Chapter 50 - Like A Thief In The Night
"You're pretty close to the undercroft. I can smell a large collection of wines."
"Wines? All I can smell is some rotten cheese."
"It's not rotten. It's Stilton, Limburgur, and Roquefort. They're delicious."
Zen slowly pans a disgusted look towards the Lemur dressed in matte-black clothes, then gives the odd woman a disdainful shake of her head. "I don't even know what t' say to you right now."
"You're the Cat. Shouldn't you love all milk products?"
"Stuff that curdles my stomach from fifty feet away are things that I actively avoid."
"I reached the stone blocks."
The short Scout quickly looks back to the front of their slim tunnel, then shuffles forward and slips around her wife's side. "Yup. Okay, here. Put these goggles on and kill your lights."
"Oh. These are the same you've been giving to your Scouts, right?"
"Yah. They're not openly sold, since they're restricted, but if you bribe an enchanter well enough, you can pick them up for a song. Kolt made these, though."
"How much is a song?" Joanne spins around in the darkness to test the effectiveness of the odd glasses, and raises her brows in surprise when finding that she could see all the way back down their tunnel as if it were daylight. "My Gods. These are fantastic."
"Ehn, costs about fifty gold each, but for humans, they'd be invaluable." Zen pulls her mithril katana out from her enchanted hip-pouch, then plunges the blade through the stone and carves an outline of a thin portal. After stowing the longer weapon, she yanks out a green dagger, then neatly destroys the outer edges to create some fingerholds. "Alright. Gask, get up here. Jo, we've gotta yank this back. Can you give it a push from the other side?"
"Sure. It'll make a lot of noise, though."
"Then nevermind." The small Cat-woman lets out a soft sigh, then positions herself to exert the maximum amount of force with a foot against the solid portion of the wall. "Ready... pull."
The slender Lemur grates her teeth in effort, but contrary to her initial thoughts, the thin portal easily slides towards them.
"Here. I'll make an earthen column so we can gently set it down."
Zen offers a nod while wiggling the portion of wall the last few inches out from it's surroundings, then patiently waits for a long cylinder to form and cradle the carved blocks before giving it a soft tug from the top.
In seconds the obstruction is laying flat against the ground, and Joanne stealthily follows the pair of Beastkin into a crammed-full undercroft. Besides the wines and wheels of cheese, there were many stacks of crates, old furniture, barrels, un-needed artworks, and small racks of rusty weapons and armour.
Both of the furries simply stand stoic for a short while, twisting their heads and ears this way and that, then they both nod in tandem before following their senses through the maze, arriving at the bottom of a winding stone stairway in a matter of moments.
Before starting up however, the feline Scout beckons her wife over, then cups her hands around where the human's ears would be under her blackened cowl. "You and Gask head straight outside and dig the first pit. I'll be along shortly."
After whirling back around, Zen quickly heads up the flight of stairs, then lashes straight through the iron door latch before pulling open the portal and slipping between the crack.
Within the dead silence of the stately manner, she's easily able to pick up the sounds of twelve softly-snoring people, and briefly points towards the right while heading in the opposite direction.
It takes only a few seconds to arrive at a well-appointed reception hall, and half as much time to spring up to the third floor, where the small Cat-woman then pauses on a thick carpet to listen once more.
She picks up on the likely target's location, quickly lopes through the darkness down a long hallway and connecting branch, then slows to a halt in front of an ornate set of gilded double doors.
Since it's not locked or barred, she's able to slip in without a sound, and briefly scans a wide drawing-room before heading towards the rear corner and moving into the sleeping area.
Apparantly, the Lord of this manner preferred to sleep alone, so all it takes to steal this idiot is a hard blow against his temple to ensure that he didn't wake up.
To prep for her escape, Zen flips a folded piece of parchment onto the floor, the fake ransom note, hurriedly glides over to a massive window behind some thick velvet curtains, then uses her mithril dagger to carve out a huge section before storing it straight into her hip-pouch.
Since flawless glass was a luxury, this was going to be re-used for all of the Founders' rooms at their hotels. Keep some of the chill out during the winter, anyways.
After leaning out into the cool night air, she's easily able to spy her co-conspirators in the flower-garden below, and makes a few curt motions to display a need for a column of dirt to carry her down.
