Jade Mouse

Chapter 20

Sometime around the second city block, I decided I had become very tired of the whole notion of running.

I'd just done six or seven minutes of high-stress calisthenics, the kind of fighting that used up a great deal of resources very, very quickly, and left you trembling and exhausted, no matter how few injuries you've managed to sustain. I hadn't so much as been scratched during the encounter in the streets, and yet I felt certain I was going to die a horrible death if I didn't find a patch of ground somewhere and just lie down for a spell. My limbs felt heavy, and my breathing was coming in ragged gasps.

As I continued plodding forward, I periodically glimpsed through my lens to follow my quarry's progress and make sure I hadn't lost him. Connor wasn't going very fast, probably due to his limp, and wasn't trying anything clever or bothering to attempt to hide amongst back-street rubble like he'd done during our previous encounter. Possibly he didn't even know I was behind him, though I wasn't going to assume that. There was nothing that I was going to take for granted about this kid anymore, nothing at all.

It turned out that I hadn't really needed the tracking gem this time – Connor ended up running straight to the very first place I would have thought to look for him anyways, probably the only place he could think of going.

I slowed my pace to a walk once in sight of his fortress-like dwelling, and took a few moments to inspect it.

The old Jaedemus Keep was the sort of building they had in mind when they'd invented the word 'dilapidated'. It still looked like a fairly solid five-story building at its core, and it possessed some very respectable stonework, but the outside was dark and dirty, and evidence of neglect and ruin was everywhere you looked. A couple of fruit trees in the front had withered and died, wooden shingles had split and turned grey from exposure to the elements, and what may have once been elegant banners had been shredded to rags of an indeterminate color long ago.

If there weren't a dozen rumors going around about this place being haunted, then the locals simply weren't paying attention.

I checked the lens again. He was upstairs already, at the very top of the ominous structure, and had made it there much faster than I would have considered humanly possible.

Yeah, of course he had.

After climbing over the rather exaggeratedly aggressive iron fence, I quickly skirted the perimeter of the yard, and, under the cover of a few trees that hadn't yet died, I jogged around to the front door. The aging cobwebs running across it told me that Connor hadn't come this way, and thus the door was very likely rigged with an alarm or trap.

The back door was very much the same, and there weren't any windows on the main floor. The closest approachable window was a second-story one, with most of the remaining windows located much higher up. That really wouldn't have been a problem except for the unusual way the keep had been constructed. About two floors up the brick and stone angled away from the center of the keep and became nearly unclimbable, flaring out to form a base for some impressive looking towers set into the side. Very little wall surface was strictly vertical, and dangling from the underside of a rain-slick precipice isn't exactly my idea of a fun time. Even without the rain, and with ample time to do it, attempting something like that risked dashing my brains out on the stone cobbles below.

Second floor window, then. Probably trapped as well. I'd just have to be extra careful.

I scampered up the climbable portion of the wall. The rain picked up a bit just as I neared the window, wind-driven droplets of water smacking into my face and gently tapping my cloak. As much as I wished to get inside and out of the rain, entering this place was not something I wanted to rush. This kid had proved himself to be unusually adept when it came to opportunistic traps, which meant this was going to be just as dangerous as breaking into an active Lord's keep, if not more so.