“No, no,” Elliot said hurriedly. His head had already begun bleeding, and he touched it and winced. “I’ll just run and get the guards after you’re gone, and tell them I was knocked out.”
“Can you give us a ten-minute headstart?” Kasper asked.
Elliot grimaced. “I’ll try.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said, because ten minutes wasn’t very long at all.
He nodded, and we turned to make our escape. Before we did, I stopped and tossed the keys to Samuel, who reached his arm out of his cell to catch them.
“There’s one key for the shackles, and one for the cell,” I told him. “Get out of here as fast as you can.”
He’d move slower than us, but since the guards would most likely be far more interested in catching us, Samuel actually had a good chance of making it out.
Kasper reached the top of the steps at the end of the dungeon before I did. They were curved, so I couldn’t see the top, and I actually thought he might have left without me. But he was waiting with his back pressed against the wall, peering out around the corner.
“Is anyone coming?” I whispered.
“Two guards went around the corner, so just to be safe we should wait another thirty seconds.”
“Once we get past here, we won’t be going the same way, so you don’t have to wait for me.”
He turned back to look at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to find Kennet. Our only way out of this is getting him to confess his part in this. Otherwise we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives on the run.”
I wasn’t sure how much knocking guards out and escaping a pair of shackles would do to help convince anyone I was innocent, but once I found Kennet and got him alone, I’d do whatever it took to get him to tell the truth.
And if I couldn’t get him to admit everything, I would get him to tell me something that would help me gather more evidence to convince Evert that he was working with Konstantin Black and Viktor D?lig. Evert would take his wife’s side in many things, but he would never stomach any aid to his nemesis.
“I’ll go with you,” Kasper said.
I shook my head. “No, you need to take Tilda and get out of here as fast as you can.”
“You think I want to drag Tilda and the baby along with me into a life in exile?” he asked. “I need my name cleared just as much as you do, so I’m going with you. We started this together, we finish this together.”
I relented. “Okay.”
Kasper leaned forward, craning his neck out into the hall, and it must’ve been clear, because he dashed out into the hall and I ran after him.
FORTY-THREE
ambuscade
We sat in wait behind the door of the en suite bathroom. I’d left it partially open so I could peer through the narrow crack. When the bedroom creaked open, I held my breath and leaned forward, trying to see the figure who had come in.
In the late 1800s, the Kanin had enjoyed an influx of cash thanks to a few well-placed changelings and the industrial revolution. That allowed Queen Viktoria to undertake a massive remodeling project on the west wing of the palace, including the installation of dumbwaiters in the guest rooms.
Guests of the palace were always dignitaries, and the Queen didn’t want them to be forced to trek down the cold halls to the kitchen or wait for servants to bring up inevitably chilly food. (Even in the nineteenth century, we had a problem keeping the massive stone palace warm.) All Kasper and I had to do was get down to the lower level beneath the west wing, which was separated from the dungeon under the east wing. That required a lot of moving quietly, hiding against walls, and dashing into broom closets and restrooms until guards passed by.
And it all had to be done very quickly. Right now, hardly anyone knew that we’d been arrested, let alone that we’d escaped, so our sneaking around was more of a precaution. But we were in no position to take chances.
Once we made it down to the west wing, I left Kasper to choose the appropriate dumbwaiter because he had more knowledge of the palace. As a H?gdragen, he knew most of the ins and outs of the palace, since that had allowed him to better protect it.
Given the cozy relationship between Kennet and our King and Queen, we both surmised that he would most likely be staying in the finest room we had. That fortunately made finding the dumbwaiter a bit easier, because the nicest guest chamber was on the south corner of the palace, in a massive turret.
Once we made it up to the bedroom, I set about checking to see if it was Kennet’s room. Thanks to the servants who made the beds and tidied up, it was nearly impossible to tell if the room had been used at all.