To Stand Beside Her Read Free Page B

follow the exact plan Leila had made.
    “So now what do we do?” Kay asked without looking Leila in the eyes.
    “We leave and go home. I will return in a couple weeks and finish everything then,” Leila concluded.
    “But this jail is not how you described it,” Kay commented.
    “That is because we are not in the women’s jail,” Leila responded. She had been in these jails once, many years ago. They seemed to have upgraded everything since her last escape from the men’s jail. “I was here once with Erich,” she explained to Kay. Kay flinched at the sound of Erich’s name. This was a very hard subject to talk about with Leila. For over a year after he died, Leila had not once said his name to anyone.
    “This might be a bit tricky, but we have to leave separately.” Leila walked over to the door and listened to the men outside. “Since we are the only people in the jail, if we both leave, they will know right away. You will leave first pretending to be sick and wait for me outside the gate.”
    “Won’t you have a harder time leaving if I am escaping?” Kay asked.
    “This place will not be hard to leave; I will go right out that window there,” Leila motioned to the window above the bed.
    “But we are over four floors up,” Kay said in disbelief.
    “Yes, and they seem to not have bars on the window,” Leila laughed to herself. “ We will be heading home tonight.”
    Leila took one last look. “Now is as good of a time as any. Pretend you are really hurt. ” Kay gave a blood curdling scream and the guards came running.
    “What happened?” asked the younger man.
    “I don’t know,” Leila replied. “We were just sitting here, and now she is screaming.”
    “Help me pick up this girl,” the older guard ordered. The younger guard helped the older guard pick up Kay. She continued to howl in pain. “Stay here,” he ordered the young guard.
    Leila stood in the doorway of her cell and watched as the older guard carried the crying Kay away . The startled young guard turned around and looked at her. The pale ness in his face told Leila he was not one for taking care of sick people. He cautiously walked back over to Leila.
    Leila led herself back to the jail cell and closed the door. From what she could hear, Kay was in the infirmary and they were going to try to treat her there . She quietly crept over to the bed and moved it slightly so that she would be able to use it to easily reach the window. In the dimness of the moonlight, Leila pulled herself up into the window. Kay was right: they were four stories above the ground. Slowly, she lowered herself out the window. The nice thing about being so high was no one would notice if she climbed out the window. S he searched the wall with her feet and found a small ledge.
    For any male, the climb down would be extremely hard , if not impossible, but for Leila, with her much smaller feet, it would work just fine. It was slow going, but after fifteen minutes she was down to ground level. She decided that she preferred the women’s jail after all ; she’d do her best next time to not get thrown in the men’s jail. She quietly ran from shadow to shadow until she was near the gate. Looking around she ran to a cart loading up to leave and wedged herself tightly under it. The cart had been packed and was moving to the gate. The cart stopped at the gate .
    “Let us pass,” a man said gruffly. “I found this girl coming out the window by the servant’s quarters and will be taking her to the king. She has to be the ghost courier.”
    Leila looked closely at the legs beside her. Kay had been caught again . The man holding Kay was the other newbie tracker from the tea house. He must have been waiting outside the palace to catch Leila.
    This is getting ridiculous , Leila told herself. I am never letting Roger put her on another mission again.
    Leila waited for the cart to move again as the cart driver received his stamp from the gate guard. She watched as Kay