Chapter 27: The Escape, the Demand...an Arrest
Lizzie Black... Does New Reviewer Dance hehehe, thank you. I suppose you realised that you sent me 21 reviews in one day... I love you. You love my characters...I love you! Hehehehehe...I am sooooo pleased that you found my story...yay! I love that you're experiencing all this excitement in one night...sometimes its better to begin a story when the author's already written a bunch. AND you hate my villains...I still love you.
Cheeky! Yay...but, Cheeky, you know how he's involved...he's employed by the Duke of Lormington, who is employed by Mother Iku...okok, good luck with the lack of internet.
Aphrodite: hello...and thank you thank you...Does a modified version of NEW REVIEWER DANCE yay...I'm tryin...but I'm really busy.
Liz: yup, the King's acting on impulse and pain...not good at all...thanks for the reminders and such...read on!
At about nine in the morning, the guards rotated. At nine thirty, the call for rotation sounded again. Hershel waited without any real aim for the next guard to arrive. The young man leaned against the bars, expecting at any moment the heavy trod of the guard's feet.
None arrived. The rest of the gypsies noticed as well and most pressed their faces against the bars in curiosity. A few minutes after the call had sounded, Yona slipped through the dungeon. In his hand, he held a ring of keys, muffled to keep the jingling nonexistent.
Within minutes, the three cells holding the women and children were empty. Marcus and the Count's business in the city had convinced three young men to accept employment for the day. The men herded the people through the twisting and nearly empty dungeon, admonishing them gently to keep quiet. They did so, practised as they were in sleuth. The women and children held the bangles that had not been taken close to them, dispelling any unnecessary noises.
Fifteen minutes from the time that Yona had unlocked the cell, they occupants of the first three cells were off the palace grounds, smuggled away by the three hired men and three compassionate servants. A small tunnel of the Troll King's era as the owner of the palace made a very convenient escape for the bootlegged gypsies.
The men had taken a different and less safe rout from their cells. The old and injured of both groups had been taken directly from their cells to a waiting hay-wagon in the inner courtyard, where they lay them under heaps of hay.
The spy waited in the shadows, glancing at his pilfered pocket-watch. ' Two minutes.' He thought, 'Two minutes until the guard call. Two minutes to get away...not enough time.' The man slipped from the shadows of the inner courtyard and into the dungeons. He took up a fighting stance at the entrance of the dungeons.
A prisoner peered through the bar of his cell. Old, emaciated and dirty, the man called out in a wheezing voice,
" You! Let me out..." Yona glanced at him.
" My business is not with you. Kindly leave me be." The man coughed before baiting the black-clothed man further,
" I'll tell them guards of the Count and his son's visit..they'll be imprisoned for you doings...how'd ya like that, eh?" Yona clenched and unclenched his jaw, ' Years of imprisonment may have taken effect on his body, but his wit is much intact...to much so.' Then, he asked the man what his crime was. The man's dull eyes took on a gleam and he began his story,
" I were but a lad of seventeen, ready to marry my Yarnala...were in Lennick's one morn, gettin' some bread for my Ma. I were handin' my coin to the baker, and all outa nowheres, a lad 'bout my age came racin' by...all in a hurry. Why, he knocked me over, spillin' a burnin' fire all over me...burnt my skin, right here it did..." the man pulled his shirt off and Yona was obliged to peer at the scar burn on the man's shoulder and chest. " I hadn't even stopped writhin' like a snake from the pain when them Guards captured me...set me here without a trial..." he paused dramatically, seeming the well-trained player that Yona suspected he was, " set me here for twenty-three years, I never seen the sight of the sun in that long." He sighed before continuing, " Help me...please help me...will you set me free, my good, er, um... man?" Yona nearly smiled, being disguised as a sexless person had countless advantages, not in the least, disconcerting people. He glanced cautiously down the corridor for the guard, and, seeing none, walked over to the prisoner. The man leaned forward in anticipation and grunted in surprise. He fell back heavily onto the stone floor of his cell. Yona moved back into his position, slipping his poisoned stiletto back into it's impermeable slot on his thigh. 'People shouldn't meddle.'
