Then she knocked the sword from his hand. Callum looked at me, goodbye in his eyes. Jackie growled, “Come help me with this.” She kicked Callum to the ground and stood next to him, her sword pointed at his neck.
I pushed her aside and stepped between them. “No.”
Without hesitation, she stabbed me in the stomach. I kicked her in the knee and tackled her. After pinning her to the floor face-down, I told Callum to grab the handcuffs in his cell. He scrambled to his feet and ran to the cell, just a couple dozen feet away.
“How - what - why are you not dead?” She asked incredulously.
“Got some top secret documents in my pants,” I told her.
“Oh, shut up. That didn’t work last time, and you know it,” she said. I imagined her rolling her bright brown eyes. Callum returned quickly and we shackled her wrists together. “We’re going to get up, nice and slow, and put you in the cell now,” I said. She started to yell for help. I shoved my forearm across her mouth, and she bit me. Hard. I yelped and stifled the curses rising in my throat. As I dragged her to the cell, I snatched the cap off one of the unconscious guard’s head and stuffed it in her mouth. She could spit it out easily, but her screams wouldn’t mean a thing once we got her in the cell - it had been soundproofed years ago.
Callum helped me maneuver her through the doorway; she lashed out with everything she could. Finally, after an excruciating experience wherein I peeled each of her perfectly callused fingers off the doorframe, we shut and barred the door. I returned my sword to the rack. Callum picked his sword up and put the blade through his belt loop. One of the guards groaned, and started to wake up. “Time to go,” Callum quietly said to me. “Are you okay? I saw her stab you in the stomach.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“I have a bunch of paperwork under my shirt. That’s what she sliced into instead of my body.”
As we jogged to the tunnel that the princesses escaped from, he casually struck a match against the wall and tossed the tiny flame to the remnants of the barrels, crates, and boxes. They started to smolder.
We crawled through the tunnel - again - I think my knees are going to whack me after this. The tapping, scraping noise of Callum’s sword drove me a little crazy, but I made it out fine. I opened the trap door and helped Callum up. The sun was just beginning to rise. It turned a sliver of the horizon orange and red.
“What’s next?” Callum asked. He poked at the mossy ground with his foot. His eyes were puffy.
“Both of us need to get away,” I said. “The Triumdemic will have our heads if we stay here. I think I’d like to go to Londinium, personally.”
“And do what?”
“Open a bakery.”
“Are you joking?”
“Well, it’s either that or start a black market organization. Those are the only two things I’m good at, so which one do you think I should choose?”
He laughed a little. “The bakery. As long as you make apple fritters, though.”
“That could be arranged,” I said with a smile. “What about you?”
“I know I can’t stay here, or anywhere close to here. I need to send a pigeon to Chantelle, then I’ll leave. Maybe America - they call it the land of opportunity. Do you think they have floating cities there?”
“I don’t know, I guess you’ll just have to find out.”