“Drag it over here,” Saela said as soon as Jade had stepped onto solid ground. Thankfully the timber was light, so together they quickly retracted the plank so that nobody could follow them across. After admiring their handiwork for a split second, Saela set off across the roof while Jade fell in behind.

“Trim?” Jade asked for a second time as she examined her surroundings. The roof that they were on now seemed to merge with those that also ran along the alley, and together they formed a neat strip that was easy to traverse while staying out of sight from those below. Occasionally there was a small rise or drop where the height of the building didn’t match the one next to it, but conveniently placed ramps and ladders were already in place as though the route was often used.

Saela answered Jade’s question by pointing across to a nearby roof as she jogged. Jade’s gaze followed the direction of her finger, and soon she found that Trim was waiting there while Nina remained slung over her shoulder. The fact that both Trim and Saela were rather unhurried now left Jade believing that they had finally made it to safety, so as she stepped across a second timber plank to join Trim and Nina on the roof, she couldn’t help but ask.

“The window with the red and white flag,” Trim replied as she pointed to a small stone balcony around the corner from where they were. “We’re safe once we make it inside.”

Smiling with a relatively relaxed expression, she set off at a brisk walk to the corner while Jade and Saela wordlessly followed behind her. Now that they were seemingly out of danger, Saela’s attitude had quickly reverted to her usual distant self which Jade was almost glad for. A cold Saela might be frustrating to deal with, but at least she was easy to read.

Soon they were standing on the roof above the window. After taking a quick look below them, Trim passed Nina over to Jade before lowering herself down off the edge. After that it was simple. Nina was carefully passed down, and once that was done both Jade and Saela followed behind her before they finally stepped through the open window into the room beyond.

“This is?” Jade asked nobody in particular as she examined the interior of the room. It looked like a fairly regular living space with a casual assortment of furnishings and painted cream walls, although in contrast to the darkness of the early morning the room was filled with the warm glow of light. A few sparsely placed candles were set on a couple of the pieces of furniture, and it made her wonder who would use them so wastefully. A timber floor was also something that surprised her, while there was even a worn rug placed under an old green sofa which sat in the centre of the room. While still a far cry from the living conditions that they were used to in the Royal District, the room that they were in at least seemed habitable unlike the majority of the spaces she had seen in the area.

“So you’re the ones, huh?” said a short man with thin white hair and a pockmarked face as he appeared in a doorway on the far side of the room. Jade cautiously examined his movements as he stepped towards them, and she could see out of the corner of her eye that Trim was gripping her pistol tightly with a finger hovering over the trigger. The man, however, paid them no attention as he casually strolled across the room before stopping in front of a faded brown tapestry that was hung on the wall. Turning to face them, his eyes flicked over Jade’s ragged state and the incapacitated Nina before he lifted the corner of the tapestry away to reveal that there was a space behind it.

“Are you going or not?”

The three of them stood in silence for a moment before Trim stepped over to examine the space behind the tapestry. After quickly glancing past his hand which was holding the cloth to the side, she sighed when she saw that he had a wry smile on his face.

“It’s about fifteen metres,” he said as he glanced once more at Nina. “Sorry, but it’s all we’ve got here.”

“Don’t be,” Trim replied before looking back over her shoulder to Jade and Saela. “You two are first.”

Jade saw that Saela seemed intent on hanging back a little, so she walked over to see the reason for why the man had been apologizing. In the space behind the wall was yet another ladder shaft that plunged into darkness, although at least the rungs were of good quality this time. She guessed that the man was apologizing as Trim would have to carry Nina down the ladder for around fifteen meters, but it was obviously unavoidable.

Frowning at the pain when she placed her injured hands onto the tape that was wrapped around the metal rungs for grip, she began her descent into the darkness. The shaft was around a metre square with a gentle breeze traveling through it, and when she looked down she could see the soft glow of light far below her at the bottom. At least it was something to aim for instead of blindly climbing down until her feet hit solid ground, and her aching limbs soon found themselves in a regular pattern once again.

“We’re safe right?” Saela asked from somewhere above her. She could hear the sounds of their feet on the rungs, but it was difficult to see them as the replaced tapestry blocked the light from above.

“Yeah,” Trim replied. “Unless I drop Nina on you, she’s getting pretty heavy.”

Jade chuckled as she heard Saela breathe a sigh of relief, but at the same she secretly did the same thing. Everything that she had been through after being summoned to Kromald’s sitting room had melted into a continuous adrenaline-fuelled blur that was a high she was still yet to come down from. Not only had she trespassed on Royal territory, broken into a laboratory, destroyed a vehicle, and been a complicit party when innocent people were shot, she had also rescued a friend, escaped from an enemy, been shot herself, and almost drowned along the way.

