It was four more nights before the gentlemen returned.
In the days before their return, Esme had filled her time with managing and implementing the taverns new rules.
Things were going well and already some profit was being recorded. Many of the other tavern people had begun to look at her like she was someone other than an imposing outsider. At breakfast that morning there had even been a brief conversation in her presence.
While Esme was glad she was able to do something for the tavern, her mind remained restless just waiting for her chance to initiate her entrance into the palace.
Esme had Ushna watch the front desk again while she listened in on the Eunuchs conversations. There wasn't much different to hear from what she had gathered on the first night. First the men balanced the accounting and determined how much they had gathered and how close they were to meeting their target amount assigned to them. Esme had a feeling that the left Prime minister and the Minister of war had other people carrying out fraud schemes to help restore the money and that each of these people had a target amount they had to reach.
After balancing the accounts the men would eat and then drink fine wine while sharing stories of the outrageous ways by which they wielded the power of their office in their favour.
The eunuch from the palace usually had the most stories and many of them involved the reactions of the workers who had bribed their way in when they discovered how much of their salary was being taken from them.
It was a bunch of sick stories yet Esme could not afford not to listen just in case she heard anything useful.
When the men rose to leave, Esme dressed in a black cloak and followed them into the night.
They parted ways early and Esme chose to continue following the palace eunuch.
The more ground the eunuch covered the more they emerged into the wealthier neighborhoods of the capital. There was a large market that divided the middle class neighborhoods from the noble class neighborhoods. The night was old so most of the stores were closed or in the midst of closing. Thankfully the lights from closed stores were snuffed so there was enough darkness for Esme to blend in as she followed the eunuch who grew more cautious and paranoid with each step he took.
They had walked a mile deep into the large market when the eunuch, with another glance behind him, made an unusual turn into an alleyway. Esme had been expecting it but her eyebrows still rose. Rather than follow the eunuch into the alleyway she scaled the building and watched from the rooftops as the eunuch made his way to-she squinted her eyes in the dark- a bucky. At the other end of the alleyway which had a wider entrance, there was a bucky hidden well under the cover of darkness. She watched as best as she could in the thick darkness and noticed the eunuch shed his tavern clothes before climbing into the bucky. The single horse that pulled the bucky began to move. It pulled the bucky into the streets from the wider entrance and began a hurried but not frantic trot down the road in the ditection of the noble neighborhoods. Esme shadow scaled across rooftops to keep up with the bucky. She thought of shadow balancing on the rooftop of the bucky but though she wouldn't be heard a soft thud would be felt at her landing. A soft thud that would make the already paranoid Eunuch go hysterical.
She followed as best she could across the rooftops even having to continue her stalking on the ground when she ran out rooftops. As it began to feel like an endurance test, the bucky pulled into the section of the noble neighborhoods which was better lit and was not lacking in high walls and rooftops. Esme sighed as her eyes adjusted to the light. She observed the bucky from a high wall as it passed under the glare of three bright streer lights. It was a public bucky, but not the kind of public buckys that operated around the taverns neighborhood by the mountains but the kind of bucky that operated in the middle class and noble neighborhoods. The noble neighborhoods in Esme's experience from living in many capitals, hardly needed the public buckys. They were rich enough to have their own carriages in numbers. It was usually low level maids who made use of the public buckys to run their errands. The middle class people, though they were named middle class were only a little above the lower class people. They were most likely the managers and attendants of the stores in the large market. Stores that were owned by the noble class. The middle class were very few but existed and it was very rare to see any of them own a carriage, they too made use of the public buckys. To go from their workplace to their houses and also on occasion to their employers houses to submit reports. This bucky was bigger and nicer looking than the ones that ran in the tavern neighborhoods.
As Esme followed the bucky her mind analysed the situation with a dozen possibilities. The eunuch was doing something risky enough to cost him his head. It was unlikely that he would trust or involve just any public bucky driver. She wondered if palace workers were allowed to own businesses outside of their palace jobs because her biggest guess was that the palace eunuch owned a percentage of the public buckys and he trusted some riders under his employ. The pay of a palace eunuch was no small pay and adding this particular eunuchs tendency to corruption, it was more than possible for him to be able to afford a few public buckys for a business.
Her mind, eyes and limbs were so much in autopilot that the image of the large imperial palace came to her as a shock. She paused on a rooftop just taking in the massive land that was littered with large fancy buildings. Prince Elian was in there waiting on her. She couldn't fail.
Lost in her thoughts, she almost missed the bucky curving into a small alley way just before the turning of the road that led to the great heavily guarded palace way. Of course the palace had a curfew and the Eunuch would be questioned if he arrived through the front gates and in a public bucky.
The bucky moved through alley way after alley way finally riding into a large piece of forestry land that ran alongside about half of the palace walls. Esme guessed it was the palaces exclusive hunting area. It was guarded but not adequately so because the large palace walls still separated the forestry land from the palace and the palace it self sat atop a high hill that would make it very difficult for enemies to approach through the forest land. Esme was swinging through trees now, she was beginning to feel exhaustion but she had to know the eunuchs entrance into the palace. Not that she could use it to get into the palace system, she still had to bribe her way through for that but it would be good to mark her potential exit points early.
The bucky rode for miles still along the palace walls and Esme kept up as best she could. Finally a little more than middle of the palace walls-the walls still went on for miles but from the top of a tree she could see where it ended- the bucky stopped in front of what first appeared in the dark to look like a leave covered wall. Much of the palace walls were covered in weeds and so this wall didn't look out of place at all until it opened. Well not the whole wall, just a small section of the wall opened, so small the eunuch had to hunch over to walk through it. Esme swung through trees to get a closer look at the wall and the person who opened it. She couldn't make out faces but through the dim light that the welcoming party carried she caught the hem of a blue dress with a pattern that she branded into her brain. She could hear voices and tried to make out what was being said but it was nearly impossible, the forest was alive with sounds. After a few minutes, the door which Esme knew was illegally constructed out of the wall was shut and only the bucky rider remained. The rider began the rocky road back to the neighborhoods. Esme remained a few minutes longer doing her best to study the surroundings and burn the image into her brain. She knew it would all look a lot different in the lights of the morning sun. When she was sure she would be able to identify the exact spot the door was carved, she swung through trees after the bucky which was moving at a much slower rate along the uneven forest road. She swung ahead and waited patiently for the bucky to climb over a rather large bumb. There was simply no way Esme was going to return to the tavern on her feet. She was hundreds of miles away and she hated to admit that she hadn't been paying that much attention to the roads as she should have been. Returning by herself meant probably getting lost and probably fainting from shadow walking so much.
As the bucky went over the large bumb, Esme calculated her steps accurately and landed softly atop the bucky. The softness of her thud swallowed up by the sound and shake of the bucky crashing on the other side of the bumb.
Taking advantage of each bumb and jerk in the road to hide her movement, Esme folded herself into a more comfortable position and allowed the bucky to carry her out of the forest and through the neighborhoods into the market. Though she was comfortable, her mind was rummaging again filing away information she had gotten that night for when they would be useful to her.
The Bucky stopped in the market place parked among other buckys at a large bucky station. Esme slipped away before the rider could dismount and began the solo walk back to the tavern all the while fighting an intuitive migraine.
Something was still missing in the puzzle.
*IMPORTANT NOTICE BELOW*.