Chapter Eight: Fly By Night

Despite her outfit, Ginn recognized Val immediately.

"What in Sturm… Val? Val, is that you?"

Val nodded. "Yeah. Sorry, I…"

Val suddenly found herself with a face full of bosom as Ginn pulled her into a hug. "Oh goodness, child. Where did you go? Why did you come through the window? What did we do?"

"Nothing… you didn't do anything," Val sobbed, and suddenly she found herself hugging Ginn back just as hard. Great, heaving sighs of relief, even though she knew there was still an awful lot to be worried about. "Ginn, you've got to get out of here," were the first words she managed to get out.

"What? Val… what's going on?"

"The Penitent Order… they know about me. They found out about me dressing as a boy and staying with you, and…" she pulled out her letter, only to find the ink smeared to illegibility from some interaction with alleyway moisture. "I wrote a letter explaining it. But that's not important… they're waiting out there and they're going to storm our house the second Ette gets home…"

"But… but that could be any moment," Ginn said. "Are you certain?"

Val nodded. "I heard them planning it in the alleyway. I was only going to leave this note under your door, but when I heard it, I knew I had to get in and warn you."

Ginn kissed Val on the cheek, the first time she'd ever done so. "Bless you, child. All right… hopefully we've got at least a few minutes. I'll gather the things we'll need and slip out the secret exit when I'm done. You need to go and intercept Ette so he doesn't walk through the front door and bring holy macaroni crashing down on top of us. He'll be coming from the west, from the Burrowing Rounds. Do you think you can do that?"

Val nodded. "You can count on me. And… Mrs. Vinzenno? I'm really sorry I left."

"You're forgiven, child. Now go warn my idiot husband! He'll know where to meet."

Ginn and Ette had a contingency plan. Of course they had a contingency plan. Not only did they deal with dangerous criminals on a regular basis, they were secret adherents of a heathen religion that could net you, at the very least, social opprobrium. It could also net you, apparently, brother-knights crashing down your door with an inkling to do significant damage.

Ginn showed her down the stairs and into the basement, as if she hadn't already taken baths there every other day for the past three weeks, and then showed Val something she didn't know - a secret passage. She pulled three hidden latches on a beat-up wooden shelf, and it swung right out, revealing a little passageway. It led back about six feet to a grating overlooking the drainage alley between buildings. Val looked as far as she could in either direction and saw nobody crouching in wait.

"Do you see the latch?" Ginn called in.

"I see it!"

She forced a rusty, semi-gunked latch up and the grating popped open. Val dropped into the drainage alley and clicked it back shut - you could leave out the secret exit, but entry would be a bit trickier. She supposed that was the whole point of a secret exit. She took a moment to get her bearings and headed out to Resonant Square to find Ette.

+++++

Ginn had said that Ette would be coming from the west, which meant he would probably be stopping by the constabulary precinct just east of the Burrowing Rounds. An awful lot of criminals seemed to take to the Rounds, as if hiding in a generally unpleasant press of old and poorly-made buildings was more secretive than living incognito on Dunsinay Way. And, since Ette and Ginn were very good at picking out which bounties they could find, Ette brought in his man (or woman) about three times out of four.

Today, it was both - a man and a woman. He brought them in on his sledge, hauling them down the street as the woman screamed bloody murder and the passersby tried to ignore her. He'd given her a sleep-cloth, but it had come loose somewhere along the way and she'd woken up and realized she was captured, bound, and minutes from getting hauled in.

"Hey you! Girl! Call the constables! I'm being kidnapped by a murderer!"

"This is the constables," Val said, and she pointed up to the precinct sign.

"Val? Where in hell's bells have you been?" Ette said.

"Take care of those two and then I'll tell you."

Ette took the news that the Penitent Order was intent on breaking his door down and causing untold harm better than Val would have. He asked whether Ginn was safe and then proceeded to the little semi-secluded courtyard two blocks to the north. That part of the neighborhood had once been an abbey but was now mostly used by the washerwomen, though the nicer part of the building doubled as a bordello. At night, there were raucous parties in the courtyard and during the day you couldn't see in or out of the place on account of the thousand assorted articles of freshly-washed clothing strung up to dry and flapping in the breeze.

Ginn was already there, looking a bit frazzled, as she'd gone out the back exit and then hauled herself plus three packs the roundabout way to get there. She handed Ette the largest of the three packs and Val the smallest - that one was obviously Val's anyway because it had Annie Stuffs buckled to the side. Then she checked the time on her pocket watch and spoke to Ette.

"I found a man with about your build and gave him two shillings and an old leather jacket of yours. Told him to deliver a note to the front door." she said.

"I hope they don't hurt him," Val said.

It made sense - even if Ginn and Ette didn't doubt Val (which they had every right to), they'd want to see what sort of response the brother-knights actually made. If they interrogated the messenger and knocked firmly upon the front door until it was clear that nobody was home, then the Penitent Order's bark was a lot worse than their bite. If they busted the door down with weapons drawn, that suggested they meant serious business.

Ginn had a friend with the washerwomen, who let them in. She was one of the women who lived on the premises, the ones who also took employment at the bordello in the evenings. The Pale Order looked down upon that sort of work, of course, but it wasn't illegal. The little recessed shrine that they passed in the back-corridor suggested that that wasn't the only frowned-upon-but-not-illegal thing that the women did. No wonder they were friendly with Ginn.

She took them up a cramped spiral staircase and to the roof, where a few drunken louts were still nursing their hangovers. Ette and Ginn sometimes ran security for the bordello, so the drunkards paid the lot of them no mind. From the corner of the roof, they could see down the street and to the little blue awning of Vinzenno Security & Investigation on the other side of Resonant Square.

Ette and Ginn took turns looking through the monocular, clicking the eyepiece two spots to the left or right to account for the differences in their vision. If she squinted a bit, Val could see the doorway just fine and figured adults just had poor eyesight in general. They'd been up there for all of about two minutes when the man who looked a bit like Ette approached and, when nobody answered the door after the second knock, stepped inside.

"If I was calling the shots, I'd have known something was up the minute he knocked on his own door," Val said.

Ginn nudged her shoulder. "Good thing the bastards calling the shots aren't as smart as you - look!"

Sure enough, there came a group of brother-knights… two groups, one from each side… to converge on the door. There had to be a dozen of them. They had their black bolt-casters drawn except for two big bastards carrying a door buster, which is what they called the squat, flat-headed iron rod with handles on either side. Unsurprisingly, it was made for busting doors.

Even though the door was clearly unlocked, they busted the door right open, knocking it off its hinges on the second hit and rushing in. A trio of them emerged from the building a minute later 'escorting' the poor messenger. He'd taken a bolt to the shoulder - he was lucky he had the protection of Ette's old jacket and even luckier that they'd realized he wasn't Ette or he'd probably have been quilled like a porcupine. A few more brother-knights emerged a few minutes later, angrily gesticulating at one another, as well as at the injured messenger.

"Poor lads. They're sore that none of the folks that were supposed to be inside were actually there," Ette chuckled.

"They meant to kill you, love," Ginn said. "Probably me, too. Who knows what they'd do to Val?"

"Nothing good, that's for sure. Have you got all the essentials?"

Ginn nodded. "As many as I could get on such short notice. I'd say it's high time the two of us took a holiday in Aurilicht."

"What about me?" Val asked.

"You've got a pack, haven't you?" Ginn said. "Obviously, you're coming with, dear. We'll hole up here until evencall and then we'll fly by night."