My chance came several hours later.
The cellar door creaked open. One of the house guards walked in carrying a torch and a stinking bucket of slop. He came over to me, looked me over like I was something he’d scraped off his boot, poked me with the toe of his boot, and said: "Dinner time, piggy boy."
I recognized his voice immediately.
"Bregg," I said.
He stiffened. The torch wobbled in his hand.
"How do ya know my name?"
I let the silence sit for a moment. Timing was everything with people like Bregg.
"I know lots of things," I said, struggling to keep my voice steady against the cold. "For example, I know exactly what you were doing with your good friend Jeana just a few hours ago."
His eyes went wide. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"H-how did you ... you is a wizard."
I gave a silent prayer of thanks to whatever god had seen fit to put an idiot in charge of guarding me.
"That’s right," I said. "I’m a wizard. What do you know about wizards, Bregg?"
He thought about it with visible effort.
"Th-they has powerful magics."
"They have."
"What?"
"Nothing. Forget it." I cleared my throat. "The point is, Bregg, that untying me would be very easy for someone with my abilities. These ropes are nothing. A minor inconvenience at best. But I’ve been lying here being patient, because I’d much rather we handle this like reasonable men."
He squinted at me. "Okay?"
"I can tell your mistress what I heard. About you and Jeana. In that storeroom. Everything, Bregg. Every last detail."
The bucket of slop hit the stone floor. Slop went everywhere, splashing up my legs and across my chest. He didn’t even seem to notice he’d dropped it. His face had gone the colour of old milk.
"Please," he said. "Please don’t do that."
"That depends entirely on whether you help me."
"I’ll help. I swear it. Whatever you need. Just don’t tell the mistress."
"Good man. Now." I looked up at him steadily. "Do you know why I’m here?"
Bregg started chewing on his lower lip. I could almost hear the gears grinding inside his head, slow and rusty, working through it one piece at a time.
"You here on wizard business?" he finally said. "You’re one of them magicked ones. Like the ones who serve the King of Light."
Selena had mentioned the King of Light. Something about magical bloodlines, about the Kings drawing power through their wives. I grasped at the thread and pulled.
"That’s right," I said. "That’s exactly why I’m here. I’m a wizard on a top-secret mission of critical importance to the crown. Your mistress interfered at a very delicate moment and now everything is at risk. I need you to help me fix it before the damage becomes irreversible."
Bregg looked deeply worried on my behalf. "That sounds bad."
"It is bad, Bregg. It’s very bad. Which is why I need you to untie me. Right now."
He hesitated. I watched him fight with himself — duty on one side, self-preservation on the other. It wasn’t a fair fight.
"But Lady Beatrice says—"
"Disobey me again," I said quietly, "and I’ll tell her everything about what happened with Jeana. Every sound. Every word." I paused. "Including how it ended."
His mouth fell open.
"You really did see everything."
"I’m a wizard, Bregg."
"A-alright. Okay. I’ll do it. Please don’t hurt me."
It took him ten full minutes to untie me. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely grip the knots, his fingers slipping and fumbling in the torchlight. I said nothing, just waited, focusing on breathing steadily and getting some warmth back into my limbs. Eventually the last rope fell away.
I stood up slowly, stretching my arms above my head. My whole body tingled and burned as the blood started moving again. My fingers ached. My skull still throbbed from where Beatrice had kicked me. But I was upright, and I was free, and that was more than I’d had five minutes ago.
"Can I go now?" said Bregg.
"Not just yet," I said. "Look over there. You see that?"
"What?" He extended the torch in front of him and peered into the far corner. "I don’t sees anything bu—"
BONK.
The empty bucket connected cleanly with the back of his head and he dropped straight down like someone had cut his strings. I looked at him lying there on the cellar floor and felt only mild guilt.
"Sorry, Bregg," I said. "Nothing personal."
I stripped his guard uniform off him, pulled it on over my own clothes, and straightened the collar. It was a little big across the shoulders but it would do. I picked up his torch, stepped over him, and made my way up the mossy stairway into the mansion above.
I made it to the first floor without running into anyone.
The mansion at night was quieter than I’d expected. Most of the staff were either asleep or sensibly keeping to themselves after whatever Beatrice had told them about the prisoner in the cellar. I moved carefully, keeping close to the walls, heading for where I thought the main corridor would be.
I turned a corner and walked directly into a woman’s chest.
"Ahhhhh!" She lurched backward, dropping her tray completely. Biscuits bounced across the floor in every direction. A pitcher of wine hit the stones and shattered, spreading a dark red puddle across the corridor.
"I’m sorry," I said quickly. "Are you alright?"
The woman pressed a hand to her chest, catching her breath. Then she looked at me.
She was in her late twenties, with wavy blonde hair tied back with a ribbon and one of those small frilly maid caps sitting slightly crooked on her head. Her maid uniform was doing a heroic job of containing what was underneath it. From her voice, the moment she’d screamed, I’d already known who she was.
Jeana.
She looked at my face. Looked away. Then looked back, narrowing her eyes slowly.
"You’re a guard?"
"Yes," I said. "Look. I have the uniform and everything."
"I’ve never seen you before."
"That’s because I’m new. Just started. They brought me in quietly — you know how Lady Beatrice is about announcements."
She didn’t look convinced. She looked at me the way someone looks at a sum that isn’t adding up.
"I didn’t hear anything about new hires."
"Like I said. Quiet. Very last minute. There were some security concerns apparently, after recent events." I let that land. "You know about recent events."
Something shifted in her expression at that. A flicker of recognition, maybe guilt. Meena had been her colleague, after all.
"Who told you you’d be working this floor?" she said.
"Bregg, actually."
That did it. Her shoulders dropped about half an inch and the suspicion in her eyes softened slightly. Bregg was apparently a credible reference, which said something about Jeana’s standards.
"You know Bregg?"
"We go way back," I said. "He mentioned you, actually. Said you were one of the good ones. Said if I ever got turned around up here, you were the person to ask."
She looked at me for another long moment. Then she crouched down and started picking up the biscuits from the floor, and I crouched down with her to help, and just like that the interrogation was over.
"Well," she said. "You’d better not make a habit of sneaking up on people."
"I’ll work on that," I said.