Holsley groaned. It felt like his shoulders were about to pop out of their sockets. In fact, he was surprised they hadn’t when the scaffolding had hit the roof. The young bard didn’t dare shift his grip for fear of slipping and falling to a quick death, so he couldn’t even ease the ache.

  Roland dangled a little ahead of him, his face full of concentration. No doubt, Holsley knew, the rogue was dreaming up ways to jump from one frying pan to another. Behind him, the cat continued to hiss and growl as it fanatically tore at its bindings.

  ‘Can you hear something?’ Roland asked then, eyebrow raised.

  ‘The tubheads loading their crossbows?’ Holsley remarked. ‘Kythos getting ready with a saw? Lady Love preparing to—’

  ‘No.’ Roland shushed him. ‘Listen.’

  Holsley ignored the ache and focussed on his ears. Clearing his mind, he suddenly became aware of a tiny voice. At first, he thought it might be the first signs of madness. That exhaustion finally driving him too far. Then, he realised that the voice sounded awfully familiar, if not a bit distant and kept issuing a one-word command.

  ‘Jump.’

  Roland was the first to peer down. The rogue had been put in a terrible position due to his stonework appendage; he was forced to dangle by his right hand alone, and it wasn’t easy to keep a lock on the weight of that old, battered leather glove he was wearing. At least he had gloves on, thought Holsley. That must have made things a little easier.

  The rogue smiled.

  Upon seeing this, Holsley dared a look down as well. He smiled, too. Below them, at a distance of about fifty to sixty feet, was a familiar stern-looking gnome covered in a heap of bangles. Now that he saw him, Holsley could practically hear him jangling from even this far up.

  The gnome wasn’t alone either. He was sitting at the front of a cart stacked high with hay. The gnome shouted at them, cupping his hands around his mouth, but they could barely hear what he was saying. He pointed towards the hay, and Holsley suddenly noticed that he’d positioned it right below them.

  ‘No!’ he exclaimed, looking up at Roland with wide eyes. ‘I’m not letting go.’

  ‘I knew something would turn up,’ Roland half-laughed. ‘What are you going to do, Holly? Stay up here?’

  ‘That’s a fifty-foot drop, Roland!’ Holsley retorted. ‘People die dropping that high.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ Roland replied. ‘Besides, it’s more like sixty.’

  Holsley made a sound caught somewhere between a wince and a groan.

  ‘I’ve fallen from that height before,’ said Roland. ‘Sure, I broke my arm in two places, but it didn’t kill me.’

  ‘Well, surprisingly, Roland, I don’t want to break my arm either.’

  ‘So, you’re saying you’re not going to drop.’

  ‘NO!’ Holsley shouted. ‘I can’t. We’ll have to find—’

  Roland deftly swung his body up and kicked Holsley’s fingers with the heel of his boot. The bard muttered an obscenity, one born of anger and shock, and plummeted towards the ground.

  A second later, he hit the cart dead on and found himself in a hay bed. He checked himself over and screamed in delight. He had survived the drop unharmed. Roland breathed a sigh of relief at that — he didn’t know if he could forgive himself for seriously injuring or even killing his friend.

  Click.

  Roland knew the loading of a crossbow bolt when he heard one. He looked over his shoulder. Kythos stood on top of the fallen scaffolding, a crossbow in his hands with a bolt loaded and aimed square at Roland’s head. The tiefling didn’t have much roof to stand on, so he’d manoeuvred himself into the scaffolding.

  ‘I used to absolutely abhor you as a child, Roland.’ Kythos shifted the crossbow. ‘I like you even less now that you’ve grown some.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ replied Roland. ‘You’ve got one shot with that crossbow, Kythos. If memory serves, you’re a terrible shot.’

  Kythos laughed. ‘You might escape from me now. You might even escape from the keep, but you’ll never escape the city. Not with the Hangman watching over your back. I’m tempted to let you go, just so he can do my job for me. Maybe I could have if you hadn’t stolen that rapier.’

  ‘I’ll escape, alright. Don’t you worry about that.’

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  ‘Back in the courtyard, you said you knew the location of the Golden Keep,’ Kythos said at last, the crossbow lowering just an inch. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘It is,’ replied Roland, thinking nothing of the honesty now. ‘In fact, I think…no, I know. I’m the only person in the Further Kingdoms who knows where it is and how to get to it.’

  Kythos gave Roland a look that Roland had trouble translating. It took him a few moments to recognise it. The look was one of apprehension and confusion. Then, he realised all at once what it was. The rogue had worn that countenance a few times.

  ‘You didn’t know.’ Roland deciphered the expression. ‘You didn’t know what the ruby was or what you were after when you threw my head in a bucket of water. You had no idea. Your mother never told you, did she?’

  Roland shifted the weight a little in his good hand, which was really starting to ache now. He was about to drop — it was seconds away. Far below, he heard Holsley and Merhim shouting, begging for him to fall so they could escape.

  ‘You’re right about that,’ replied Kythos.

  ‘I thought I might be.’

  A moment passed in silence.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Roland?’ Kythos raised the crossbow. ‘I’d like an honest answer.’

  ‘You can try.’