Aline isn’t going to believe this, she thought to herself as she reached the bottom of the ladder. Now finding that she was in a thin passage that stretched away from her, she turned her attention to the source of soft lighting which she had previously seen from above. It was electric, to her surprise, and she used the steady glow to examine the clean stone beneath her feet which must have been cleaned recently. The air was also pleasantly cool down here although a little thick, so despite how well the passageway seemed to be maintained she reasoned that they were underground.

Without waiting for Saela or Trim to join her in the narrow confines of the passage, she walked along it until she found that there was a wooden door placed at the other end of a shallow curve. Trim had said that they were safe now, and considering that the man from earlier had also helped them she felt that it was alright to gingerly reach for the handle before pushing it open. Cautiously stepping through into the room beyond, she looked up at the contents of the room for a moment before collapsing onto her knees and trying to fight back the rapidly oncoming tears. She was done, and although her body was about to fall forward due to the fact that she was completely out of strength, a figure appeared before her with two arms that locked her into a tight embrace.

Jade wouldn’t mistake these features anywhere. Whether it was the slender fingers on her back, the soft scent from the hair that dangled in front of her nose, or the intimate feeling that she got when that cheek was pressed against hers, Jade knew each and every detail as though they were her own. Despite knowing where she was and that she was safe, however, she couldn’t find the words that she wanted to say.

“You’re hurt,” Aline said softly as she leaned back a little so that she could examine Jade’s shoulder.

“Mmm.”

“But you’re alright, aren’t you?”

“Mmm.”

Jade and Aline’s reunion was interrupted as Saela pushed her way through the door before holding it open as Trim followed her through. Jade hadn’t really been paying attention to her surroundings, but she heard the murmur from the rest of the group when they saw that Nina was slung over Trim’s shoulder. Taking a deep breath, she looked up but felt warm when she saw that Aline was ignoring the rest of the group as she examined her wounds.

“What is it?” Jade heard Reina say with noticeable concern in her voice as her footsteps crossed the room. Her smooth calves that popped out from under her usual white pants entered her vision as she approached Trim, and when Jade looked up she saw that Reina’s usual composure was nowhere to be seen. If anything her expression was a mixture of anger and concern right now, and Jade was wondering if she had ever seen anything like it before.

“It was Rucille,” Saela replied bluntly as she stepped past Reina. The room they were in was a small round dome with a single bright light that hung from the ceiling, and Saela immediately took the opportunity to sit on the round sofa that was placed in the centre of it. After stifling a yawn and then flopping backward, she shrugged. “What were we supposed to do? She’s unresponsive to communication, incapable of keeping herself upright, and essentially mute. Do you know how hard it was to bring her here?”

“It’s not her fault,” Jade said quietly as she glared in her direction. “How hard? You wanted to abandon her when you first saw her to the point where you walked out on us.”

“I was preparing a way out,” Saela replied with a tinge of frost to her tone. “If it wasn’t for that carriage, what do you think would have happened?”

“Enough,” Reina cut in despite the fact that she was busy examining Nina’s condition. If she was to be honest, Jade was actually glad that she had cut them off because she knew that she didn’t have an appropriate response to what Saela had said. It was true that she wouldn’t have had a plan if the carriage wasn’t there, and she also knew that carrying Nina any further than she already had would have been essentially impossible.

After what they had been through together, Jade had been beginning to see Saela in a slightly different light. Sure she was prickly, but the fact that she had made some very difficult decisions in order to accomplish her task was admirable. Words of thanks had already been circling through her mind as soon as she had stepped through the window to safety, but Saela’s seamless return to her usual self had quickly changed her mind.

If that was how she wanted to be, then that was how it would stay.

“Looks like poison,” Svanda said with a serious expression on her face. After Trim had placed Nina onto the couch, Artel’s loose clothing had been quickly discarded so that Reina, Svanda, and Trim could begin the process of methodically wiping her down. The large splotch of yellow-green on the centre of her chest had quickly drawn their attention, but while they all wanted to help her there was little that they could currently do.

“I don’t want to assume there’s an antidote for whatever this is,” Reina sighed as she examined the bruises on Nina’s arm. “We’ll have to find a doctor on Areinis.”

“You want to take her down like this?” Trim asked with a frown. “She needs to rest.”

Reina frowned before walking over to the side of the room and collecting a pair of small bags which sat by the wall. Turning around before tossing one to Jade who was still on her knees with Aline, she looked over at Saela before tossing her the other.

“Get changed,” she said to them before picking up a third bag and tossing it to Trim. “As much as I’d like to stay so that she can rest, we’re already overstaying our welcome here and I’m not going to give them time to change their mind. Dress Nina up and then grab your shoes, it’s time we put this mess behind us.”