By the time she returns with the fat lump of humanity over her shoulder, her gorgeous wife has formed a nice cylinder of compacted soil, and she rides it all the way to the ground before rejoining the other women.
Gask gleefully stabs the man through his heart, then they roll their first victim down into the deep, sloping grave, and move on to their next target's location which is two manors over.
The slender Lemur-kin leads them around to the furthest side, but just before moving around the final corner, she suddenly stops and holds up a fist. A full minute tensely ticks by, at which she pokes her head around the edge, then waives the other women forwards when she sees the patrol of three heavily-armoured humans had certainly moved on.
While the other two slink over between a large pair of concealing shrubs, Zen moves to another portion similarly shrouded in shadows, then quickly carves out a section of stone and crawls into a lavish parlour.
In this estate, it sounded like a pair of roving guardsmen were on duty, so the short Scout plots a path to the top-most level that avoids them completely, and soon arrives in front of the Master bedroom.
This time the lock is engaged, though easily subverted with a mithril dagger, and she slips into a small lounge before closing the door behind her. Unfortunately, a steady draught pushes the portal open again, so she's forced to hack off a section of carpet to stuff under the edge before moving on.
A man and woman were snoozing inside the huge four-poster bed, and she smacks both of them in the base of the head before following the same exit-procedures as before.
Within a minute she's back in the garden, and Gask again happily murders the rail-thin human before disposing of his corpse and leading the way to the neighbour's house, where she points towards a second-storey window.
Zen gives a curt nod to show her comprehension, but on this occassion there's no shrubs nestled against the side of the estate, so she's forced to cut through a pair of latches on a window before slipping into a sprawling dining-area.
Three guardsmen were on duty in this home, with one of them stationary at the second landing of the only staircase leading to the higher levels, so, after back-tracking to the dining-hall, she gets creative in making some hand-holds up to the ceiling and carving a small access.
The guest bedroom that she pops up into is thankfully deserted, but after moving over to the door backing out onto the hallway, she finds that another guard just starting his languid journey, and is forced to wait for a full, frustrating two minutes.
Once the coast is clear, however, all the short Scout has to do is move into the next room down, skull the two men sleeping in the huge bed, and take a few moments to sniff the ambient smells in the room before deciding that they younger of the two was simply the lover.
A wry grin spreads across her lips at the thought that this poor gay boy was going to be found out before waking, and, to make matters worse, she neatly tucks the fake ransom note into his hand.
After moving over to the window and peeking around the drapes, Zen finds a group of patrolling guardsmen gathered on the exposed avenue between the last manor and this one, and a momentary sense of panic floods her body at the thought of being discovered so early in their clandestine activities.
But once she carves out a tiny circle of glass and directs her ear to the hole, a soft sigh escapes her lips at hearing the disgusting pigs discussing the best whores in the local brothels.
Three and a half minutes later, the gathering of guards disperses back into the night, and she's finally allowed to rejoin her companions in the garden below.
The next estate they visit is three properties to the north, and it takes some creative hiding in shallow holes to go un-noticed, but when they arrive at the location, they find it to be the easiest snatch so far, with the master bedroom handily located on the ground-floor behind a wide arrangements of tall topiaries.
Unfortunately, this middle-aged male is so obese that it takes all three of them to roll him out into the garden through a sizable hole in the wall. So much for easy.
Were they to actually try and kidnap this bastard, it would undoubtably lead to discovery. Thankfully, though, after a simple stab through his massive chest with her mithril katana, Zen solves their problem, and Jo buries the evidence beneath twelve feet of soil and stone. Anything less would probably be obvious after decomposition set in.
Since they'd wasted far too much time with one victim, the women are forced to pick up the pace a little, and they take a few risky paths that very nearly leads to them being found, but because the guardsmen were all half-drunk anyways, their darting shadows were easily dismissed.
With fifty percent of their targets already taken care of, the small Cat-woman feels a palpable thrill building steadily inside her chest, and the next four humans are all done in with an evil smile on her lips the entire time.
But the final manor of the night represented the biggest challenge.
The Goldstein estate was by far and large the most imposing of all the residences inside the castle walls, at five stories, three wings not including the one for servants, and four dozen guardsmen who were all sober, alert, and patrolling at random on the grounds or in the manor.
Zen's smile readily fades in the face of this task, and only once she's made a full circuit of the wrought-iron fences surrounding the perimetre does she choose an avenue for herself to enter.
