Crow took the stick from Penelope and nodded when she told him to call for her if he needed help. “You don’t have to worry about me, though,” he assured her with a brash grin. “By the end of tonight I’ll have these guards so confused, they’ll be putting each other in chains.” While it was a slight exaggeration of his abilities, the thief was confident that he could pull off the distraction without getting caught. Besides, he had never tried stirring up a commotion with fire before. He was curious about the kind of effect it would have on the guards. If the plan went well, he could even store it away for future use when he was finished with the king’s mission. Perhaps he could use it against the knights in the inner kingdom or even His Royal Highness, himself. He laughed under his breath. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

As Penelope took off to circle the camp in one direction, Crow hurried around in the other until he found a hiding place with a better view of the fire pit. He crouched in the shadows, using the wild shrubbery for coverage, and waited to give Penelope enough time to position herself on the opposite side. He stayed still for a short while and silently observed the guards until something caught his eye. One of the nobles was pacing in front of the thief’s designated tent: Gavin. The young guard looked slightly agitated, as if his patience was wearing thin. He was probably trying to decide whether he should enter the tent and risk walking in on a couple, or stay outside and risk getting in trouble for releasing one of the captive knights. Crow muttered a curse. With Gavin just one step away from realizing that he and Penelope had escaped, the thief didn’t have time to finish planning his route. He had to go now.

Gripping the two sticks in each of his hands, Crow stepped out from his hiding spot. He walked casually towards the fire pit as if he was just another noble who had found some wood to keep it lit. He was relying solely on the darkness to conceal his identity until he got close enough to the glow of the flames that the guards would be able to see who he was. Fortunately, this part of his plan went smoothly. None of the nobles paid him any more than a passing glance as he walked by them. He stifled a laugh. After dealing with his strict prison guards for a year, tricking untrained noblemen like these was almost too easy.

Once he had a clear path to the fire pit Crow broke into a run, finally drawing the attention of the closest guards. However, they were too late to react as the thief had already reached the pit. With one hand he thrust the sticks into the flames to light them on fire, and with the other hand he reached down to collect some of the cooling soot around the far edge of the pit. He smeared the gray-black stuff across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose and then sprinted towards the guards’ tents, letting out a feral holler and raising the torches to catch the fabric as he ran. His wild act worked perfectly. The nobles froze at the sight of a seemingly crazed man armed with a set of flaming sticks. Of course, their fright was short-lived, but it bought the thief enough time to set fire to three tents before they started to chase after him.

Crow glanced over his shoulder to see about a dozen men drawing their swords and shouting frantically at one another, while another group was running off into the woods with empty buckets to collect water to put out the fire he had started. He laughed and kept running, striking one of his torches across another tent to spread the flames. The plan was working. He just hoped that Penelope was having as much success on her end as he was on his.