The Merry Men Masquerade

25. Reason #11

Beyond the cell lay two snoozing guards. Right outside the door to the dungeon, the man who had brought Ronan his food every day was crumpled against the cobblestone. His black cap covered half of his face as if he'd put it on sideways. Ronan eyed the sledgehammer now strapped at Knuckle's waist and felt a sadistic, condescending mock pity.

"What the hell is happening?" he said with a hysterical laugh.

"Is now really the time?"

Ronan shut up. They ran through the basement halls until the stairs came into view and Knuckle raised a finger to his lips, and as one they slowed, soundless. Knuckle reached behind Ronan and drew his filthy hood low over his head. When he offered something too small to see, Ronan opened his hand without question. A small gray sphere was dropped into his palm. One of Genie's sleep grenades.

"We each get only one of these, so you better be careful."

It quivered precariously in Ronan's trembling palm. After a long second of watching it teeter toward the edge, Knuckle plucked it right back out. "Just. Stick close."

He closed his hand and held out his fist. Ronan bumped it with his own.

The basement door opened up to an unfamiliar dark-wood stretch of the first floor, with paintings dotting the walls but not much else going on. They skirted down the moonlit hall, pressed close to the wall, for what felt like forever. Ronan braced for confrontation with every step, but none came.

He understood why when they turned a corner and came across six dropped guards sleeping soundly on an indigo rug. Knuckle let out a low, impressed whistle.

Past them, the hall came to a dead end. There was nowhere to go except up a carpeted staircase or through the only door, but Knuckle aimed somewhere between the two, making for the tall grandfather clock against the wall.

He only got halfway there when the door nudged open and two ladies emerged - servants, if their plain nightclothes were anything to go by. Rubbing sleep from their eyes, they set out for the staircase, unaware of the frozen pair of men blending into the shadows a handful of steps away.

Unfortunately for everyone, one of the women turned her head just so. Her hushed chatter slowed as she did a double take, then stopped altogether. She got a vice grip on her friend's arm, and that girl froze, too.

Knuckle regarded the clock, now blocked by the sickly-looking pair, with deep weariness. The women sucked in great breaths just as he reluctantly threw their last ball, and the smoke choked off their budding screams.

Ronan whispered an apology as he picked past their sleeping forms. He couldn't see much of what happened next through the fog, but he gathered that he was stepping into the grandfather clock behind Knuckle, then through a panel of the wall into total darkness.

Light bloomed marigold orange from a torch in Knuckle's hand. "Can I ask now?" said Ronan, one pace behind. The paneled stone walls were too narrow to allow both of them at once.

"Do you need to? Shit, you didn't actually hit your head, did you?"

Maybe I did. Ronan sure felt delirious. "It's not- it's not just you...?"

Knuckle scoffed. "Who do you think cleared the path for us?"

Ronan must have hit his head.

The tunnel opened up from behind a mounted shield into a frankly terrifying room, where an armory's worth of swords and lances casted long claws across the floor. There were armor stands, too many of them, tall shadows surging from their feet. Ronan clutched Kncukle's wrist, and Knuckle didn't even laugh, just towed him a bit closer.