Using the phone he provided, I send a text to Reginald to let him know I have the money. He doesn’t send a response. I’d feel inordinately better if I knew for sure there’d be someone ready to pick me up at Giovanni’s.
There’s someone around me at nearly every moment of the day, but at least the toilet is still a private event. I don’t know what to bring, and finally I settle on the jeans and shirt I used the night I tried to escape in the catacombs. My half-boots will match well enough, and no one will think it too odd that I’m wearing them, even with my more formal gown. I’m beginning a new life—there’s truly nothing else to bring that won’t mark me as a former citizen of Sonoman-Versailles. I roll the clothes tightly and scrunch them into the cage of my panniers on the left side. The right is stacked with euros. I’m as prepared as I can be and am simply waiting for the ridiculous ball tonight to be over. It’s an unfamiliar sensation, looking forward to something; for months I’ve been begging the clock to stop, to turn back. Two hours before the ball, I’m dressed and ready when Lord Aaron presents himself at my door, all smiles and low, flourishing bows.
“Your Grace,” he says, bending to kiss my hand. “I have a present for you,” he adds softly. “I think I can override the system to let you visit Saber in the prisons, and still make my way in after the soirée. If you’re game to risk it.”
My chin trembles, but I know my answer without having to think. “Of course.”
“I’m taking Her Almost-Highness on a stroll,” Lord Aaron informs a stern-looking woman—one of my new staff, who, knowing His Highness, must be trained much more thoroughly in security than in couturiery. “We shan’t leave the palace,” he assures her before she can protest.
She lets us depart, but about ten seconds after we leave the Queen’s Bedchamber, I glance back and see one of the younger new maids—even younger than me, I think—stepping through the double doors with an armload of satin, looking for all the world like she’s been sent on an errand.
“We have a tail,” I murmur to Lord Aaron.
“As expected. Not to worry.” He laughs brightly at something I haven’t said, but I don’t dare join him. My nerves are stretched tight, and any sound I made would be false and brittle.
He carries my hand in his, held formally high, and chatters and giggles all the way down one hallway and then another. The girl continues to follow us, her cheeks red as it becomes evident that she’s on no errand for the dressmaker.
“A little faster now,” Lord Aaron says as he approaches the end of a long wing.
We turn and he looks up at the ceiling. “Blackout spot.”
“Really?” This is a new secret.
“Not always,” Lord Aaron says, confirming my suspicions. “Just for the next five minutes. Here!” He nearly swings me around another corner and into a lift waiting with its doors open. “Press B, quick!”
I hear the young woman’s footsteps, but the doors close fully before she makes it around the corner. “It’s going to be obvious where we’ve gone,” I say.
“A little faith, Dani, please.” Lord Aaron pulls out the wireless keypad he used on the balcony yesterday evening. “We’re not hiding—of course she’ll know where we’ve gone. But now she can’t follow us, can she? At least not without running to the emergency stairs on the other end of this wing, which she may or may not have clearance to enter.” He pulls a length of optic fiber from his pocket and patches it into a small opening in the lift panel. “More likely she’ll wait for the lift to return, and that’ll be her mistake.”
“Jam the lift; of course.” An elementary bit of hacking.
“Done,” Lord Aaron says, snatching the fiber back out and curling it into his fist as the doors open on the starkly modern—and thus barren-looking—basement. “This way,” he says after glancing down at his tablet, fingers flying across the surface, inputting coordinates. I recognize this as an update to his location hack—he’s telling M.A.R.I.E. that our Lenses aren’t on the grid. I suppress a twinge of curiosity—or maybe jealousy. He’s always been a better hacker than me. Ironically, I was always too worried about breaking rules.
We follow a veritable maze of hallways, and I’m once again struck by how massive this level is. Obviously it’s a mirror of the palace layout above, but without the cavernous salons and ballrooms, it seems they can fit hundreds of tiny cubicles and storage rooms down here, and I can’t help but wonder what secrets they hold.
“This one.” Lord Aaron points at a door with a large window in it, then opens it for me with a graceful swing of his arm—all smiles and tittering laughter.
The room that greets us is small and stark, with one heavy door and a single counter in front of a desk, where a man in a black uniform sits. My stomach quivers when I see a gun at his belt. I’ve rarely seen such a weapon, and never this close.
“Visiting pass,” Lord Aaron says, holding up his tablet with a document on it that looks much like the one the security guard showed me yesterday when he searched us.