Since it was too dangerous for her companions to get near, they were going to stay on the grounds of the first manor they infiltrated, waiting anxiously in a secluded patch of the garden.
To start her infiltration, the short Scout lops off two portions of the wrought-iron bars, slips through the gap, then delicately sets them back into place before darting across the wide, exposed front lawn.
During her survey, she'd found that only two men were in charge of watching the primary access point from the roof, but the shadows were so thick that their horrible eye-sight would never be able to penetrate the darkness.
After arriving at the side of the manor, Zen takes her time moving from one window to the next, peeking in through the frames and looking for the best spot to enter from... yet the first half-dozen only hold views of the same wide-open reception hall.
It isn't until she rounds the edge of the front facade that she finds a likely candidate in a water-closet... but it's unfortunately in use by one of the guards at the moment.
She decides to scope out some of the others a little further down, though returns a few minutes later after discovering a dining-area and ballroom.
Once the small Cat-woman destroys the window-latch, she stealthily slips in through the frame, then pokes her head out into the hall for a quick peek in either direction.
In both ways, guards were passing by each other and nodding a greeting. Their pace was perfectly measured and completely in-step, moving like clock-work through the halls in opposite directions.
But these men stayed on their pre-assigned routes. They didn't check the rooms they went by, instead, just kept their focus moving from one shadow to the next.
From the sounds and smells of things, there were other guards lazily roaming about in other locations, checking windows and likely hiding-places... so this was gonna be tough.
Zen quickly ducks back into the water-closet, then briefly folds her arms across her chest while considering the optimal way to make it up to the upper floors, where the patrols would undoubtedly be thinner.
Carving out hand-holds up the front facade would leave her visible to the men wandering the streets, and since their objective was to abduct these people without being seen at all, she simply couldn't go on a killing spree.
How annoying, damnit.
After bobbling her head in non-commital for a short while, she then spins around, heads back onto the front lawn, then strains her hearing as much as she can to suss out the roving guards on the avenues.
Almost a dozen minutes tick by before a perfect opportunity presents itself, and she immediately springs up from the ground to sink a pair of mithril daggers into the stone, with their blades held on a horizontal to prevent her weight from just dragging her back down.
She slowly moves up the massive expanse with sheer upper-body strength, travelling hand-over-hand up to the fourth storey, then pain-stakingly moves over to the first stone window-ledge to peek in through the frame.
Though it was clearly a child's room, it was her sole option for an infiltration, since three different patrols along the streets were closing into range, so the small Cat-woman flicks a dagger through the pair of latches and pulls open one of the sides before dropping silently onto the plush carpet.
Before the five year-old-ish human girl is woken by the slight draught, Zen hurriedly closes the windows and moves over to press one of her furry ears against the door.
Only a pair of distance foot-falls on this level present themselves to her acute hearing, and she slips into the hall without being discovered... yet then freezes at the sight of a burly human male standing a metre away with his back turned.
And with his bulk shifting from one foot to the other... it was clear that he was about to turn in her direction.
Taking as much care as she can, the short Scout silently closes the door and springs over behind the huge human, landing without even a whisper immediately behind his frame.
The massive male issues a hearty yawn as he completes his half-turn, then begins to languidly lumber down the hall, apparantly taking great pains to not make much noise on the thin carpet.
Zen sits completely still on her haunches, not even daring to breathe until the odd, non-smelling human is a good twenty paces away, then she slowly moves on all fours to more evenly distribute her slight bulk over the floor.
Once she finds a decent hiding place, she starts to strain her ears and drink in large lungfuls of air, trying to figure out where her target was located.
Unfortunately, she didn't have a Dog-kin's sense of smell, nor a Mouse-kin's level of hearing, so she's ultimately forced to play hide-and-seek with the five randomly-patrolling men on the fourth storey.
Only after she's scoped out the entire floor does she head back to the central staircase and head up to the top-most level.
And there she finds another in-surmountable challenge.
Three men in heavy armours sitting on stools in front of a pair of huge, gilded doors.
After inwardly groaning at the amount of paranoia this stupid Goldstein had, and realizing that she was there to kill him so it was actually justified, Zen then returns to the fourth storey, moves into an un-occupied bedroom's closet that would be directly under the wing that the three armoured goons were guarding, then hurriedly creates a number of hand-holds up to the ceiling.
