Vale

Chapter 5

            Even though I dumped it dangerously close to the wharf, the civic guard takes forever to find Dega Goodall's body. If any of the guards from the High Castle tower just so happened to have been looking that way they would've seen me drag her down the wharf, tear up the grate at the end of the main drainage pipe and plop her down easy.

            Once they do find her I sneak close enough to the scene once the guards isolate it, to hear them state the time of death so I know nobody will even suspect there were two Dega Goodalls out there at any point in time. My only concern is that Lady Goodall was already hypothermic when I returned to the murdercave, so maybe they mistakenly determine an earlier time than what it was. Technically I'm safe but I like to know what to expect.

            The townsfolk around me have gathered as close to the pier as the security would let them and are in deep chatter about the scandal, the Goodalls, about who could've done this. Everyone around me is dressed much fancier than I am; softer fabrics, vivid colours, lighter voices, brighter eyes. If these people had half of an idea about what goes on a few miles behind them up in the hills... or if they cared.

            The sun has begun its descent behind the High Castle when the guard commander Mason comes down to the scene. The crowd around has mostly dispersed so I'm making rounds around the security line and acting overtly concerned, joining a group of loud people who "just want to know if their families are safe from the plague". Then they bring the body up from the pipe covered in a white tarp while Mason exchanges a few words with the investigators and I overhear the words "possibly", "two past midday" and "liver".

            Excellent, I'm out of here.

            The bells ring for eight o'clock when I break out of my lair dressed in full professional attire. I'm comfortable and light; the heaviest thing on my body currently is my grappling hook. The second I saw the amount of guards in Ecklehold I knew I would have to make a quiet drop-in and leave as soon as possible. It's not that I'm unequipped to handle them it's just that I don't want to risk leaving my daggers behind.

            I've had protected targets before but not ones locked away in the deepest corner of a stone box half-buried underground. They usually get on the move eventually or there's a change of guards, or some sort of window but the only place my current target would be going is the gallows.

            Which is why this job has been weird from the beginning. I was grabbed on the street just by my usual supplier's store and paid upfront the most handsome sum of money to kill a man who was already on death row by then. Even better/worse than that I was hired by a shantee, of all people.

            But I'm not paid for asking questions unless I'm already on the job so I took the money and got to work. Only three days later I'm outside the stone walls of the fence surrounding Ecklehold, the residence of the vilest criminals in all the country Zavier has no more use of, and some of the petty ones he no longer wishes to pretend to feed.

            Social commentary aside, I choose the spot where the fence is closes to the wall of what once was the rectory; with the additional height of the wall built over it to form the biggest block in the back of the prison estate. It casts a shadow at just the right angle for me to hop the fence – or as others would say, scale the thirty-foot wall – and wait behind it patiently until it's safe to grapple over to the prison block wall.

            I can't get on the definitely guarded roof because it's overseen by anyone in the bell tower and on the buttress looking this way. I squeeze myself against the wall, holding myself up by the hook embedded in the wall and the spikes of my boots planted firmly below me. I'm small and still in the shadows but it only takes one observant guard, and then what am I going to do?