down this main passage until I come to another stairway up, which leads to another door. The door swings when I push it, opening into a barracks room. This must be the old guard barracks. The bed platforms are almost as dusty as the ballroom was.
I check my directions on the parchment, then see the door out of this room. Once I leave the room, there are only open passageways between here and Kesn’s office. That could be tricky if anyone is in those passageways while I’m in them, but now’s not the time to get nervous. I should have done that before I left! Besides, Kesn went first, and if she saw someone in the passageway, she would have distracted them. …I hope.
Opening the door, I stick my head out and check the passageway in both directions. No folk in sight, so I quickly exit and fast-step down the left passage. Coming to a corner, I slide up against the wall and peek around it. No one there, either. I jog down that passageway to the first left, and peek around the corner again. This passageway leads to a four-way crossing at which I need to make a right, but I won’t be able to easily sneak that corner like I could with these. I’ll have to just hope for the best.
I jog quickly to the intersection, look in all directions, and see no folk. I continue to the right, jogging the corridor until I reach another right-hand turn. I look quickly and jog that passageway, stopping at the fourth door and quickly duck inside the room that should be the Ambassador’s office.
Thankfully, there’s no one here. The office is a good size, set up like Cap’s office with a desk and chairs to one side, and a small table with eight chairs on the other. I quickly walk around the desk to make sure no one’s there, then take a seat.
I can’t believe that actually worked! I successfully broke into the Stenchstone Palace! I remember what Simon said in the landcraft the other day – peace leads to complacency. I wonder if breaking in was so easy because the guards are complacent and no longer noticing security holes. Then I wonder if maybe those rooms are unused because they changed everything after the ‘last goblin king’ was killed and are relying on new procedures to cover all eventualities while considering these to be part of the ‘old security structure’ and therefore able to be ignored. Just like they cover the doors but not the landcraft area, because ‘no one can get into the Palace doors so monitoring the landcraft is pointless’. I hope Kesn can straighten them out about this.
Looking around Kesn’s office, I notice the same painted portraits of the King and Admiral Shockpaw that the Overseer has in his office. The Admiral’s portrait really is an inspiring reminder of the day the world first started to see peace. I hope we can stop whatever this gang plot is so folk can still believe in it.
Around fifteen minutes pass in silence before I hear clanking steel coming closer to the outside of the doors. It’s funny how you don’t really notice the noise of the steel armor when there’s a whole platoon in it moving around, but when there are only two dwarves coming down an otherwise-empty passageway, there’s definitely no ‘stealth’ involved.
Just in case, I get behind the Ambassador’s desk and crouch down, peeking out from the side until I can see the door. There’s always a possibility it’s not them, so I should be prepared.
The clanking gets closer and louder, stopping right outside the door. After a second, there’s a knock, followed by another knock. A few seconds of silence pass, then two more knocks.
I really hope they don’t think I’m dumb enough to open that door. How stupid would that be? I wonder how many stupid criminals get caught just because they’re hiding in a room but still answer the door when a guard knocks. I’d like to think I’m smarter than that!
Another few seconds and the door opens wide. Two squat bodies covered head-to-toe in steel armor block the doorway while they look inside. Nothing happens for a minute, then I hear Kesn’s voice behind the armored dwarves. “Commander?”
I release the breath I was holding. “Behind the desk, Ambassador.”
The two steel bodies step out of the way to let Kesn, Cap, and Admiral Shockpaw cross into the room. Standing, I wave them to the table while Kesn closes the door, leaving Gimmir and Lada outside to guard the room.