“Let’s keep going,” Meena said. She pulled at the latch on the door. To her relief, it opened instantly. “I was expecting it to be locked.”
“The next one definitely will be,” Ezra responded.
“I thought you said you hadn’t been down here before?” Meena stepped through the door, pulling it closed behind them.
“I haven’t.” Ezra had exchanged her bottles of wine for a lantern. “But Jules was here for two days straight when the shipment arrived. There were very specific instructions about securing it.”
“How specific?” Meena asked nervously.
“Lots of guards. Definitely locks.”
“That’s not very specific,” Meena replied, disappointed.
Ezra held up the lantern, illuminating a meticulously carved sandstone tunnel.
Meena felt like a child, exploring the tunnels under the old castle in Iseldis for the first time. A tingly feeling of anticipation sparkled across her skin. She didn’t have a map, but she was not afraid to be under the ground. Perhaps it helped that she knew the cliff face was not far away, so it did not truly feel like it was underground.
“If I had known it would be important, I would have paid more attention,” Ezra said. “At the time I was rather busy studying how to write in coded symbols.”
Meena wanted to ask how Ezra and Jules had been recruited by Robin, but that would have to be a story for another time. “You don’t happen to have keys for the locks, do you?”
“No.”
“Unfortunate.” Meena stepped fearlessly down the tunnel.
“But I might be able to pick the lock,” Ezra added.
“Oh!” Meena spun around as she walked to catch Ezra’s face behind her. “You’ll have to teach me sometime. I never could figure out lock picking.”
“Let’s see if it works first,” Ezra said.
“Which way should we go?” Meena asked, indicating a split in the tunnel ahead.
“There are likely guards at the door itself, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Let’s start with this side.”
The chosen branch of the tunnel turned out to be fairly short. It had multiple smaller side rooms filled with additional chests and barrels of storage, as well as a cache of swords, spears, and arrows.
They returned to check the other branch, both remaining as silent as possible.
As they rounded the corner, they could see a faint light up ahead.
Ezra quickly extinguished her lantern. The light was coming around another corner a good distance ahead.
In complete silence, Meena and Ezra crept down the tunnel. Meena carefully glanced around the corner, then stepped aside so Ezra could do the same.
Two guards sat on a bench at the end of the tunnel. A solid wood door filled the space behind them. Meena could hear the faint sound of their voices echoing down the symmetrical walls of the square tunnel, but she could not hear their specific words.
Remaining out of sight, Meena and Ezra stared at each other for a long moment, not daring to speak and reveal their presence.
Meena’s toe silently tapped the ground below her feet as she tried to come up with a plan. The ground was rough under her feet.
Leaning down, she used her finger tips to find a few small chunks of rock. That was a start.
Holding the rocks in her fist, she silently mimed her plan to Ezra.
The dim light reflecting off the side of the tunnel was just enough to see each other.
Ezra nodded, then held up a hand, asking Meena to wait for a moment.
