If you know the hunter's coming
Then you hide or keep on running
-- Aviators, Godhunter

The alarm bells of the royal palace had been set up over two hundred years ago. Originally they were used only in the most dire of emergencies, such as when an Iqui had been murdered or a civil war had broken out between rival factions in the palace. In the last fifty years they had been used more and more often. Usually they signalled that an arrest warrant had been served against a member of the royal family. When the royal guards heard it they knew to rush to the throne room no matter what they had been doing or how ill-prepared they were.

All through the barracks they sprang out of bed, dragged their clothes on (usually inside out and back to front), and staggered off to the main palace. Lights went on all over the place. The inhabitants of the smaller palaces round about found themselves frightened out of a sound sleep by the awful clanging bells.

The group of assassins, right outside the palace walls, almost leapt out of their skins.

Damn it all to hell, Nimetath thought. She buried her head in her hands. That idiot! She's gone and got herself captured!

On the one hand she knew she had to get the rest of the group to safety before all of them were caught too. On the other, Kiroshnoy was a child. She was a child who had now fallen into the enemy's hands. Heaven only knew what they might do to her. Torture her? Kill her? Worst of all, she was a foreign royal, and Nimetath would have to take the blame for anything that happened to her.

She turned and started shouting orders. The noise of the alarm bells drowned out her words. In despair she grabbed the person closest to her and yelled in their ear.

"All of you go back to the boats. I'm going to rescue Kiroshnoy."

The person, whoever they were, shook their head frantically. "No, don't! It's far too dangerous. You could be killed!"

"So could she."

Abruptly the alarms stopped. The sudden silence was almost more painful than the dreadful racket. A chorus of pained groans rang out. Most of the assassins clutched their ears. Some cowered on the ground for reasons that made sense only to them.

On the other side of the wall Nimetath heard one of the least welcome sounds imaginable. The clatter of at least fifty pairs of feet drawing steadily nearer. Unless she was much mistaken an entire crowd was heading right towards them. It took no skills of deduction to know what that meant. Not when that alarm had nearly deafened them all.

She abandoned all thought of rescuing Kiroshnoy now. Even being quiet faded into insignificance when she needed to make sure the entire group heard and understood her.

"Everyone, run back to the boats!" she shouted.

For once she didn't have to tell anyone twice. No one raised so much as a single objection. If only they'd been so obliging all the other times she gave them orders!

In all the confusion it was impossible to count how many people were there. Nimetath never thought that anyone else might have already followed Kiroshnoy. She took it for granted that all forty-nine assassins were present.

The whole group ran down the hill as if they were being chased by an army of demons. Behind them the guards had already found the open gate. They poured out through it with torches and swords in their hands. Within minutes they found a mass of footprints heading downhill.

~~~~

When the bells finally stopped clanging they left a silence somehow much more profound than the one that had been before they started. Hailanyu shook his head repeatedly to stop the strange ringing in his ears. It didn't help. There were moments when he genuinely feared he couldn't hear anything because he'd gone deaf.

"My ears feel strange," Kiroshnoy grumbled, putting her hands over them then taking them away several times in quick succession. "That noise was horrible."

Hailanyu nodded solemnly. They lapsed back into silence for at least five minutes. Not a single noise drifted in from the rooms around them.

At last the quietness grew too oppressive for Hailanyu to bear any longer. "What do you think is happening out there?"

Kiroshnoy shrugged. "I suppose they're looking for us."

There were moments in a person's life when they had no idea what to do. Even the thought of taking any action at all filled them with fright and despair. Sitting and waiting for something to happen was the only thing that they felt capable of. It didn't matter what that something was. It didn't even matter if it was good or an unmitigated catastrophe. As long as they were spared the burden of having to make any decisions themselves, they would calmly sit back and accept whatever chance threw at them.

Both Hailanyu and Kiroshnoy had reached that stage by now. What did it matter if they were recaptured? They had no other options. So they waited in the dining room. And waited. And waited.

~~~~

Few things caused a person more embarrassment than knowing they'd left something in a certain place, telling everyone where it was, and then discovering in front of an audience that they were -- inexplicably and against all logic -- mistaken. Zafadin couldn't believe his eyes when he turned on the light and found the cellar empty.

This must be the wrong cellar, he thought, even though he was sure it wasn't.

Jalakanavu watched with narrowed eyes as he opened the doors of the other cellars. Nothing. Not only that, but each of the cellars contained something different. One was full of fruit, one of vegetables, one of fabrics, one of furniture, one of the sort of gift you didn't know what to do with so you put it in a box and promptly forgot about it. He knew for a fact he'd locked the prisoner up in the cellar full of vegetables. He'd taken the rope holding a sack of datdin closed and used it to tie the still-unconscious prisoner up. So what had happened?

"Are you sure this is where you left the spy?"

