Ratface was delighted to see that even in a heavily guarded place like this, they still failed to watch the roof. She’d climbed up the building in the alleyway to look at the shops once the girl left, and she’d yet to see anyone move up there. In an ideal situation she’d wait until dark. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an ideal situation. She had no idea of knowing when these people would leave other than soon. With that thought in place she sprinted and leapt onto the other roof. She hit the roof hard and rolled to stop her momentum. Ratface winced, that was louder than she’d wanted it to be. She kept low and listened out for anyone running up to check what that noise was. The building stayed blissfully silent. Ratface let out a sigh and looked for a way down. This roof was incredibly bland. It didn’t even have an opening up here. She looked around in confusion. Rooves always had openings in them. She was about to give up when she saw a small latch someone had attempted to hide under some fake tiles. Existential crisis avoided, she rushed over and carefully removed the tiles and opened the latch. She stuck her head down and had a look.

  The hallway she was looking into was dingy and not well kept. It looked like mildew was making its way in. Hmm. It must have been an abandoned building before they’d set up shop. She wouldn’t have thought a town like this would let such a thing.

  Overall terrible quality aside, the main thing she noticed was the hallway was empty. She made sure her rat helmet was secure and climbed down.

  Looking at the hallway right way up she could see the stairwell that went to the lower floors. She peeked into the closest door to her and found a room lit up by a grimy window. There was a bed and some clothes strew around, they looked too good to be prisoners. That was probably good, anyone this messy clearly wasn’t leaving any time soon.

  She eased the door closed and walked towards the stairwell. If the humans were keeping their prisoners anywhere, they’d be keeping them in the basement, humans always kept the things they wanted to hide down there. It might be a generalisation on her part but she’d yet to meet one that didn’t. Goblins would never put something in a basement because most of them didn’t own one.

  She crept down the stairs, being sure to check her weight on each one so that it wouldn’t creak and give her away. Close to the bottom she heard the soft hum of voices. They sounded like they weren’t directly down there, and a quick look around confirmed it for her. The noise seemed to be coming from a main door. She walked over to the door and looked through and could see the group was in a table in the middle of a room. There were a lot of other tables around and each one had a spot for candles. Ah this must be one of those restaurants she’d heard of. Looked like business hadn’t been so good if they were shut down. She looked through another door which had a big kitchen to confirm her thoughts.

  Now, where would they put the basement in a place like this? She would have thought it was close to the stairs, but she was here, and nothing was here. Why were there so many rooms upstairs as well? Maybe it was an inn mixed with a restaurant?

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Her musing didn’t help her work out where to go but it was wasting time. She looked at the two doors available to her. The kitchen seemed empty which was what decided her. She wasn’t so cocky that she’d go fight a group she didn’t even know the size of.

  She slipped into the kitchen and kept low. She was looking for stairs or another room and having no luck until she got deeper in and found a door with a latch on it. It felt cool to the touch. She had a bad feeling about this.

  She yanked the door open and found a bunch of people sitting on the floor and shivering. They were still conscious but most of them look drowsy.

  “Who?” asked one. She looked like an older version of the little girl and Ratface let out a sigh of relief. She stepped forward and was greeted with a collective flinch. It was only now that she was further into the room she realised it wasn’t just humans in here. There were all sorts of races looking at her, even an orc of all things. She raised a hand to her lips before they could talk. They all looked at her scared and drowsy. She needed them alert and to do that she had to give them a little bit of hope, so she lied.

  “I’m a squire of the Lady,” she said, “my knight is on the way, but we need to get you all out of here before it’s too late.”

  That managed to get some life back into them and they stood up and got moving after her. They made their way back through the kitchen and Ratface gestured up the stairs. There was about ten of them so she made a hurry motion before they could get too many ideas. Tiffany had taught her that once you got one sheep moving, they’d all follow so she figured it was the same. The orc woman went first and sure enough the rest followed. Ratface looked at the door where the people were talking and considered blocking it before deciding it was too much noise.

  They hurried upstairs and between Ratface and the orc they started to get people climbing up. It was slow going with them all being stiff from the cold but one by one they were getting up, eventually it was just the orc and her left and the rest were helping the orc up.

  Suddenly there was running from downstairs. It was too close for Ratface to do anything. She shoved the orc up all the way and hissed at them to close the latch which they did. A moment later, a rough looking kid came up the stairs.

  “Oh man, I totally forgot to pack, they’re going to ki-”, he stopped when he saw Ratface. He was about to yell when she pulled out her crossbow and trained it on him.

  “No talking or this bolt is going through your chest,” she warned.

  He looked at her with a sly smile.

  “A knight wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man,” he said.

  “Adventurer,” she shot back.

  “You don’t have jurisdiction here,” he said. Ratface shrugged.

  “That may be true, but should you really be arguing with the one with the crossbow?” Her hand rested on the trigger, and he held his up. When it was clear that he wasn’t going to scream Ratface gestured for him to get into the room. She was going to wedge it shut with her knife once he was in. He moved towards the door slowly and Ratface was sure to keep a safe distance between them. She gestured him inside and he went in then closed the door after himself. Ratface let out a breath. Now she just needed to find a new way out and she was home free.

  The kid shouted from the room outside and there was an answering call a moment later followed by hurried steps. Ratface groaned to herself. She’d forgotten about the window.