Mother Iku's pursed lips did nothing for her wrinkled face. 'She looks more like a raisin every time I see her,' Count DeBracey thought. The man bowed courteously,
" Mistress Iku, it is good to see you again. But what is it that you are here for?" He sat quietly and attentively as he signed behind his back to Marcus, who sat on his father's sofa behind the desk at which his father sat. Marcus silently read his father's hands. Leave. Careful, keep watch. Go to Y-O-N-A. Marcus stretched and made his excuses. The elderly mistress of the Green Coterie nodded and the young man left, pleased at escaping a further encounter with the bossy and irritable woman.
" I come to ask for information on your son's whereabouts nearly a month ago. I have had news from my agents that he may have meddled in some rather dangerous, but highly sensitive matters. Unwittingly, of course. I would be obliged if you would regale me in his itinerary." For all that her words were formed as a request, her tone indicated her true meaning. A Mother of the Green Coterie... or any Coterie never truly asked. They demanded.
The Count frowned slightly, though his appearance was still that of a friendly and attentive listener.
" My dear woman, I cannot begin to believe that Marcus would have engaged in any dangerous acts, however unwittingly. I thank you for your concern most heartily. Would you care to join me for my afternoon tea?" He got up and reached for the cord, which, like it's twin in every room in the palace, rang the servants' quarters.
Mother Iku's lips shrunk further.
The Count watched interestedly as her knuckles whitened, the parched and puckered skin rasping dryly as she clenched her fists. She stood in a fury.
"I will have your son's itinerary! I must know!" She lunged towards the count and grasped him with an unexpected strength from such an elderly woman... " I WILL have it. You do not want the Green Coterie against you!" The Count unpried her hands from his tunic and stood. He took her gently yet firmly by the elbow and escorted her to the door, where he turned her to face him. When he spoke, his quiet voice penetrated the corners of the room, and he explained to Mother Iku in a gentle voice.
" I have no doubt that the Green Coterie is a dangerous cult. But I know for a fact what you know, that the Red Coterie is known for their perilous antagonization. I am on of three who have escaped their wrath with my life. The Green Coterie is mild by comparison." He smiled, just as polite as when she had entered not a minute ago, " Now as you have chosen not to stay for tea, I would ask you to withdraw most kindly, Mistress Iku. Good day to you." She was ushered out without any more ceremony and the oaken door closed heavily behind her.
The Count's friendly smile died as the sound of the door closing echoed through the room. He glanced towards the desk, knowing full well that it would be searched later, no doubt by one of Mother Iku's spies. He left the room and made his way to the stables, where he saddled his mount and rode into the city.
He arrived at the Beggar's Mug at ten in the evening, the middle of the heavy drinking time of night. The bartender nodded towards the back wall, where a large door stood blatantly.
When the Count emerged an hour later, he rode back to the palace, where he had a brief meeting with his son. Marcus then wrote a short message on a tiny scrap of paper and made his way to the rose garden, where the note was discarded at it's proper place.
Yona, of course, found it with very little trouble. ' So the Green Coterie is onto the Count...this is expected. A little sooner than I had thought, but it hardly matters.' Marcus, unbeknownst to his father, had long been in the Queen's service. One of his main objectives in the Mattensworth Estate area had been involving the Gypsies. ' And now those adverse to the Queen's desire for a child, the Green Coterie, have found one of the major agents in the scheme. How the plot thickens...'
"Perhaps the Green Coterie has had the King's ear from the start, and they are only now showing their faces." Abby nodded, but a frown still marred her features.
" Even if that were true, Keosha, why would Natalia contact us now in regard for the gypsies...it makes not a bit of sense." They walked down the stone corridors, unwittingly giving several listening ears a bit of information as yet unknown to the efficient gossip chain of the palace servants.
Mary Ellen smiled. ' And not a bit of sense it will make, yer ladyship when the Mother Iku has the King's Council arrest yer lover for consortin' with other magic suppliers.' The young maid slipped off to find the woman to paid her so well.
Within an hour, the Royal Guards were handed the writ for the young Sir Count DeBracey's arrest. As they went out in search of him, Mother Iku watched, satisfied from her third-storey window. ' Poetic justice. He valiantly helps the gypsy-vagrants escape, only to be arrested and imprisoned himself for breaking the magical supply code.' Her faded green eyes were lit with evil happiness as she watched the guards move steadily closer to the rose garden, where the unsuspecting Count and the heir to the Mattensworth estate, his lover, sat in the peace of a sunny afternoon.
I apologise for the short chapter...haven't had time.
Posted on March 22nd, 2oo5
