Scarlet

“How many ways do you know?”

“The tunnel’s my best way in. I can get over the wall in a trice without them seeing me, but the tough bit is getting others over.” I stopped, my eyes going wide. “I know what we can do.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, they’ll be expecting us to break Godfrey and Ravenna out, won’t they? They’ll be guarding the prison extra just for it.”

“So?”

“So let’s give them what they expect.”

His eyebrows pulled together tight. “You want us to walk into a trap? Or, rather, a heavily guarded prison that might as well be a trap?”

I grinned, setting off. “Nail on the head, Rob!”

“Wait, Scar, that makes no sense.”

I kept walking.

“Scar!”

“You’ve gone completely mad,” John told me, again. Again and again. And again. Rob and Much said nothing, but they were with me too.

“Stop saying that. It’s bad luck.”

“You don’t need luck—you need to not go in there.”

“Since when are you antsy about scaring up some trouble, John?” Much asked.

He glared. “Since she’s taking far too much risk on her shoulders. They’re little shoulders, if you lot haven’t noticed.”

“She’ll be fine, John. It’s a good idea,” Rob said, rougher than I would have thought. Honestly, the lug were just worried.

“I’m holding you responsible, Huntingdon,” John snapped. “Remember that you’re the one who agreed to all this.”

I slapped John’s stomach. We never called Rob by his title. “In case you forgot, John Little, we don’t look back once we agree on a plan. Stop casting bad luck round.” I spat on the ground; it were supposed to send off bad spirits.

I looked up at the sky. It were a dark, clouded sky without a moon, like a better thief than me stole the light to help us hide. We climbed the wall, scaling the rough stone by moving quick and never searching out much of a foothold. Only Much couldn’t fair get it, and John climbed back down and did it again with Much on his back, like he’d done Freddy the other time.

Rob and I went over the wall to the parapet, looking for the roving guards. One came through and we separated, each flipping over the side of the guard’s walk at the top of the wall to hide in the dark. The side I flipped over, of course, left me dangling above the castle residences. I lowered myself onto one careful, hiding on the back of the roof.

Rob came down, and then John and Much came a few minutes later. Once we were all there, I dropped down into the central courtyard, looking straight into Gisbourne’s chambers. The room were lit, but he weren’t there, and that chilled me a little.

One by one we dropped down, then ran across the upper bailey and down through the gauntlet. There were more guards on, and they were moving, but they still tended to group together and leave areas unprotected. We knew how to move in the darkness unseen, but I knew the Mason twins wouldn’t be so good at it.

Once we got to the prison, I went round the side of the lads while John came in from the front, bumbling like a drunk. The two guards from the front threw their gaze to him, and I slid in behind them. I heard John shouting at them as I ran deep into the prison.

The rough rock walls gave way to cells, a lone candle guttering in the front to cast light over the place. I could see the cells and the people within, and I stopped dead.

Something were wrong. ’Ever I set foot in the prison, they’d all be whispering and calling to me, begging for help or helping me find who I needed. They were all dead quiet, and I didn’t flatter myself that they couldn’t see me.

I stopped at Jack Tailor’s cell. We had tried once to help him get out of there, but he wouldn’t go; he didn’t want no backlash on his family. He said it weren’t worth the price of being free. That were a few months ago; I wondered if he might change his mind if he thought there’d be some hangings soon.

He came to the front of his cell, meeting my eyes and then looking over toward the back of the prison. I drew my finger down between my eyes, trying to ape the nosepiece that were on the guards’ helmets.

He shook his head.

I nodded. It weren’t a guard, then. That meant it could be someone I didn’t need to bother ’bout none—or Nottingham. Or Gisbourne.

Either way, I had to move quick. “Mason?” I mouthed. Tailor pointed to a cell farther down. I would have to be quicksilver. I nodded my thanks and moved into the darker end of the prison.

I could feel someone there. I could hear soft breathing, measured and even, and, worse, I could feel his eyes on me. Watching me. Hunting me. Somewhere in my gut, I were sure it were Gisbourne, standing in the shadow just beyond me like he’d always done.

Didn’t matter none. Couldn’t turn back now.

I slid the package from my back. It would fit through the bars. I moved quiet along the cells, looking for the twins. My heart were drumming up a storm. I just had to be steady, I kept reminding myself.

It were nineteen paces and six cells in that I found them. They rushed forward and I pressed the package through the bars. “Have faith,” I whispered, gripping Ravenna’s hand on the bar and meeting her eyes, trying to somehow show her everything that I couldn’t tell her and her brother.

A huge hand came out and grabbed my neck, ripping me back from the bars. I fell back against the other cell across the row, and even in the dark I knew the Devil when I saw him.

“Gisbourne.”

He pulled back, surprised that I knew his name, and I didn’t sit around gawping. I bolted. “John!” I barked as I cleared the prison gate. He threw off the guards and snapped a couple quick punches, and we set off running.

Rob were running ahead of us, and Much were on the roof, waiting to grab him with his good arm and toss him up. Then Rob hauled John up while I scrambled up the wall. We were over the wall as archers started setting in.

The archers shot, but there were big brass bowls full of fire right on the parapet, and they couldn’t see into the dark beyond that. We skittered right down the wall and scampered quick into the forest.

We ran for a while, and Rob called us all to stop by a stream. We drank, and I pulled onto a tree branch. “Well?” Rob asked.

“Went perfect,” I told him. “Now that they think we’ve tried and failed, we’ll be set to get them out tomorrow. Got the package in, so they’ll think we’ve been getting people out dressed as guards. And they did keep a man inside, like I thought they might.”