The Royal Thief

Chapter Nineteen: the Feather Boy

Fear flashed across his face and for a moment he stood standing there, frozen. Then he jerked his head, breaking eye contact, and sprinted down the hall.

"Wait!" I shouted, running after him. My boots slid on the smooth floor, while his bare feet pounded around corners, down stairs, past doors. Why on earth was he running from me? Hadn't I saved his life in the alley?

I could no longer see him. He was too far ahead. Instead, I relied on the pattering of his feet to figure out where he was. And then, when I realized where he was going, I smiled. He shouldn't have tried to outrun a thief in her own castle.

Darting through courtyards and around servants, he lead me across the first floor, down into the storage rooms. Without a thought, I followed him into the musty maze of honey-combed chambers. Every once in a while, I would catch a glimpse of him just ahead of me, darting through a door or around a corner, but I no longer bothered to follow him. I took my own path to where I knew he was going.

Something few people seemed to realize was how thick the walls of the castle were. Unusually thick, in fact. Thick enough, in some areas, to conceal a narrow passageway between them. Honestly, they weren't very useful. I had already grown to big for most of them. But a young boy like Kemp-- or at least, a very skinny teenager-- would have no trouble slipping through the passage that lead from the last storage room and back up to the east wing. I didn't question that that was where he was heading, because it was exactly what I would have done. He had no reason to think that I would know about the passage. Therefore, in his mind, if he could get there first (which he thought he would, because I didn't know where he was going and so had to follow him), all he had to do was get into the tunnel, follow it upstairs, tell his supervisor that he had showed me the schedule storage room, and leave me down here to realize I had lost him. Too bad for him, I was just a little bit smarter.

When he rounded the last corner he found me leaning on the wall right next to the tunnel's entrance.

"Well? Are you going to tell me what that was all about?"

His mouth opened and closed. He looked desperate. Scared. He raised one hand and wiped his nose on his sleeve. His eyes were red.

Crouching down on the floor, I reached out and took his other hand. "Hey. What's wrong?"

He mumbled something indistinct.

"You know, call me crazy, but I don't think you have any reason to be afraid of me."

His hair flopped over his eyes as he sniffed loudly. "You won't tell anyone?"

I shook my head. "Tell anyone what?"

"About... about me being..." He looked at me strangely. "You didn't even...?" There was a question hanging onto the end of his words but I couldn't figure out what he was trying to say. Unless...

"Does this have something to do with the feather?"

His brown eyes grew wide. "You don't know."

"You can pretty much assume I don't know anything," I told him frankly. Which was true. Right now, he held all the answers.

"Oh," He whispered.

"Well, are you going to tell me?"

He shook his head very slowly. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Just can't."

"I saved your life," I pointed out.

"They didn't want my life, they just wanted the bag."

"Well then, I saved your bag."

He shook his head again, but now he was grinning a little, like a small child with a secret. Which I suppose he was. "I can't tell you." He paused, and then he added, "But."