Lora of Two Worlds

Lora paced outside the Crown Granary gate. There was no getting in the front way.

Norton tugged her sleeve and motioned for her to follow him. They walked a long way along the east wall, nearly to where the Crown Prince's palace abutted the compound, and there he stopped.

"Here? There's no gate here!"

Lora mopped her brow with her sleeve and craned her neck at the wall, a good six feet of solid masonry. Even if someone dropped a rope from the top, she wasn't sure she could climb it.

Norton pointed at the top of the wall and waved his hand, no, not up there. Then he pointed at the base, where the weeds grew thick. The entrance was down below.

"The corner? You're saying we dig under the wall?"

Lora didn't see what he was getting at, but Chance had already figured it out. The dog bounded over and started scratching at the base of the wall, digging furiously.

"No way, how long is that going to take " Lora's eyes went wide. Not because she'd thought of a better plan, but because behind the clump of weeds, there really was a hole. A dog-hole.

Norton pointed at Chance, then at himself, beaming. He meant for the two of them to go through.

It was the only option. He would go in and find Roland; Chance could reach places they couldn't. Lora nodded and stood lookout, covering them while they crawled.

Chance knew the way by heart, hindquarters up, nose down, a couple of scrabbles and it was through. But Norton got stuck. Lora pushed from behind, frantic, but his shoulders were simply too broad.

Norton's face turned scarlet. He backed out and attacked the wall base with his bare hands, but it was brick-faced masonry, no tools, no chance. Someone had tried to dig through before, from both sides, and given up when they hit the foundation stones.

Chance was getting anxious on the other side. The dog poked its nose through the hole, snorting and puffing, as if asking what was taking them so long.

"Dignity be damned! You stay out here, I'm going through."

Lora was much slighter than Norton. The girl's figure hadn't filled out yet, Dorothy Dunbar had teased her about it at the convent school. Now, at last, being skinny paid off. At least when crawling through a dog-hole, she didn't have to worry about any prominent parts getting stuck.

"Ah-ah!" Norton waved his arms and shook his head frantically, but he couldn't stop her. Lora got down on her stomach and eased her head into the hole.

She made it!

Head and shoulders through, her slim frame carried her until she was propped halfway up on the other side. She looked up, and there was a face right in front of her.

Saints preserve us, caught red-handed before she'd done a single thing.

But then she recognized the face and broke into a grin, eyes curving, mouth crooking into a lovely arc:

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"Well, fancy meeting you here."

The other person recognized her too. He sat up straighter in his wheelchair, not knowing whether to laugh or scold:

"First you're skilled at climbing walls, now you've taken up tunneling."

Lora scrambled through nimbly and reached back through the hole to take an oilcloth bundle and the firecracker tube. Before she'd even stood up, a voice called from a distance: "My lord, are you looking for the privy? It's not over there."

Leon kept his face rigid. He'd been on his way to the next storehouse when he heard a rustling at the base of the wall. Curiosity had brought him over, and now a clerk thought he was looking for a place to relieve himself.

Humiliating.

The clerk was walking toward them. Leon said, very quietly: "Are you going to push me into the storehouse, or do you want to be caught?"

He reached down and grabbed Chance's lead. The dog started to pull, Lora snatched a meat pie from the oilcloth bundle and stuffed it into Chance's mouth before it could bark.

She ducked her head and pushed Leon's wheelchair. Chance, quietly chewing its meat pie, was perfectly hidden behind the chair. The clerk saw them heading for a different storehouse door and stopped in his tracks:

The Granary Bailiff had said to open even the royal-palace-only storehouses and let him pick. If he actually chose something from those, it would be a crime, why go over and invite trouble?

The two of them and the dog slipped into the storehouse.

"So, what are you doing in here?" Leon ran his hand along the handle of a ceremonial feather fan propped against the wall, his voice low.

His noise-making little cousin had turned up in a place like this. He couldn't think of a single useful thing she might contribute, and she'd brought a dog, of all things.

Lora looked around. "Where's Roland? I'm here to help him."

"We split up. He's in the storehouse ahead. And how, exactly, do you plan to help?"

Lora pulled the firecracker tube from her tunic. "I know you're looking for black powder. If I let Chance get a whiff of it, he can track it down. Way faster than any of you."

"Oh? That clever? I'd sooner believe he can track down meat pies."

Leon's face was perfectly flat. He eyed Chance, who had swallowed the pie in one bite and wasn't even licking its chops, with deep skepticism. Lora wasn't about to get mad at a man of his time. She grinned:

"I'll show you. Don't you blink."

She did what Norton had shown her earlier, held the firecracker tube to Chance's nose, gave it a sniff, then patted its head. She darted off to where Chance couldn't see her and placed the tube inside an empty chest.

"Hidden, let go of the lead." She crouched and patted Chance's head.

"Ah!"

Chance's tail wagged and off it went. Leon looked puzzled. "Why did you say 'ah' to it?"

"Because his owner is a dumb lad who can only say 'ah.'"

Lora braced her hand on the wheelchair and looked up at Leon, her face full of such easy confidence that she seemed to glow. His heart gave two sudden thumps, what on earth?

She didn't notice. She was crouching by his feet, and without thinking, she reached out and squeezed his calf.

"When did your leg go wrong? Can you feel anything at all?"

Leon nearly leapt out of the wheelchair and ran. It took everything he had to stay still. He rolled the chair back two full paces, and only then said, coldly:

"Have you no manners, my lady?"

Lora stood up, laughing. "Sorry, sorry. Old habits."

She meant her habit of wanting to fix anything broken. To Leon, it sounded like the habit of a busybody who couldn't keep her hands to herself.

This woman was dangerous. No wonder his heart had thumped just now, that had to be a warning sign. The farther away, the better.

While the two of them were stuck in that awkward moment, Chance trotted briskly back. It tugged at the hem of Lora's tunic, telling her to follow.

A dog trained by a mute lad was something else, since its owner couldn't speak or hear, every interaction was by gesture, so Chance never used barking to call him.

In no time, Lora came running back, brandishing the firecracker tube triumphantly. She'd already forgotten the leg-grabbing incident entirely. She thrust the tube in front of Leon:

"See? Didn't lie, did I?"

Leon looked at Chance, who had swallowed the meat pie in a single bite. He felt an absurd urge to swallow himself. He stammered:

"Th-then you, you take the outer room. I'll take the back."

Watching him all but flee, Lora looked down at the oilcloth bundle in her hand and snorted:

"You want one too? Not yet, these are all for Chance."

She crouched down again, held the firecracker tube to Chance's nose, patted its head, and pointed into the storehouse:

"Ah!"

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