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.
"Are you not?" I asked suddenly. It surprised even me, and everyone stared. I couldn't stop now, so I swallowed and plunged on. "It seems to me that you are taking these things for your own personal gain. Surely you know that workers need to share whatever they find with each other. If we do not take care of our own, than we are no better than those royals who eat cream and cakes while children are starving in the streets. I should think better of you, but I can see I was mistaken in thinking that all the workers had a brain within their skulls." My voice rose with each word until I was shouting at him, my finger pointing in his face. He blinked furiously in shock, backing up until his back hit the wall.
"Of course we support the Vigilant Men," he managed to squeak out. "Don't tell Captain..."
"Weston," Ferdinand filled in.
"Don' tell Captain Weston that we were resisting. We were going to take the haul back to the palace, honest. I just didn't know if you were tricksters, is all. Just don't report me." His cheeks were blanched of color and his hands shook ever-so-slightly. It seemed everyone bore a healthy fear for the Vigilant Men.
I sighed heavily and turned to look at Ferdinand. He shrugged.
"I suppose we can keep this incident to ourselves," I said. "But I want you to leave now and not bother any other useful citizens again tonight."
The young man nodded so hard I thought his head might pop off, before he and his crew darted into the house to collect their other companions. They hurried by us a moment later, heading for the door with their armfuls of loot.
"Let's get out of here before more happens," Ferdinand said, hooking his through mine. Hannabella followed us into the freezing air.
Outside was chaos. Men and women raced along the streets, dragging whatever possessions they could pack or steal. No one stopped to question us about the jewels in our hands. They were all headed north, up the street. It wasn't long until we heard the reason they ran. Gunshots, close by. A vague screaming and yelling rose from the same general direction, and a quick glance down the road offered up a view of the backs of men huddled behind makeshift barricades. They were dressed in ill-fitting clothes of every style and class. Vigilant Men. And the way they leveled their rifles and screamed into the night said plainly that they were in a small skirmish. I couldn't see their opponents, but it was safe to bet on it being the royal guard of one or the other of our neighboring cities.
We didn't wait for the battle to evolve. Ferdinand took my hand and we dove into the mass of people getting away from the gunplay. The farther up the road we went, the tighter the crush of people became, until we were firmly pressed in on all sides. Up ahead the road narrowed, and the crowd came to a standstill as everyone tried to squeeze through at once.
Ferdinand kept his arm around me as the people around us shouted and shoved, trying to clear a way to the front. Elbows found my ribs and heavy boots found my toes. I jostled into Ferdinand almost constantly as the stream of people became more frightened.
"Keep your head down," Ferdinand shouted. "We'll just ride it out until we can get close to one of the storefronts. We'll sneak out that way."
I nodded, tucking my head into his chest when an elbow just narrowly avoided my temple. Ferdinand wrapped both his arms around my head to protect it and I found myself in a warm and quieter cocoon. It was hard not to melt into him, pretend I was safe somewhere else.
We slowly began to move, being pushed by the press of the crowd. My view being limited to the front of Ferdinand's coat, I had no idea where we were headed—only, that I followed when Ferdinand moved, and that we seemed to be headed forward and a bit to the right.
What seemed like hours later, Ferdinand guided me up a step and I pulled away from his chest to see that we stood on the pavement that ran along the storefronts. To our side was a small shop that once sold hats, and Ferdinand pulled me to the alleyway that stretched between it and the next building. Unfortunately, the alley ended in a brick wall, but Ferdinand managed to break a window in the hat shop without making too much noise. Thankfully none of the crowd heard it and we were able to climb in without alerting the others.
As I huddled in the dark interior of the abandoned hat shop and blew on my hands to warm them, I noticed that our number had dwindled.
"Where's Hannabella?"
Ferdinand's head shot up and he looked back out into the alleyway. "She was just behind us not a minute ago," he said, carefully leaning out the window. "I don't see her."
I bit my lip, wondering if she had gotten stuck in the crowd and forced to continue, or if perhaps she chose not to throw her lot with ours anymore. The latter sent a heated flush up my face, so I quickly chose to believe the former.
"Did she see us come down the alley?" I asked.
"I don't know, but I would think she did. She was right behind me when we stepped up on the pavement."
"She might not have been able to follow us right away. Let's wait a minute," I said.
And we did wait. A full ten minutes slowly crawled by, and with each one the danger began to mount. The crowds only thickened and soon the sound of gunfire echoed just down the road. Ferdinand took my hand at this and we pulled away back into the shadows of the store.
"We can't wait any longer," he whispered. "I hate to say it, but she's on her own now. I have to get you somewhere safe."
I didn't say that he was the one more likely to be in danger, being the more famous and the one with a title, but I almost wanted to. Instead, I let him take me to the back door of the building and into another dark alley that let out onto a different road.
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Thanks for reading! :D I hope everyone's liking having Ferdinand and Nadia together so much now! There's even more for them in the coming chapters!