“Not with an urn,” Felix admitted. “Won’t she tell someone we’re assaulting guardsmen in here?”
“Who, Dovetree?” The baroness giggled and, with a surprisingly vicious tug, pulled the first of the guardsman’s boots free. “No, she is loyalty herself. Absolutely devoted to me. Do hurry, sweetness!”
Felix, in a bit of a fog, obeyed, kneeling and working at the armor buckles and straps with the trembling fingers of his good hand. Between the two of them, they stripped the man to his linens. Then, at the baroness’s direction, they rolled their victim onto a rug and dragged him to the adjacent dressing room beyond the study. This was made difficult by Felix’s wounded wrist, but the baroness proved stronger than she looked.
“Lionheart was a bit squeamish himself about hitting the page boy,” she said conversationally as they went. “What little mouses young men are these days! My dear baron wouldn’t think twice about clunking another fellow over the head if it served his purpose. But then, I suppose there aren’t many men like my dear baron!”
Her dear baron against whom she was actively plotting. Felix rolled his eyes heavenward and began to think longingly of his nice quiet home up north, that which so recently had seemed dull. He thought he maybe could do with a little dullness just about then.
The baroness flung open a wardrobe, and a page boy tied up in curtain cords blinked out at them. Felix nearly dropped his hold on the guardsman.
“There’s someone in your wardrobe, my lady!” he gasped.
“Of course,” said she with a disarming smile. “How are you, Cubtail? Head feeling better?” she asked the boy, who was gagged but who shrugged agreeably enough. He even slid over obligingly as Felix and the baroness hefted the guardsman into the wardrobe. The baroness then hurried to grab a number of belts and the sash off a dressing gown, with which she trussed up the unconscious guardsman with shocking expertise.
“Now, sit tight and don’t make a peep,” said the baroness, patting the page boy on the head before she shut the wardrobe door once more. She turned to Felix. “Let’s see about getting you into that uniform!”
“It’ll never work, you know,” Felix said as he followed her back to the study and the pile of discarded armor and leathers. “I’m too pale, for one thing. And they’ll spot me by my accent, for another!”
“Oh, it’ll be too dark up in the tower for them to see you, and you won’t need to talk,” said the baroness, holding the breastplate to Felix’s chest. “This doesn’t fit right.”
“It’s upside-down,” said Felix, taking it from her. “Why won’t I have to talk?”
“I’m sending Dovetree up with you. She’ll say the wine is from me, in thanks to those noble souls willing to risk life and limb for the sake of my dear baron, and so on. They’ll sip the wine, they’ll fall over unconscious, and you’ll get Lionheart to let you in.”
“I still don’t understand,” said Felix in last feeble protest as he pulled the guardsman’s jerkin over his head and the heavy boots on his feet, “why you need me for all this. I’m not even a Southlander!”
“But you jumped to save Lionheart.”
“Yes, but that was . . . different.” He didn’t think it worth trying to explain the vision of Prince Aethelbald standing in midair. It didn’t make sense in his own mind anyway; he might just choose to forget it.
“Besides,” the baroness continued in what was probably intended to be a comforting tone, “if they catch you, they probably won’t execute you, you being the crown prince of our strongest ally. They wouldn’t think twice about hanging Dovetree, or me, for that matter! But you might just pass it off as a lark and be no worse for wear.”
Somehow, this wasn’t the reassurance Felix might have wished.
“I only wish she’d seen fit to tell me of this mad scheme of hers a few minutes before expecting me to carry it out.”
Lady Dovetree led the armored guard with the shuffling gait through the corridors of the Eldest’s House, muttering angrily as she went. He dared not respond for fear of having his accent overheard. He wasn’t certain he could speak above his thudding heart in any case.