"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
***
The voices got clearer as I crept toward the bend. Two men, at least. That careful whisper-talk that somehow carries further than normal conversation.
"...shouldn't be here this late." The first guy sounded nervous. "Lord Aldric finds out we're using his archives for dice games, he'll put both our heads on pikes."
"Relax, Thomas." The second voice was lazy. Unconcerned. "Old Aldric never comes to this wing anymore. Too many memories of the first wife, they say. That witch of a stepmother hates it too. Place gives her the creeps. And young Master Lucius thinks the whole section is haunted. We're safe."
Fantastic. Gambling guards turned the archive chamber into their private casino. Because tonight wasn't complicated enough already.
Why couldn't they be in the kitchens stealing food like normal corrupt employees?
I pressed my back against the wall. Brain working overtime.
Wait them out? They sounded settled in for the night.
Go back? The servants mentioned Lord Aldric was having the whole wing inventoried next week. This was my only window.
Create a distraction? With what? My winning personality?
The conversation kept going. Dice rattled on wood. Someone cursed creatively after a bad roll. I counted at least three different voices. Maybe four. Too many to sneak past, even if I could get close without being spotted.
But wait.
They were focused on their game. Watching the dice, the coins, each other. They wouldn't be watching every window.
And if I could reach the exterior wall...
Time for Plan B. The "desperately improvised" plan. The kind that starts with "hold my beer" and ends with someone asking "how was I supposed to know that would happen?"
I backtracked. Even more careful this time, if that was possible. Every nerve in my body was screaming.
The side passage I'd noted earlier during my mental prep work came into view. One of those details you file away without thinking about it, then suddenly need. This route was longer. Way more dangerous. It went through a section where the ceiling had partially collapsed years ago.
The family had just sealed it off instead of fixing it. But it would get me to the archive chamber's exterior wall, far from the gambling idiots and their dice.
Moonlight came through gaps in the damaged ceiling. Silver slivers mixed with patches of total darkness. The original Kaelen had been a lot of things. Coward. Failure. Disappointment. "Athletic" was not on the list.
Every muscle in this borrowed body screamed as I squeezed through gaps barely wide enough for my shoulders. I twisted around fallen beams. Climbed over debris. The kind of obstacle course that would have killed me in gym class back in my old life.
A timber shifted under my hand.
The rotten wood crumbled. Dust and small stones rained down to the floor below. In the quiet of the corridor, it sounded like an avalanche.
I froze. Every muscle locked. Listening.
The dice game kept going. Laughter. Coins changing hands. They hadn't heard.
Apparently gambling is more absorbing than I thought. Men plus dice plus money equals complete oblivion. Good to know the universal constants hold true even in fantasy worlds.
The exterior wall finally appeared through a gap in the rubble ahead. Ancient stone blocks, each one bigger than my torso, stacked in courses laid centuries ago by people who actually knew what they were doing. The windows were set high. Iron bars made black shapes against the slightly lighter darkness of the sky.
And there. Third window from the corner. Exactly where the forum post said it would be.
One of the bars hung crooked. Rust had eaten through most of the metal over decades of rain and neglect. The gap looked barely big enough for a person to fit through.
The kind of opening that makes you question every decision that led you to this moment.
But the original Kaelen had been built like a scarecrow with depression. All sharp angles and zero muscle mass. If anyone in this world could squeeze through that gap, it was this pathetic body I'd inherited.
Finally, being a scrawny failure pays off.
Climbing the wall was easier than expected. Low bar, though. The same erosion that had weakened the bars had also created handholds in the mortar between stones. I went up slowly. Tested each grip before trusting it with my weight.
A fall from this height meant broken bones. Best case. Worst case, guards finding my unconscious body in the morning.
"Young Master Kaelen, why were you climbing the exterior wall of the condemned wing at midnight?"
"Excellent question. I was looking for a cursed artifact mentioned in a web novel forum post. Obviously."
The stones were slick. Wet from the night air and covered in something oily that I chose not to think about too hard. But they held.
The loose bar moved when I pushed it. A grinding screech that sounded like a horror movie sound effect. The kind of noise that should have brought guards from miles around.
I waited. Counted heartbeats. The night stayed quiet.
Thank god for gambling addiction.