She takes her time carving a hole through to the top floor, and once there are only two small fibres of wood holding the panel in place, she braces it with the top of her head and snips the connecting portions before rising up to peek around.
Apparantly, she'd chosen her spot well, as she was directly underneath a long dining-table, and quickly sheathes her dagger before pushing the chunk of floor off to the side.
Once she's hauled herself up through the hole, the small Cat-woman spends a fair while simply listening to the dead silence and sniffing the air...
And an evil smile starts to spread out across her lips.
Seems like, even with all the security around this estate, Goldstein preferred to be the sole occupant inside his lavish apartment.
Of course, the ropes spaced evenly around the outsides of the open-concept room were undoubtedly connected to bells that would summon the guards... but it wasn't like he was going to have the opportunity to yank on one.
Moving as silently as ever, Zen creeps towards the back of the wing on all fours, only to suddenly freeze in place at the sight of a very-slightly raised section of flooring ahead.
It was so miniscule of a deviation that anyone else wouldn't notice it... but to a professional S-ranked Scout... it immediately made her think of similar traps in the lower-levels of Dungeons.
A bitch-plate.
This one might not try and roast her in fire or stuff a pike through her rear... but it was definitely rigged to summon the entire security-force.
After slowly panning her gaze around, this time specifically searching for similar oddities, the short Scout easily identifies a dozen others scattered around what would be the most-commonly traversed areas.
Luckily, by sticking close to the seating-areas and travelling over some of the furniture, she should easily be able to make it over to the master bedroom without blowing her infiltration.
It actually takes longer than she first thought it might, since three more times she finds the pressure-plates concealed under small rugs or carpets, but once arriving in front of the gilded double-doors of Goldstein's sleeping-chambers, she lets out a long, silent breath of relief.
But now that she's encountered one type of trap, she then starts to actively look for others around the slight crack bewteen the doors and it's frame... and spies something that might be a thin strand of wire on the opposite side.
If it were like the ones inside treasure-boxes, then the pressure of opening the lid would cause something to happen. Typically, slicing through the cords or wires would disable it... but she couldn't be absolutely sure in this case, as it could just as easily be the lack of pressure that set off the trap.
Luckily, though, the doors themselves didn't appear to be rigged with anything, so Zen whips out a mithril dagger and slowly moves to push it through the painted-white wood.
Only to have her blade repelled.
After blinking a few times in confusion, she then immediately recalls the story her wife had told, about Jessie almost having her foot blown off by an enchantment that rebounded all force directed towards it...
Then she remembers Jeleel-the-middle-man saying that adamantium could cut through any magics.
With few other options to try at this juncture, the small Cat-woman sheathes her dagger, then takes her crimson katana out from her hip-pouch and slowly guides it towards the wood. At the point where her mithril weapon had been repelled, this time she feels only a slight resistance, and is easily able to pierce the door without any problems.
Once she's carved out a large chunk, she stores her katana away, then plucks out the panel and sets it aside before poking her head through.
Snoring blissfully away between satin sheets was her target, not twenty feet away... but between them were at least six more pressure-plates, including one large enough directly behind the doors that it spanned nearly the entire width of the frame.
Feeling more annoyed than she had in a very long time, Zen decides to get a small measure of revenge by neatly carving three more wide panels from the oddly-enchanted doors, then stuffs them all into her pouch.
Turning these pieces into shields for her front-line girls would be somewhat hilarious. Maybe she'd even call them 'Goldsteins' as a sick joke. Justice.
After keenly plotting her approach to the bedside, she leaps three times in rapid succession, and lands with barely a whisper atop a super-thick rug at the side of the massive bed, then rises up to her full height and sends a poignant frown towards the old, stocky man disgustingly chuckling in his sleep.
A quick, hard smack with her dagger across the temple, and the sixty year-old human is rendered comatose, allowing her the opportunity to let out a heavy sigh without fear of getting caught.
After making sure that there were no pressure-plates around the bed, she moves over to peek through the windows, taking her time surveying the scenes below.
Being five storeys up make it rather easy to scope out the patrols... but it didn't help to provide an exit.
Since she probably couldn't count on being able to simply climb down the front facade while lugging an eighty-kilo man on her shoulders, the only thing she can think of was murdering him here and stuffing Goldstein's remains into her enchanted pouch.
