It was hard for me to judge what was feasible, though I had spent all week finding what intelligence I could to improve my odds.

  The problem is that my most well-positioned allies, Even and Alex, were specifically the ones I had to work around. Despite their frustrations they were insistent on working within the legal mechanisms the Regency made available, making them incapable of actually helping Drifter. Of course, as the ones who got him arrested, I expected little else; his imprisonment was incidental to their goals, and his execution would be an unfortunate consequence.

  In retrospect, they weren't exactly allies at all. They offered no actual help, I just hoped that continuing to talk with them would reveal helpful information.

  I spent the rest of the day after I met Olivia trying to meet with a few other underworld contacts I'd discovered, but none of them had much to help me with. The thief Ebert had a quiet way in and out of the inner city, but not the prison; Astra the smuggler could sell me just about any gear I needed, but she didn't have the information I needed; a man named Peter could smuggle a person out of town no problem, but his trustworthiness was roughly zero.

  One person had a potentially usable lead: Egil, a guardsman on patrol in the slums, said he could smuggle me into the prison by pretending to arrest me. The cost was extreme, though, several times the amount I had received for turning in Varys. Really, the cost for help from any of these people was going to be difficult to stomach, but Egil in particular felt out of reach.

  I met with Orwyn that evening to confirm his exit strategy was good to go. It was, for either the next day or the execution day. If I could get Drifter to a rendezvous point near the western exit to the inner city, Orwyn had made arrangements to get us out. Borin was apparently already staking out the spot, just in case I pulled something off in a hurry without notice.

  Orwyn was a better friend than I deserved, no doubt. His whole trio were.

  Afterwards I retired to my overly fancy inn for the night, trying to weave together my threads of possibilities into a plan. Failing to do it in my head, I took out some paper and mapped it all out in ink: Orwyn's exit, Olivia's options, Egil and Astra and the others, clues from Even and Alex, bits about the layout of Beorne's castle and prison based on my days of scouting...

  My writing was scattered, and scattered unhelpfully. I grabbed a knife and cut up the paper so that each bit of information was on its own scrap, and I shuffled them around as I saw fit. I had a stack of paper on breaking into the prison, a clear path out of the city, a few opportunities - with the right manpower - to spring Drifter on the way to the execution platform, and a concept of sabotaging the execution itself. Based on my clusters of notes, it was evident that my best option was to break Drifter out the following evening, although I was still unsure on some key points.

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  First and foremost, would Olivia and the Blood God Bandits accept a half-baked entry plan? I realized, based on my my various notes, that I had a path in, but it wasn't a guarantee. No keys, no schedules, not even a full map.

  I lacked the skills needed to break in with such restrictions, and every point made it less likely for her to accept.

  With all my options before me, I could see some backup plans. We could probably negotiate a plan. But we were down to the wire; if we couldn't pull something together quickly Drifter would die.

  I went back to the Bandits' hideout first thing in the morning with my array of plans in hand. I knocked on the back door of the restaurant and a cook happily let me in, for some reason excited to see me. The bandits downstairs greeted me like an old friend. Olivia, to my surprise, was waiting for me outside her office. She nodded her head to the door to invite me in.

  "This is an odd welcome," I said after closing the door behind me.

  "My men are easily excited," she replied, "There was no shouting or stabbing after our conversation, and then I said to let you back in, so they probably think we're together."

  "Is that their main indicator... no, wait, is being stabbed normal?" I was a tad flustered; I thought I was at risk because of bringing in their leader, not just for existing.

  Olivia shrugged.

  I shook my head and pulled myself back together. "The prison break. I have a plan, but it has some gaps. I thought it would be useful to discuss directly with you what was possible with what I had."

  The plan I had the most confidence in involved sneaking into the castle via the old moat, which had degraded over time to reveal a small hole under the wall, and then crossing a small, unused courtyard into the prison area. Once inside there was generally one guard at the entrance to each cell block and two patrolling around the upper level; I didn't know their schedules, but I vaguely knew where the cell blocks were. One of those blocks descended down into a lower block with a separate guard hanging around, and that was where Marchon and Olivia's other people were.

  The oubliette, where Alex told me Drifter was being held, was another spiral staircase down from there. It was on its own, not a guard in earshot, not a torch in sight. It was as dark as the castle's architects could make it. More importantly, it was locked by an immensely heavy door of solid steel.

  I had no keys, although I happened to know that one of the oubliette keys was held by one of the patrolling guards to make it harder to steal. Even said it was a meaningless security change, but the Regent insisted it was more secure than leaving the key with the stationary guards.

  Their way out would be the same way they entered, allowing Olivia's people to get out through their normal smuggling routes. I kept to myself that I was going to meet with Drifter at the moat exit so that we could head to Orwyn's rendezvous; it was an unnecessary detail for her plan.

  We talked over some of the details for a bit, combining the knowledge Olivia had with my week of reconnaissance, and eventually she agreed to send a few people in. My offer of the Varys bounty certainly helped; a lot of coin made the risk easier to stomach.

  Had everything gone to plan Drifter and I would have been out of the city that night. Alas, Olivia's men were caught in the courtyard and chucked in a cell, I was caught outside and arrested as part of the conspiracy, and all I could do was hope some act of the gods would save Drifter from the axe. All my planning had come to naught.