Page 83 of Taking Jenny
Both she and Longshot laughed like I was a child who’d just said something precious.
“No,” Longshot said with exaggerated patience. “Surge is not bait. Moons above, boy. Surge is recon, to see if we’ve been detected. If he trips an alarm, we will know the path is compromised.”
“And if he doesn’t, we proceed,” Discord chimed in.
I crossed my arms, remembering many pranks similar to this with Kapok. “I’ve been bait before, and that sure as hell sounds like he’s bait.”
“Were you gathering information, while testing alarm triggers?” Discord asked pointedly.
“No, I—”
“Then yes, you were bait,” she said, cutting me off. “Reconnaissance is not bait.”
I slumped back in my seat. “I still don’t like it.”
The distinction might matter to them, but not to me. Either way, Surge was alone. Small. Even with his strange magic, I couldn’t stop the gnawing urge to protect him. He was my friend, and he was walking straight into danger.
“If he gets caught, then what?” I asked, my voice tighter than I wanted.
“Then we take a different tactic.” Discord’s gaze locked on the palace as we circled around it. “If it makes you feel any better, this was all Surge’s idea.”
That caught me off guard. “Really?”
Discord nodded, her gaze sharp and calculating. “We leave that sort of thing up to him. Strategy, risk evaluation, planning…Longshot and Iarecapable of doing it, but Surge has a gift for it.”
“So, what are you looking for?” I asked curiously.
“Any sign of alarms. Lights, noise, any kind of disruption.”
I considered that before I asked, “Have you ever broken anyone out of the royal prisons before?”
She laughed. “Of course not.”
“There won’t be alarms,” I told them confidently. “Not if Surge does his job right.”
“Oh?” Discord arched a brow at me. “And you know this because you’ve broken someone out of the royal prisons?”
I didn’t miss the sarcasm in her tone. “Notone. Several.”
She stared at me in disbelief. “What?”
“I’ve brokenmanypeople out of the royal prisons, Discord.”Including Justice Bateen’s daughter, Silence,I thought, but kept that information to myself.
“Really?” Longshot asked.
“Yes, really,” I said, letting my aggravation surface. “And if you would have told me the plan, I could have helped Surge get in and out of there unseen. So tell me what is next and stop dripping the information to me.”
“Very well,” Longshot said calmly. “We’re going to commit treason.”
CHAPTER 24
Mal
Ajem’hora called out in the distance as I tried not to look around my cell again. Those eyeless silvery birds were harbingers according to the unclassed, so the new shift guards fought the urge to shiver by distracting themselves with idle chatter. Inside the royal prison, they were safe from the birds, but every Ladrian knew what those predators were capable of, and none of us were exempt from their menu.
The jem’hora’s call gave me hope that soon, this would all be over.
My cell was particularly wretched, and though I knew what I had stepped in upon my arrival, I tried to convince myself it was just thick swamp mud, but the stench was unmistakable. There was no bed, no waste bucket, no window. Windows were a hot commodity in the humid royal prison. The only fresh air entered from other cell’s rare windows, and the nearest cell with a window was five cells away.
