The Price {Completed}

Chapter Twenty-One

We were only alerted to the looters by the sound of panes in a glass window being smashed. Hannabella sat up with a jerk, shifting me awake. Ferdinand was already standing by the door, his hand on the knob, his ear pressed against the wood.

"What is it?" Hannabella mouthed.

"They're just downstairs," Ferdinand whispered. "You have a gun?"

Without a word, Hannabella leaned over the side of the bed and felt along the bottom of the frame. After a few seconds she came back up with a small pistol wrapped in a handkerchief. The bullets she'd bought earlier now lay nestled in the chamber.

Ferdinand hesitated a moment before taking the gun and tucking it into the band of his pants. He leaned across the bed and disconnected a thin lamp from the wall. Its base was made of metal, slender and tightly twisted around itself. The lampshade he dumped onto the bed, and he ripped off the cord. It wasn't anything that looked like a competent weapon, but it would do for any close attacks that might need to be taken care of with something less noisy than a gun.

Ferdinand gripped the cold base as he slowly opened the bedroom door.

As Ferdinand risked a quick glance at the hallway, I pressed against his back to try and get a glimpse over his shoulder. I didn't see much beyond the flickering shadows from the torches that the looters carried downstairs. "What are you doing?" I whispered to Ferdinand. "We can't just go waltzing down there. If we keep quiet in the bedroom they might not even find us."

"They won't leave an entire room untouched, Nadia," he said. "Especially if they discover that it's locked."

"So, what? You're going to go down there and fight them all with only a lamp and one pistol?" I asked.

"I was thinking more along the lines of pretending to be a group of Vigilant Men supporters gathering supplies for the troops," Ferdinand said, moving me to one side so that he could gather up the blankets on the bed into a bundle. Hannabella, catching onto his plan, threw open the doors of her wardrobe and began to pile her few dresses and coats over her arm. I took her extra boots and a handful of necklaces that she showed me in a box on her side table.

"They might not be friendly, even if we appear on their side," Ferdinand said, cautiously stepping into the hall. "Hopefully they will be here to help the cause, but if they are here merely for their own profit than we might have to fight. If that's the case, make sure that your back is always clear and try to get to a door or window as soon as you can."

We crept down the stairs with what stealth we could muster. Secretly, we all hoped we might make it out without ever seeing the looters, but that was not to be. Almost immediately there was a shout from somewhere in the shadows, ordering us to stop. We froze, our hands full of belongings.

A group of young men appeared just below us, looking up the stairs with suspicious eyes. They carried pistols and cudgels, and sacks full of objects laid up against the wall close by.

"What do we have here?" one of the young men asked, drawing his pistol and cocking it.

Hannabella drew on a mask of indifference that must have been something she used commonly in her old life, and Ferdinand actually rolled his eyes and sighed. I just tried not to let my shaking show as I clutched Ferdinand's sleeve with the one hand I had free of boots and jewelry.

"What we have here is a group sent out by Captain Weston to gather supplies for the troops," Ferdinand said, never dropping that clipped tone to his voice that suggested he was in too much of a hurry to be bothered with such trivialities as a gun pointed in his face.

A crease appeared between the young man's brows, and he slowly lowered the weapon. "You're Vigilant Men?" he asked, his eyes flicking doubtfully to me and Hannabella. While there were many women in the Vigilant Men, they looked nothing like us. They were sturdy, strong, and no one could ever doubt their loyalty to the cause. Meanwhile, Hannabella and I were obviously used to a better life than one lived in the tenements. The young man's belief in our story began to dwindle, and his hand reached once again for his gun.