As Promised
It was raining hard that day. She’d been on my mind for months, our first meeting at the Baron’s party, where she was introduced to me. I live two lives, the life of a orphaned, single (scandalously so) Duchess, sole heir to my father’s estate, and a shadow life, where I can use the skills I was taught during a period of my life that few know about. I dangerously told her a bit of this shadow life the second time we met, for tea at the castle one afternoon.
The door opened, spilling rain water into the broad hallway. I walked up to her as she shook her umbrella, and I offered to take it from her. I showed her to a chair in the parlor. I asked for tea and pastry from Albert, the trusted one. He shut the sliding door behind him once he’d served us.
“He’s been in that prison for 10 years.” She told me the story of her eldest brother, lost in the bowels of a dark prison, put there not for any crime committed, but because the Prince found out that his beloved really loved her brother, and not him. I listened to the story. “I will find a way to set him free, I promise.” She looked at me with grateful eyes. I drank it in, hoping.
It was a challenge, but the kind of challenge I liked. The prison was away down the river from the city, and it had had high walls and a moat. The guards were vigilant, of course. I went through a break in the wall my cousin told me about. He’s the one who sleeps with the wife of the warden. Quite convenient. Once inside, I was careless at first, but only once. I had to injure one man, but he will recover. I always vow never to kill.
I wound my way through the warrens of the prison, finally finding the place where her brother was kept. He was sitting in the back of a dark, dark cell, with rats scurrying over the bare stone floor. “Duke Majian?” I whispered. He came to the front of the cell, looked at me, and looked at the keys I held in my hand. I put my finger to my lips, and he stepped back, expectant. I quietly opened the cell door, and let him out.
We went back over the wall, into my boat, down the river, back to the city. He didn’t talk much, but did wonder aloud where he would go to escape the wrath of the Prince. I suggested the lands east of the mountains. Shrouded in mystery, most Gardinians never go there. But that is where I’d been trained, and I knew he could find safety there, until the Prince, inevitably, did himself in.
The reunion with his sister was brief, and I was showered with gifts. I thought then, surely, she'd see by now that I was the one she'd been looking for. But no, she left, out the door she came in, and I never saw her again.