Katherine of Carpenchia: Episode 4

YESSS IT'S HERE FINALLY.

(sorry it's so short btw, the lack of length is the reason I debated cutting it for a while, but I ended up shooting it anyway because I realized how important it was xD. I hope you enjoy! :) )

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Elsie and Caihanna stepped quietly through the back servants' halls. Unlike the grand, gilded, arched hallways of the nobility, these corridors were plain, small, whitewashed, and simple. Torches in plain sconces lined the walls, and the smells of fruit pies and roasted duck wafted from the kitchen, where food for the ball was being continuously prepared and pumped out. And even from here, you could hear the distant chattering and music of the evening's event.

Elsie was nervous. She had been nervous quite a lot these past few weeks, she realized, tugging her braids, and it definitely was not good for her health. "Do you really think Lady Marella sent that assassin?" she piped up anxiously.

"Be quiet," hissed Caihanna, "someone could've heard you say that, and then the game would be up. I think it does seem likely, yes."

"What sort of information should we get?" Elsie questioned in a high-pitched voice. She had never done something like this before - oh, how romantic and exciting it seemed in the tales, but how horribly frightening it was in real life!

Caihanna sighed. "Orders, letters, or any documentation linking her to the assassins will be good enough."

"Oh," said Elsie, who was now worried that those items might be stowed away behind secret doors or locked in hidden boxes, but she daren't say anymore, for she feared she was irritating Caihanna, and she so desperately wanted the other girl's approval.

At last, they came to the entry to a great, grand hallway - some of the nobility's quarters and where Lady Marella resided. 

Pausing at the mouth of the hall, Caihanna explained the plan. She hoped Elsie wouldn't mess it all up. "You go inside Lady Marella's room," she instructed, trying to be clear as possible. "It'd better be you than me, because you could have a valid excuse for being in there and all, since you actually work here and I do not. You will attempt to enter quietly, but if anyone is in there or catches you in there you will tell them you are looking for some legal papers your queen leant to Lady Marella to look over prior to the next Council of Ladies meeting, and your mistress would like them back now and sent you to fetch them. If no one is there, look through her desk, vanity, tap the floorboards and walls, listen for a hollow sound - but carefully! and not too loudly. If you find anything, bring it back to me. If you find something you think is a secret compartment that you can't get open, come out and get me and I'll see what I can do about it. I'll stay watch here in the meantime - pretend I am waiting for another of the Marigan maids to meet me or something of the sort. If I see anyone or anything it looks like you can't handle going your way, I will whistle like a nightingale. So be listening. All right? Do you understand?"

Elsie nodded furiously. A solid, concrete plan. Even though she was still terribly scared, having a firm plan with an escape excuse if things went wrong made her feel a bit better.

She went past Caihanna and entered the grand hallway.

Caihanna watched her until she disappeared into Lady Marella's suite.

Then, she found a nook to hide in to keep watch.

No sound came to her ears except that of distant party music and yelling of the cooks in the kitchen. Some novice chef must have messed up one of the pies.

Suddenly, Caihanna felt a presence so close it was nearly on top of her. She gasped, turned around -

And all went black.

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Welllll that was the fourth episode. What do you think? Comment your thoughts below :)

Namarië,

Ellie
{on the other side of reality}