The empress's icy, disbelieving tone would have struck terror into the heart of many a brave man. Zafadin, being not particularly brave but having a good idea of how to keep himself safe, recognised at once that he was on very shaky ground. He'd better produce an explanation. Quickly.

One presented itself when he looked at the floor. There was the rope, now lying in an untidy pile where the prisoner himself should be. Yet how had he untied himself? Zafadin knew he hadn't left those knots loose.

Then he remembered the first spy he'd caught and lost. Suddenly it all made sense.

"It's that girl. She followed me and set the spy free."

He expected an argument. To his surprise Jalakanavu accepted this explanation with only a scornful snort.

"You should have watched her more closely. How did you not notice you were being followed?"

It took a great deal of self-control not to respond with a scornful snort of his own. How could I watch someone I didn't know was there?

"We'll find them soon," Jalakanavu continued. "They can't be far away. We know they haven't gone out the front gate because the guards would have seen them at once. I'm sure they're not stupid enough to still be in the palace. That leaves the garden gate, and I've already sent a patrol there."

~~~~

Sitting in one place got boring very quickly. And boredom, in spite of what common sense and simple logic had to say on the subject, could sometimes provide much more motivation than knowing you were in danger. Kiroshnoy got sick of waiting within fifteen minutes.

"We have to do something. I mean, we can't just sit here all night."

Hailanyu didn't answer. Kiroshnoy looked over at him. Judging by the way he was lying partly curled up on the table, he was either asleep or dozing. She drummed her fingers against the table. When that didn't wake him she clapped loudly. He sat upright so abruptly that he fell right off the table.

"Eeeeerrrrrgggggg," he groaned.

Apparently he considered that enough of a response. To Kiroshnoy's disbelief he curled up again, uncaring that he was now on the cold stone floor, and went right back to sleep.

"For goodness' sake wake up!"

This time he was awake enough to glare at her. "Kiroshnoy. Will you please be quiet? I'm trying to sleep."

How could anyone possibly sleep in an enemy palace? When the guards were searching for them? Bizarre. It was truly bizarre. She tried to speak patiently. It was very difficult. Long ago she'd reached the conclusion that people became idiots the minute they turned twenty. Her companion's behaviour right now was just confirming and strengthening her in that view.

"We have to get out of here before they find us. Do you want to be locked in a cellar again?"

Hailanyu stared at her. "But we don't know how to get out."

"We'll find a way." She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. "Have you heard any guards go past? They can't be looking for us here. So we can escape now before they come."

~~~~

Just when Jalakanavu thought she might be able to go back to bed, one of the guards came running into the main hall. He was so out of breath he couldn't speak at first. She waited impatiently for him to recover.

"Large group of foreigners," he gasped. "Outside. At the river. Chased them. Got away in boats. We're following. Thought you ought to know." He straightened up and saluted her and Zafadin with an attempt at looking suitably respectful. His badly-buttoned coat and the boots he had on the wrong feet detracted from his efforts. "Your Majesty. Your Highness. Shall we call out the city police?"

Jalakanavu felt a headache beginning. This night gets worse and worse. "Yes. Where did you find these foreigners?"

"We first saw them half-way down the hill. But we found their footprints almost directly outside the gate. They must have run away when they heard the alarm."

A large group of foreigners trying to get in through the garden gate? In the middle of a war that could mean only one thing. Carann was attempting to invade the palace itself. Jalakanavu turned to Zafadin.

"Tell the palace guards to keep watch at every door. Have them barricade all the windows on the ground floor. I'm going to summon an urgent council meeting."

~~~~

"I wish we knew where we were," Hailanyu said wistfully. He wasn't even grumbling or angry any more. He'd reached a sort of exhausted indifference after the eighteenth hallway that looked exactly the same as all the ones before it. "We're probably walking in circles."

Truth be told Kiroshnoy worried about that too. She looked back over her shoulder. Perhaps they should have taken the right-hand turn instead of the left one. Or maybe they should have gone up those stairs a few hallways back. Were they on the ground floor or still in the basement? Did those doors open into rooms or out into courtyards?

The next time they found a flight of stairs they stopped to debate it. "We haven't found a way out yet, and at least if we're upstairs we'll know we aren't going in circles," Kiroshnoy argued.

Hailanyu eyed them dubiously. "But if we're already on the ground floor then we won't be able to escape by going upstairs."

"Have you got a coin to toss?"

He gave her an equally dubious look. "Do you really think I brought any money on a secret mission?"

Oh. Good point. Kiroshnoy took out her only remaining hair clip and studied it. "I think we could toss this instead. If it lands upside down we stay here. If not we go upstairs. All right?"

Hailanyu shrugged. "We might as well."

She tossed the hair clip. It landed right side up, its rose-coloured paint clearly visible against the stone floor. "Upstairs it is then."