But the women just shook their heads numbly.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Isobelle asked gently of the woman closest to the bars. “To you, to your village? Where did you say you were from?”
“Aberfarthing,” came the soft reply. “Just outside the village proper, most of us, to the south, toward the new mines. I didn’t see much, myself—but I heard it.” She gave a bone-deep shudder. “The roaring, the screams.”
“I saw it,” piped up another voice, farther back in the shadows. “A great black monster flying over the village just before the headman’s house exploded in flames.”
Another woman stepped forward. “Not black,” she argued. “Sort of brownish green, an awful color, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Gwen glanced at Isobelle, brow furrowed, obviously thinking the same thing she was: no wonder no one had believed these women and their tales of dragon attacks. No two of them were telling the same story.
Isobelle stepped back, leaving Gwen to continue her examination of the cell door, and glanced at Olivia, who was still within sight up the passageway. “What do you make of this?” she called, keeping her voice low, as the women in the cell debated the sequence of events that had driven them out of their homes.
Olivia was listening with half an ear, her attention partly directed back the way they’d come. “Eyewitnesses are unreliable at best,” she said, though her voice was slow and troubled. “The more traumatic the event, the harder it can be to recall exactly what you saw. It doesn’t necessarily make them liars.”
Isobelle sighed. “You could have just said ‘I don’t know,’ Olivia.”
Olivia raised an eyebrow and glanced at her, lips quirking the tiniest bit. “Come now, Isobelle. You know I know everything. Keep working here, I’m going to check on our sleeping beauties.”
Isobelle turned her attention back to the women, infusing her voice with the kind of calm confidence she imagined was helpful when leading armies, and undertaking other great deeds requiring courage and confidence. “We’re going to get you out of here,” she told them. “We’ll keep searching for the key, as long as it takes to—”
“Actually,” Gwen said, interrupting her and lifting her head. “We don’t need the key.”
“You can pick the lock?” Isobelle asked, leaning in, heart pounding. “Or break it?”
“I don’t need to. Look at these hinges—simple pegs, relying on the weight of the door to keep it closed. Everyone focuses on the locks.” Gwen gave a disgusted shake of her head. “Amateur hour over here.”
Isobelle had to hide a smile. “Well, why don’t we go find whoever’s in charge, and let them know what they’re doing wrong?Really make sure no one can get out of this place next time.”
Gwen looked up at her and blinked in the torchlight, before a breath of laughter escaped her. “Point taken. The bottom line is that these hinges are atrocious. I can get the door off, with a little help—is Olivia still back there?”
Isobelle handed Gwen the torch and went scurrying up the disgusting corridor as quickly as she dared, regretting her choice of slippers. She found her maid going through the guards’ pockets, but at a glance from Isobelle, she straightened up.
“Just checking again for a key,” Olivia protested archly. “I wasn’t going to steal anything, they’re just lads.”
Isobelle hid a smile and beckoned for Olivia to follow her back down the corridor.
When they returned, Gwen was instructing the women on the other side of the gate. “If we can lift it enough, we’ll raise it off the pegs that form the hinges.”
Isobelle and Olivia took their places on the outside, Isobelle’s fingers pressed up against the hand of one of the women holding the inside of the door. Her knuckles were swollen, and her skin was dreadfully cold.
Isobelle squeezed the cold hand, then tightened her hold on the iron bar and lifted with everything she had, straining to drag the door up from the ground, a pain shooting through her jaw as she clenched it harder than she’d known she could.
The door lifted off its hinges, giving way, threatening to swing by its new hinge—the lock on the other side of the door—into the cell, pinning the women who were trying to brace it without the help of the hinges. Isobelle kept tight hold of it, throwing her weight backward with the effort, but all she could do was slow its fall.
Then Gwen was there, stepping around her to take hold of it beside her, and with a groan of effort, dragging it back toward them once more. And for all Isobelle had understood how hard it must be to move in armor, to lift a lance, to stay in the saddle, she hadn’t realized until this moment just how strong Gwen was.
The gate made a horrible screeching sound as they dragged it out of the way, but there was nothing to be done about that. Half a dozen women quickly made their way out, one of them supported between two others, her feet dragging as she stumbled, trying to keep herself from going down altogether.
“Let’s get it back in place,” Gwen hissed shortly. “Let them think they just walked out of a locked cell. They’ll call it fae or witches and won’t go looking for conveniently disguised blacksmith’s daughters.”
Isobelle caught her breath in a laugh and nodded to the other women, a few of whom joined the efforts to drag the screeching door back onto the open peg hinges, until there was very little sign they’d ever been there at all.
“This way. I know a place where you’ll be safe, at least for now.” Olivia hurried up the hallway, and the women followed without question—there was an air of competence about Olivia that commanded it, and it was a quality Isobelle was determined to master herself one day. She and Gwen brought up the rear, and Gwen reached out to squeeze her hand again.
I can’t believe we’ve done it.
And then she nearly ran into the back of one of the village women, who’d all stopped.
