(I don't have any good excuse for my delay beyond the usual RL and no e-mail notifications [which wears thin :P ], so I'm just going to apologize and move on.)

Julian saw her talking to one of the men he'd approached, and returned to the notes he'd made on the underground tunnels that would get him - and probably, it was looking like, Felicia as well - into the Baron's manor. Well, not exactly [i]into[/i]. They'd need to knock down a bit of wall to actually get into the man's basement. Whoever had built the manor had had the brains to wall off the old tunnel network, even if now a days no one seemed to remember its existence. The next hat trick would be getting inside. There were three possible entrances that he'd been able to find. One, the sewers, would be the most direct, but it would require going down through three levels of sewer to get there, and he very much didn't want to spend hours on end smelling like shit. Call him vain, but he just didn't find the concept particularly appealing.

The second option was through one of the old aqueducts, dating back to the old Empire. Unfortunately, the old aqueducts were pretty public, and getting up into one and then climbing down within one into the undertunnels was not something that could be done at night, and if done at day, would draw far too much attention. That undermined everything he was trying to achieve, so that was out.

What that left was a lovely little detour through the Mausoleum of Tyrants. In the oldest days, even before the Empire had ruled here, the local city had been ruled by a series of military tyrants, all of them buied in that ancient mausoleum. Near as he could tell, that was the best access point into the under tunnels. Unfortuantely, the place was rumored to be haunted, and by all accounts, actually was. The walking or haunting dead within couldn't come out of there, due to the nature of the Mausoleum's construction and ancient wards built into the site, but that wouldn't make things any more fun traveling through it.

Julian looked up at Felicia, frowning in annoyance as she spoke. He forced himself to drop the frown, his expression professional and businesslike. "Its a two person job. Its always been a two person job. So yes, I'm looking for someone else."