Unfortunately, the smell of blood tended to linger, so even if she quickly stabbed and stored him, it might be obvious that he'd been murdered, that the ransom-note was simply a ruse, and all the other pain-staking infiltrations would come undone shortly after.
So that left either back-tracking the way she came in... or simply hacking through the floors to the second storey, then jumping out a window to ensure that she wasn't injured.
But, considering that she climbed up to the fourth floor from the outside... hacking was the only option.
After recalling in detail the layout of the level below, Zen moves over to the opposite rear-most corner of the bedroom, then quickly carves out a thin section of the floor to peek into.
Just as she'd smelled when moving past, this was a simple storage-room devoted to off-season clothing. Spring and early-summer fashions, judging by the scent of pollen and grasses...
Once she hacks out a large enough area, she moves back over to the huge bed, then starts to slice through sections of satin sheets to tie into a harness and rope.
It takes a dozen minutes to complete, but after assuring that her rig wouldn't rip or break, she then slips it over the comatose old man and carries him over to the hole.
Lowering him down is a rather laborious chore, but he gently lands without a sound, and she drops beside him immediately after to gouge another section out.
Unfortunately, the distinct pattern of snoring reach her ears as soon as she pierces through the lower ceiling, and is forced to completely abandon this location in favour of something better.
Leaving Goldstein behind for a few moments, Zen scouts out the five patrolling men on the floor, then settles on a dis-used bedroom to test her luck in that location. She finds a large study directly below, returns to her quarry, and brings him back over within a few minutes.
Under the library is a visiting guest's bedroom, so she has to yet again abandon this position, though this time must avoid eight guards wandering around.
It takes nearly a dozen minutes to understand that there were quite a few rooms that the security men weren't allowed inside, and chooses one room at random. Unfortunately, this linen-closet held another in-use sleeping-chambers bleow, so she has to move on to her second option before finding a likely candidate.
Yet the next drop would be into a massive, extremely-lavish office-space, and was frequently patrolled. After a small amount of deliberation, she just shakes her head and heads over to a different wing to try her luck there.
Another twenty minutes goes by before finally finding a storage-area for guest-linens, and it takes nearly ten minutes in avoiding the patrols to drag her prey over.
But with dropping down onto the second floor, she's finally within reach of her goal, and ditches the improvised satin harness before placing a magical choker around Goldstein's throat.
Immediately, his body is covered in swirling shadow, and she tosses the old man over her shoulder to slowly make her way to the frontal portion of the manor.
She needs to avoid nearly sixteen roaming men in the process, but finds herself lucky after having to duck into a random room and discovering a cleaning-closet with a wide window overlooking the main lawn.
Unfortunately, a cluster of wandering street-guards are pacing across the avenue in front of the estate, and she has more than enough time to curse each of them a hundred times before the coast is clear.
It takes a little fineagling to hold herself and Goldstein from the stone ledge and push the window closed behind them, but then it's just a short drop to the well-manicured grass.
With the shadows being just as thick as when she started her infiltration, Zen is able to make it over to the wrought-iron bars she'd cut through previously, and slip them back in place once more without being seen.
Just a few minutes later she meets up with her anxious pair of co-conspirators, and happily allows Gask to stab the paranoid old human in the heart before rolling him into a grave.
In moments they've slipped back into the manor they started in, and quickly retrace their steps to the corner of the basement. Then comes the task of pushing the section of stone wall back into place, back-filling in a good dozen metres of the tunnel with stone-chips, and retreating to the Lemur's building to do the same thing at that end.
It's not until they slip silently up to Gask's room that they all start to smile, and without a single word between them, they simply down a few shots-worth of potent alcohols as a toast before laying down for a few hours of sleep.
Still, Zen doesn't close her eyes until she's replayed the entire shadowy operation through her head, making absolutely sure that there were no blunders that could be traced back to any of them.
They weren't seen. They caused no commotions. Yes, they left lots of destruction in their wake from the exfiltrations, but that would lend credence to the kidnapping demands.
Undoubtedly, were these incidents not just going to be overshadowed by the assassination of a higher noble, this night would probably have been talked about for years. Perhaps gone down in infamy...
And it was a shame that the only people who would ever know were a human healer, a Felindae, and an odd Lemur. Regardless... it was a good night.