The Trouble with Time, Part 2.19 - Snowy

Four days and a couple of hours. That's what they have left. And they're going in now. If everything goes smoothly, they should meet back at the cabin with three days remaining with both Vanessa and the heart.

With a nervous smile to Alsebah, she steps through the door in front of her, and finds herself utterly alone for the first time in more than a week. That feeling hits her even harder than the cold of the midnight winter air. When they decided she would have to go alone, she was relieved. At least this way no one is going to stop her from doing exactly what she thinks needs to be done to get Vanessa back. But now, now she simply feels alone and lost in an unfamiliar and probably hostile world she knows next to nothing about. She doesn't know what she's doing. The feeling evaporates after a short moment. At least she's doing something. No more sitting around, waiting, planning. No more clues, no more frustrating searches. Just an easy, simple rescue mission: get Vanessa out of the castle and through the door behind her. It feels good to have a clear, simple goal again. She smiles to herself, just a little.

The door she came through is simply sitting in a wall in an alley, and doesn't have anywhere obvious it leads. Alice feels like it should look out of place, but somehow it doesn't. She tries to memorise the place, so she can find it again, then steps out of the alley onto an empty street. The Winter Castle is towering over the small town, easy to spot from anywhere, every horizontal-ish surface covered in thick snow. Even in the middle of the night it's brightly lit, looking exactly what Alice would expect a fairy winter castle to look like.

Her heart is aching, knowing Vanessa is so close in both distance and time. She steers her steps, grounded, determined, towards the lights of the castle, the squeaking of the snow under her boots the only sound in the dark. She sees only a few lit windows, making her way quickly past them, looking in the other direction. The only light outside is from the castles and from the stars, from the crescent moon low on the horizon.

The castle is farther away than it looks, and soon she is out of the town, heading through a snowy forest towards is. It's completely silent. The snow glitters in the starlight, and for a while Alice is also enjoying herself, walking through a perfect winter scene.

It takes an hour for her to get from the door to the walls. There she stops, thinks her strategy through. Walking into the castle is a bad idea. If the princesses are here, so are guards, awake at all hours. She could try to sneak around, but she's not sure where she needs to sneak. Finding Vanessa's bedroom would be optimal, so they could sneak back out together during the night, be back at Alsebah's by dawn. She readjusts the weight of her backpack on her shoulders. She's carrying a set of clothes for Vanessa too, something more practical than what she was wearing on the stage when they saw her at the fair. Those clothes, while stunningly beautiful, are definitely not suitable for this kind of thing.

The thing she wants do is what Kevin and Sam are doing: dress as a servant and blend in with the staff in the hopes that no one will bother her if she moves around the castle looking busy enough and like she belongs. But she doesn't have a uniform, and there's probably not much staff around right now, other than the guards. So it's not really a possibility. She'll have to do this some other way.

Whatever she's going to do, she should do it fast. The clock is ticking, and if she can't get Vanessa out tonight, while Sam and Kevin do get the heart, getting to Vanessa will become practically impossible.

So first thing is to scout the perimeter. She takes a slow walk around the castle, careful to only move where others have already moved, so as to not leave any obvious prints of her own, alerting someone to things being amiss. There are some lights on in the windows close to the ground, and she tries to peek in through them, just in case she can catch a glimpse of Vanessa somewhere. She can't. She makes note of every possible escape route

The second floor is harder. The ground floor is, in most places, three times the height of a normal stories. There's lights on upstairs, over ten meters off the ground. She looks around, trying to find a way onto the roof. She's not sure how much that would help anyway, since with this much snow covering the rooftops she's more likely to fall to her death with dislodged snow than see in through the windows if she tries to see in from above.

She sighs. She's an Acquirer. A good one. One of the best. But she's never needed to acquire anything the size of a human. Or from a well guarded royal palace. But she can do this. She has to. There's no other way. She needs to get inside somehow. It's time to change tactics. Kevin would absolutely hate this, and it's a risk. A huge risk. If something goes wrong she simply has to believe king Oberon isn't tired of the game yet, with only days left.

She changes into a different coat she's carrying in her backpack, a men's cut (or so she's been told) that's loose enough on her to pass as a decent disguise in the dark. She walks back to the main gate at the wall, turns, and marches straight towards the front doors of the castle. As she does it, she pulls her hat deeper onto her head, her scarf up farther over her face.

And then she pounds on the heavy doors. Nothing happens. She pounds again. She hears a noise from the other side. The big door opens just enough to squeeze through, and a confused-looking guard looks out.

"Yes?" he says. 

Kevin's warning not to interact with anyone, anyone, unless absolutely necessary rings in her mind. 

"I have a package for..." she digs out a blank piece of paper from the coat pocket, squinting at it. "A lady Vanessa." She's straining to speak as low as she can without it sounding obvious she's someone trying to speak low. It's a delicate balance, she knows from experience.

I'm sorry, Kevin. But this is necessary. I can't get Vanessa out if I can't get myself in first.

"A package?" the guard asks, not moving from his position in the door. He doesn't quite believe her. She can respect that. She wouldn't believe it either. Then again, the fae can't lie, so he technically shouldn't have a reason to disbelieve such a straight-forward statement. She hopes.

"It's urgent, sir," she tries. The guard stares at her. She carefully lets annoyance bleed into her tone. "Look, I know in the middle of the night isn't normally a time for a delivery, but like I said, it's urgent, from one of Lord Callan's sons, I believe. You think Ḯd be here at this hour if I didn't have to? That I wouldn't much rather be in my warm home, with my warm wife, under a warm blanket?"

She watches the guard's face closely as she speaks. He's warming up to her. 

"One of Lord Callan's sons, you say?" he asks.

"Yes, sir, I believe so," she nods.

"Very well," he says, but doesn't move. "Leave the package with me and I will take it to lady Vanessa right away."

"I'm afraid I cannot do that," she says. "I have strict instructions to hand it to the lady personally."

The guard looks at her for a moment, thinking, then steps aside.

"I will take you to the lady's room. You will give her the package, and I will walk you out," he informs her as she slips in through the crack in the door. he looks to the other guard at the door, who nods.

"This way."

Alice falls in step behind the guard, following him into the castle.

________________________________________________

I don't even know anymore.

The topic for tomorrow is Role.

~matleena