BURN

Prologue

It's a miracle that no one has noticed her yet. Really.

Puffing, feet swinging, Nicola digs her left pick into another patch of ice and pulls herself another few inches up the east tower of Camelot's royal palace, towards the open window. She's thankful for the mottled surface of the palace-- part ice, part stone-- which gives her better grip.

Swearing softly, she tries to ignore the cluster of fat, snowy white birds gazing at her from the roof, interest in their gleaming eyes, and struggles the last few inches to the window. Carefully, she props her foot on the ridge of the guttering to her right, and lifts her eyes just above the windowsill.

The corridor is empty.

She listens.

Silent.

Lauding her good luck, Nicola scrabbles over the ledge and through the open window. She peeks back down the way she'd come, and finds the courtyard just as deserted as it had been when she'd arrived. Good.

Huffing, she leans against the wall and stares down the corridor, marvelling at the bizarre combination of the-- presumably original-- dark stone, split by veins of glimmering ice. Parts of statues are frozen too, and she can see gems on a chandelier that are far too smooth and sparkly to be diamonds.

Eyes narrowed, Nicola pads down the corridor, treading carefully to avoid making much noise. The palace is eerily silent and devoid of any servants or visitors, apart from the ones she'd seen in the courtyard, yoking horses and preparing a carriage. Hopefully, it means people will be appropriately busy. Unfortunately, it also means the target of her observations is probably leaving soon.

Casting a glance out of the window, she finds another few of those birds, oddly still, and more people in the courtyard. Damn it. She doesn't have long.

---

The plans the twins had given her are mercifully accurate, and it doesn't take her long to reach the centre of the palace. But where will he be?

Nicola decides to try the throne room first. There's always a chance he's receiving other people. Following a passageway marked to: TR viewing gallery she emerges in a shadowed balcony that runs all the way around the room. Frowning, she turns to look over the edge, sliding her foot over the frosty floorboards. She can't see anyone, which is irritating. But something makes her hesitate to leave. It feels as if she's being watched, almost...

Shaking her head, she pulls the map out of her pocket again, to see where she should go next, and as she does so, the token that had come with the plans falls with a clatter to the floor. Nicola stoops to pick it up, sighing, and peers at the royal crest of Foxwood engraved in the bronze. The floor feels colder than she'd thought. Maybe it was getting to her.

She doesn't have much love for either of Foxwood's twin Kings, but the money involved was enough to keep her family afloat for years, so...

"I better get my pay for this." she mutters--

The floorboards below her shatter.

Too shocked to even scream, Nicola plunges through the hole in the floor and crashes in a heap onto the flagstones below, the wind completely knocked out of her.

Wheezing, she rolls over, trying to work out if she's injured. No, she doesn't think she is. She'll have some terrific bruises, and her coccyx hurt like hell, but nothing's broken. Probably. She can move everything. Good.

Gasping shallowly, she scrabbles into a sitting position. How could the floorboards have broken? She'd barely moved, and they'd only been frosted over, it wasn't as if they were made of ice--