The rancid odour of spoilt food greeted ava as she moved through the wall with her back low and her arms close to her sides, the way She did when she came to tell Simon to sneak out.
The hole in the kitchen wall had been behind the old bread shelf — loose stone, she'd found it by accident a while back when she'd pressed her back against the wall in a moment of desperate stillness and felt one of the stones give, just slightly.
She'd worked at it since then in the dark, in the brief windows when the guard changed, and last night it had been enough. Barely. She had the scrapes across her ribs to prove it.
She straightened now in the passage, checked the corridor ahead, and moved left toward the lower holding cells.
That was where Varder had put him. She knew the wing — she had memorized this palace the way you memorized the floor plan of a place you needed to eventually leave, noting every exit, every servant's route, every room that was occupied and every room that wasn't.
