“This is the interior of the Citadel,” Lisa said. “We have no idea why it is white lines on blue paper. Perhaps an effect of the bad air.”
“Architectural blueprint,” Mildred explained, grabbing two of her plaits and tying them together behind her head to keep the rest out of the way when she bent over. “It was a cheap way to make multiple copies. Or least it was before laser printers and computers.”
Ryan rotated the paper toward him. “Hmm, a lot of these spaces are blank. Probably a safety precaution in case prisoners got a copy. So they couldn’t find weak spots to try to escape.”
Lisa flinched at the forbidden word.
“We can guess what’s in these rooms forever and never get it right,” Krysty complained. “Whatever they were in the predark, surely they’re something different now.”
“Apples never fall far from the tree,” Doc said cryptically.
“Doc’s correct. You wouldn’t make a kitchen a horse stable, but you might convert it into a laboratory.”
“I see,” Krysty said softly. “Very good.”
“What does this matter?” Lisa demanded, annoyed. “We know where the armory is.”
“I’m betting you don’t,” Ryan said, glancing at her. “I’ll wager no slave has never been near the real armory.”
“Then how will you find it?” she shot back. “Magic?”
“Where are the prisoners not allowed to go?”
“Many places,” Lisa replied, waving her hand.
“Show us. One of them will be what we want.”
“And how shall you know?”
Ryan stared at the blueprint as if envisioning the walls and corridors. “Oh, I’ll know.”
“How?”
For the second time in as many days, Ryan almost smiled. “Because I’m an even bigger bastard than the heirs are. All I have to do is consider where I’d put my storehouse of blasters.”
“Throne room?”
“That’s not what they call it,” he corrected. “But yes. Only much too obvious.”
“But definitely close by,” J.B. said, raising and lowering his fedora. “Mebbe near where they sleep?”
Ryan stabbed a blank area on the map with a finger. “Not close by, J.B.,” he corrected. “Inside.”
“That’s the ward’s bedchamber.”
“Exactly.”
“They sleep in the armory?” Lisa’s voice took on a squeak.
“A pair of paranoids, like the heirs?” Mildred scoffed. “Certainly. It was probably their nursery as children.”
“Bedchamber,” Dean mused. “Going to be a lot of guards, no, wrong. That would defeat the whole purpose. It will only have a few specially chosen guards.”
Ryan slapped the boy on the back in approval. “So our best chance to gain entrance would be during the day,” Dean said, preening under the attention.
“Midnight,” Ryan stated, circling the area with a broken piece of chalk. The white ring enclosed two corridors and a room with no doors or windows shown. “Yes, that’s got to be it.”
Lisa recoiled. “We attack when they’re both there asleep?”
“Infiltrate,” J.B. corrected sternly.
“But why?”
Ryan folded his hands and looked at her again with the full intensity of his cobalt-blue eye. “Because that’s when you’re going to start the riot.”
Chapter Sixteen
The dark sky was full of ominous clouds, heavy, black and pendulous, threatening to unleash deadly rain at any moment The ground was soft underfoot, not mud, but freshly plowed. It was like walking on a pillow, then on something solid. The sec men didn’t seem to care as they patrolled the fields like dogs on the hunt, shoulders hunched, weapons sharp.
Off to the side, a team of rag-clad slaves pulling a plow continued their endless journey of turning the soil in preparation of a late planting. Every day that good weather permitted, the farms were worked. Every scrap of edible plant meant more would survive the coming winter with its acid snow.
“Try there!” Sergeant Kissel ordered, pointing toward a barn.
A squad of men approached a haystack and began ramming wooden pitchforks into it.
“No blood yet!” one man announced, adjusting his grip on the wooden shaft for a better hold:
“Get every inch!” Kissel snapped, both hands on his blaster belt, fingers nervously tripping the handles of his blasters. “Don’t miss a section!”
A guard appeared from within the barn, cradling an armful of iron and rope. He hurried over to the waiting sergeant, jingling every step of the way. “I found some hooks, sir,” the guard stated. “And more than enough rope to do the job.”