True evening had fallen by the time Raith retook to the streets, rubbing his hands together as if to remove some sort of residue clinging to the skin. He certainly felt as if he had been doused in oil, Omiar’s crooked yellow smile burned behind his eyelids. With a shiver that ran the length of his spine, Raith hurried away from the rats nest hole in the wall building with its deceptive medicinal herbs and remedies front, shrugging his cloak closer to his neck and ignoring the impulse to look back over his shoulder every couple of steps. Unpleasant as the reunion had been, it had served his purpose. He now knew for a fact that the captain of the queens guard was innocent. All that remained was for him to secure her release. And he highly doubted that his asking politely was going to be enough to get the job done.

A quarter of an hour later saw the young man near the center of town, standing in the shadow of a building and looking up at the high wall that surrounded the palace grounds proper. Biting at his lower lip in thought, Raith’s hazel eyes swept over The seemingly insurmountable barrier between him and the palace, assessing his options. After several moments, he approached the wall, stepping between the pools of firelight cast by a pair of stone braziers set atop The wall, running his fingers over the stone. Slipping his other hand into an inner pocket of his cloak, he withdrew a dagger, Balancing the small blade in his fingers for a moment before testing it’s point against the grout that cemented the blocks of stone that made up the wall together. With some effort, He managed to get most of the blade in between the stones. It wasn’t a perfect plan, nor was it the fastest, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice. Pulling the dagger free, he began circling the wall, in search of a better location to make the climb.

He found the perfect spot rather quickly, a brazier’s flame guttering lo from lack of fuel darkening the shadows on one corner, Raith started his climb, pulling out a second dagger to assist him. Slowly, carefully, he began ascending the wall, face flushing with the effort of pulling himself up and bracing himself against the tiniest cracks. Not moving faster than he was able, he didn’t want to chance an unfortunate fall, Raith wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he finally reached the top of the battlements and grabbed onto the edge of the wall. Wiping away a trickle of sweat from his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt, the young man took a moment to look around, searching for any sign of a passing guard patrol. Luck still inexplicably holding, he didn’t see anyone in his vicinity and was able to pull himself up and over the wall in one quick movement, pausing only long enough to retrieve his daggers and stow them away in his cloak again. Then, with a deep breath of warm night air, he hurried off along the battlements in a slow crouch, making his way towards the nearest staircase.

As he reached the foot of the stairs, Raith froze suddenly as a burst of laughter sounded nearby, his Head shooting up quickly. Approaching his location, a group of five soldiers were coming around the corner of one of the inner buildings, torches held in their hands, clearly in the middle of an absorbing conversation. Cursing under his breath, Raith hurriedly ducked into the space beneath the stairs, pressing himself as far as he could against the wall and praying that he hadn’t been spotted. As the first of the guards started to pass, he had to suppress the reaction to sigh with relief when he saw that the man wasn’t looking in his direction, eyes focused ahead. Raith filtered out there conversation, something to do with a hidden brothel in the city, and instead reached once again inside his cloak. This time, he pulled out a small vial of some sort of bluish green liquid, slowly pulling out the Needle that had been concealed within before he re-Stoppard the bottle. He had been planning on using the needle as a last resort, should one of the soldiers happen to look in his direction, but found himself considering an alternative use when his observant mind picked out The tidbit of information that the man in the back of the group, the most nervous looking of them, was a new recruit. The older, more seasoned fighters were currently teasing the other mercilessly, though none glanced in his direction, Instead choosing to make sidelong comments and snarky remarks over their shoulders to one another that had the younger man shrinking in on himself and falling steadily behind. Just as the group was almost out of his reach, Raith made up his mind and hurried forward, sliding one of his hands over the young man‘s mouth while simultaneously sticking the end of the needle into his neck. The man jerked with surprise, but didn’t even manage a muffled cry before the solution he had been injected with had taken effect, his eyelids drooping as he fell into a deep sleep. Levering the weight of the soldier so that his armor didn’t clatter, Raith carefully dragged the man backwards into the space beneath the stairs, holding his breath once again as he watched the other soldiers marching on obliviously.

[CENTER]~*~[/CENTER]

[I]’I hope that leaving him there wasn’t a bad omen,’[/I] Raith thought darkly to himself some time later as he walked quietly into the palace, freshly dressed in the new recruit‘s armor, it’s unfortunate owner left snoozing beneath the stairs next to the battlements.

Walking purposefully and looking straight ahead, Raith eventually was able to make his way down into what he hoped was the dungeon area of the castle, no one having stopped him. That was part of the secret of getting around someplace you really weren’t meant to be: look like you were supposed to be there. People were less likely to question your being there if you looked like you had a purpose. Eventually, He found himself at a door and he paused, gathering his strength. Silently hoping that whomever was on the other side of the door wasn’t likely to put up a fight, Raith tapped The wooden surface sharply.

“Oy, change of shift,” he grunted, Lowering his tenor voice into a gravelly baritone. “New Captain says I need to get some experience in the dungeons.“