That was where his conflicting thoughts were when the door screeched open.
Sawny stood on shaking legs. Was this it? Or would a guard drag him away to his doom?
Addison’s pasty face appeared around the doorway. Pale and filled with fear, he waved his hand, beckoning Sawny to the door.
“I ran here as soon as I heard the chieftain speak to his men about the messenger,” Addison explained in a breathless voice.
Sawny reached the door. He glanced into the dim hallway. No guards.
“Why would he speak this news in front of you?”
He squinted his eyes at Sawny as if Sawny should understand something so basic.
“I’m naught but a servant. Nobles and men of power speak as if the help has no eyes or ears, and certainly no brain. Yet we hear and know everything. Now, we must get ye out before they kill ye. Ye will be just the start. The guards are drunk, celebrating the letter even as they discuss it. Come now.”
Addison turned and Sawny stepped beyond his cell door after him.
“Why are ye helping me?” He rested his hand on Addison’s arm, slowing his rushing pace.
The lad paused and looked up at Sawny. For the first time, Sawny saw an expression on his face that was not one of fear or worry. Addison sneered.
“The Campbells and MacIntoshes only care about their power. They killed my father and mother, the MacNabs near Inverlochy, and my sister and I were taken as servants.”
No wonder Addison exuded dread. He lived in a constant state of it. Sawny pursed his lips, then turned his attention to the greater matter before them.
“Did you see the letter? What did the letter say?”
“I could no’ read it. I only overheard them discussing the news that the letter is a problem. Kelso was debating if he should destroy it before Breadalbane arrives or no’.”
So Kelso still had the letter.
That was a new development and meant a change of plans.
“Take me to the letter.”
Addison’s ferocious expression shifted in an instant, back to his pale fear. “What? Nay. I canna. ‘Tis on the third floor in his study. If I’m caught . . .”
Something else was going on with the lad. He was worried about more than getting caught with Sawny. Something else that made him pale so much that he resembled death.
“Then I’ll go. Direct me to the stairs and I’ll go myself. That way ye are no’ caught and if I’m caught, I’ll blame the drunk guards.”
The lad stared at him for a moment, then nodded. Sawny wiped his stringy hair out of his eyes and steeled himself.
“Where is the study, exactly?”
“From that door, go up the stairs to the right,” Addison said, tipping his head toward the iron-reinforced door at the top of the stone stairs. “Go left to the hall to another set of stairs that curves up into the tower. After the second set, ‘tis a door on the landing ‘twill lead to a narrow hall. The study is the first door on the right. But they may still be in his study. I dinna believe that Kelso will let the letter from his sight.”
“Let me figure that out. If they are drunk or celebrating that much, they may no’ notice a dim figure skulking along the walls.”
“If they see ye . . .” Addison’s words drifted off, not wanting to speak such a dire thought into existence.
Sawny was not going to let that thought continue. “If they do, I’ll run.” He leveled his gaze at the shorter lad. “I vow to ye, I’ll never get caught by a MacIntosh again.”
Then he brushed past the lad and strode to the door.
Toward freedom.
Sneaking up the stairs had been rather easy. The guards and Kelso’s men were collected in large drunk groups in the torch-lit hall. One man moved slightly, and Sawny cringed backward into the shadows, but he was only adjusting his ballocks under his liquor-soaked kilt.
