Agnes POV
The stables smelled good.
Hay and leather and animal warmth. I moved through the stalls slowly, running my hand along the wood, looking at each horse with the focused attention of a woman conducting serious business.
No one knew I was here.
That was the first thing I had established upon waking - that the castle, for all its guards and its gates and its general atmosphere of thorough surveillance, had blind spots. Every fortified place had blind spots. The people who built them always forgot to account for someone who had nothing left to lose and a great deal of experience moving through spaces that didn't want her in them.
I had found four so far.
The stables were blind spot number two.