  ‘Do you still have that firelighter that you stole from me?’ Kythos asked. ‘I bet you do, don’t you?’

  Roland didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His arm gave out, and he dropped.

  Whether acting intentionally or on instinct, Kythos fired the bolt and missed Roland by a single hair. The rogue plummeted downwards, and a second later, he was met by the soft, malleable hay of the cart, which formed around his body like a giant cushion and expelled any force he’d carried with him.

  Merhim whipped the horse into shape, and suddenly, they were flying across the flagstones.

  As they galloped away, Holsley looked up to the rooftop and saw Kythos standing there amid the scaffold structure. With a grin, the young bard blew him a kiss and laughed when he saw Kythos shaking his fist in rage as a reply.

  ‘Where are you taking me!?’ Tiacat howled over Roland’s back. ‘Take me back to the keep this instant or face my claws, you human ruffians!’

  ‘What’s the cat saying?’ Roland asked.

  ‘Well, let’s just say you’re not going to be invited to any cat birthdays in the near future,’ replied Holsley.

  ‘I can live with that.’

  The cart swung wide around the next corner, going so fast that it drew up on a single wheel. Merhim, the boys knew, was heading to the large gates at the end of the courtyard, which served as its main entrance.

  ‘Don’t go this way!’ Roland yelled. ‘The gates will be closed.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Merhim grinned. ‘You’ve got a friend manning them.’

  Holsley and Roland looked at one another in confusion. What did Merhim mean they had a friend manning the gates? Roland could count on one finger how many friends he had in this city, and Holsley could count the same with the same finger.

  An arrow thunked into the side of the cart. Boy, they were both getting pretty tired of arrows being shot at them.

  ‘Where’d you get the cart?’ Holsley asked.

  ‘Stole it, eh,’ replied Merhim with a grimace. ‘Took it from the stables.’

  ‘What about Old Millie?’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ replied Merhim. ‘Stoic old thing, that horse.’

  ‘Who’s this friend?’ Roland shambled his way up the shaky cart and leaned just behind where Merhim and Holsley were sitting. He suspected there may be a trap up ahead.

  ‘She just said you knew her,’ he replied. ‘That if I could find a cart, she’d make sure the gate would be open.’

  ‘She?’ Holsley shared another glance with Roland. ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘She was wearing tubhead armour. Now, hold on.’

  Merhim drove the horse faster, whipping the reins up into a frenzy. The horse cottoned on quickly and broke into a speedier gallop just as they reached the courtyard. They whizzed past the gallows and through a sparse evening crowd that knew enough to get out of the way of a speeding cart. Ahead was their destination, the gates, which miraculously were still open.

  As they passed underneath the stone archway, they saw a figure staring down at them from above. Beneath the helmet, they could see her smiling at them, and she was even coy enough to give them a little wave as they shot past. The moment they were through, the chains controlling the gates began to turn, closing them out and sealing any pursuers inside.

  ‘It was her,’ said Holsley, thoughtfully. ‘The guard with the purple eyes.’

  ‘Purple eyes?’ Roland repeated. He suddenly remembered an encounter with a tubhead on one of his ill-fated escape attempts in the dungeons. She’d attacked him and then, strangely enough, given him some directions. He hadn’t followed them but suspected they might have led him out of the dimly lit maze of corridors.

  ‘Yeah,’ Holsley confirmed it. ‘Shortly after visiting you in the dungeons, Kythos came looking for me. I managed to escape by disguising myself as a tubhead, and it was her that gave me the uniform. I never got her name, though.’

  Roland thought on that and desperately searched his mind for anyone who might want to help them. He came up with no one that matched her description, yet he remembered her voice sounding so familiar. Those purple eyes, though. He’d never known anyone with purple eyes before.

  ‘Doesn’t matter who it is, eh,’ Merhim shouted from the front. ‘Just make sure you thank them if you run into them again.’

  ‘It does,’ Roland protested. ‘People don’t help you for no reason. We now owe her, and I don’t like that.’

  He shifted his shoulder with a wince. There was still a bolt sticking out of it, same as his upper thigh. It was lucky that the bolt hadn’t hit the bloody cat, he thought. The adrenaline had worn its course now, and the pain of the weapon’s points was rising steadily.

  Holsley noticed this quickly. ‘We need to get those arrows out of you.’

  ‘We do,’ replied Roland. ‘How’d you manage to avoid the bolts?’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess.’ Holsley shrugged in reply. ‘Good news is I can heal you if we find a safe spot out of sight. Uh, and if we wait eight hours.’

  ‘I have a healer’s kit,’ Merhim shouted. ‘Got it in the markets yesterday as I was looking for your disguises.’

  ‘Perfect!’

  Thankfully, the streets were empty for the time of day, but there was still the odd person here and there using the sidewalks or driving their carts along the street. In short, there were not many to witness where they had scurried away.

  ‘I’m going to try and find us a secluded alley,’ said Merhim. ‘We’ll have to figure out our next move from there, eh.’

  A horn blared out in the far distance, coming from the direction of the keep.

  ‘Well, you better do it fast,’ Roland replied. ‘They’re coming, and I don’t think they’re going to be on foot.’