The Rogue Lady

Map in the external link.

     **

     As the loud and mocking laughter from the guards faded away, the dungeons were left in an eerie silence. Most of the cells were empty, making the silence even more pronounced. Those that did hold someone were just as silent. I was one of the few to share my cell, but not for much longer.

     I counted silently to three hundred before I fished the twisted pin out of my hair and moved towards the door. While I got to work on the lock Rowan counted the passing seconds. I had one minute to pick the lock, which would leave us with nine minutes to make it to the back wall of the dungeons, get past the brick wall and make it all the way to the end of the tunnel. And, of course, we needed to be as far away from the city as possible when they sounded the alarm.

     A soft click told me the lock was one less problem to worry about. After putting the pin back in my hair, I slowly pushed the door open. Rowan grinned as he slipped past me and out of the cell. He led the way, the small knife he had hidden now grasped firmly in his hand. Almost all the cells we passed were empty but those that did hold prisoners were hard to distinguish from the empty ones. Everyone knew an attempt to escape would bring the Queen rage's upon them, which meant a slow and painful death. In other words, it was easier and better to pretend to not notice anything than to join in on the escape.

     Rowan went ahead without looking back; he knew I would follow closely and would check behind us. It was almost scary how silent everything was. In the dark, every stone looked darker, every shadow appeared more threatening, and every corner was a potential hiding place for guards. I was glad that we both knew this place by heart, otherwise we would surely have gotten lost. Hearing something, I turned around in the blink of an eye... but there was nothing. My nerves were on edge because of the escape, making me imagine things.

     When I turned back to face the front, Rowan was gone.

     For a second I panicked, but he reappeared out of thin air in front of me again, a questioning look on his face. I shook my head and he nodded in return, understanding that nothing was wrong. This time he grabbed my hand and moved along silently and swiftly. He knew better than me where the tunnel was. The wall that hid the entrance was nothing special, just another dark stone wall.

     But we knew better.

     Rowan placed both hands on the wall and slowly moved them over the stones while I kept watch. After a minute, the stones started to disappear ever so slowly; this was a slow process, slower than making them reappear, which wouldn't take more than a handful of seconds.

     Two minutes and twenty-five seconds had passed since we left our cell, which left us with approximately seven and a half minutes. That was when we heard the footsteps above us, making our heads snap up to the ceiling at the same time before we looked back down at each other. For days we had counted the time the guards left the dungeons unsupervised for. Every single time we counted the same amount of minutes. It had to be tonight, when it really mattered, that they decided to come back seven minutes earlier. The tunnel was only half open, barely enough for me to crawl through.

     "Get in!" Rowan ordered with a sense of urgency that I had rarely heard from him.

     I looked at him, ready to argue, but the hard look on his face and his locked jaw told me not to. Instead, I dropped down to my knees and crawled into the opening of the tunnel and, through it, into the darkness beyond. I glanced over my shoulder to check if Rowan was following me. But he wasn't; he was still outside the tunnel.

     Meanwhile, the footsteps were becoming louder and louder. "Come on!" I whisper-yelled at him. He shook his head, stealing a quick glance behind us in the process.