I decided to follow Advisor Owl's advice and try to climb the gate. The challenge was that the gate was a wooden one about two meters tall and made with solid planks, so it was without footholds, meaning I’d need some way to haul myself over and pull myself up. There was a post on each side though, so I decided to go the bedsheet route again, looping it around the side post, then climbing up by holding onto the ends of the fabric and walking up the side. This was also pretty much how I intended to get back up to my window from the second-floor balcony; I planned to leave the bedsheet hanging and climb back up along the wall.

This climbing required some practice to ensure I was strong enough though, and luckily, I was able to test my technique and my strength by climbing up one of the posts of my bed frame. Anne did catch me at it, but it was hardly the strangest thing I’d ever done, and she knew when to pick her battles. Since to her, it seemed like I was being relatively safe, and it was keeping me occupied, she let me do what I wanted with my strange new climbing obsession.

After three weeks of practice, I was ready to implement Operation Infiltrate.

It was moderately successful. I made it there, but I hurt myself a bit. The first snag was climbing down the bedsheets and jumping to the balcony. I ended up scraping my hands on the rough wall when I landed and caught myself – my balance was good, but my legs buckled a bit, and I swayed into the side of the building. It hurt, and I didn’t like it, but I kept going, climbing down the trellis without much trouble. Sneaking through the hedges was tricky, and I ended up covered in leaves, but I didn’t worry about it at first.

The guards were pretty oblivious, to be honest. It made me a bit worried about our palace security levels. Then again, that assassin had gotten in, so maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me. When I got to the first gap in the hedges, I stayed low to the ground as they walked by, their footsteps crunching on the gravel. There were two, and they were chatting in low voices.

“I just don’t understand why Hortense won’t admit they ate my sandwich,” the first voice complained. “I know it was them, because Andreas was on vacation, and they were the only person who had time to get to the ice box during their break. Mine was right after and my sandwich was gone.”

“Well, it could have been someone from a different guard post,” the other voice, which was deeper and a bit rough. “You don’t know if someone snuck in to check the ice box for food from somewhere else.”

“No, I just know it was Hortense. They always mess with me. Last time it was making fun of my hair, and now it’s my sandwich. They just won’t admit it.” The voice turned a bit plaintive, almost whiny. “It was a great sandwich, too. My brother made it for me.”

“There’s not much you can do about it now, though.” The deeper voice was measured and reasonable sounding. I didn’t agree with it though. I wanted to jump in – if this person was losing their lunch, they needed to run an experiment and stake out the location to catch the culprit. All they needed was proof. But I never learned what the sandwich person’s plan was, because the two of them walked past me, clearing my way to the next patch of hedges. I made a run for it, almost tripping over the blanket I was carrying. I made it, but I was mildly disappointed that I didn’t get to learn more about the thief.

Similarly to this, on the way to the opposite side of the palace, there were other paths and hedges. More watchmen walked back and forth along the paths, leaving small openings as they turned around and kept up their rotations so that I could dash across the walkways to the next hiding spot. In this way, I made it all the way to the gates to the training grounds.

The gate felt much taller than it did in the daylight, dark and imposing. I swung up the blankets, which I had weighted on the ends with some stones that I sewed into the folds of fabric. It failed the first time, but I did not panic, even though I knew my chance to make it over before the guards walked by again was slipping by. The second throw worked, and I started climbing immediately. It was very hard, and I was sweating profusely, but I made it. I had never been so proud of myself.

I trained then, energized by my victory. I felt invincible, and my drills went perfectly, my strange muscle memories allowing me to execute moves I’d never seen or heard of before, and yet which I knew by heart and was fully confident in performing. By the end though, my hands were aching, and I was very tired and sore. The climbing had been hard on me, even with all my practice runs. Nevertheless, I didn’t stop training until the very last possible moment. I had to stop all too soon though. I knew it would take up to an hour to make it back, and the guards and knights started their drills well before dawn. Carefully, I snuck back out, climbing painstakingly back over the gate and then dashing back behind the bushes on the nearest path.

Making it back to my room was much harder than making it to the training grounds had been. Sandwich Guard and their friend must have ended their shift, or they were just done chatting for the night because I didn’t hear them. Again, I felt a tiny bit of disappointment that I wasn’t going to find out what the plan was for solving the sandwich mystery.

Putting the sandwiches out of my mind, I kept sneaking onward towards the east wing. The faint lightening of the sky highlighted the silhouettes of the passing guards, and my exhaustion made me clumsier. I tripped twice, and started to worry about the climb back up to my room. I don’t know exactly how I made it, but I fell into a sort of hyper-focus, and the next thing I knew I was back in my room, hauling up the bedsheets and folding them to hide the evidence from Anne.

I managed to keep up my evening trainings for almost a month. Oddly enough, Anne and Captain Alea didn’t seem too suspicious of my minor scrapes and my tiredness. The scrapes were pretty normal for me, to be fair. And maybe they were just grateful that I was a bit quieter. Usually, I came up with odd adventures and games pretty regularly, like trying to ride the dairy cows they kept out behind the kitchens or finding a way to sneak into my grandmother’s office to take notes on her meetings. Those were just two examples I’d actually been caught for, though. They had no idea about the times I’d snuck into the kitchens to steal the premium chocolates Chef George made, which I then gave to the children my parents hired as playmates to bribe them into refusing to see me anymore. I had to do that one because my parents stopped listening to me when I demanded they stop trying to buy me friends, and I didn’t like scaring off the children outright. Although I did do that if I had to; convincing the average five-year-old that I could read their minds and steal their thoughts was pretty easy for me.

Arden was very suspicious of me, though. She noticed that I was slower than usual in training, and I caught her observing me closely over the last week or so. In the end, she confronted me about it.

“You hurt yourself.” Arden stood in front of me, arms crossed, glaring. I shrugged.

“What do you mean?”

“Your hands. They are scraped up, and you have too many blisters.” She squinted at me. “You are practicing swordsmanship outside of our lessons, aren’t you?”

“No. Don’t be stupid.” I didn’t like using that word, but I knew it made Arden angry, and I needed to distract her. She was much sharper than I’d originally given her credit for.

Arden tossed her head defiantly, seeing through me. “You are, aren’t you?” Her face was crunched up with something like jealousy. “Are you getting special lessons from Captain Alea?”

I understood enough about her by now to know she absolutely idolized the captain. “No, I’m not. She told me no when I asked.”

At this, Arden looked very happy. “Hmpf. So, you aren’t allowed? But you definitely are training.” I winced internally. Arden had basically figured out my secret, and trying to distract her would only work for a short time, even if I succeeded. My only option was to bribe her or blackmail her. But chocolates wouldn’t work on her, and I didn’t know any of her dark secrets. I decided to be direct.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to stop extra training. It’s not fair.”

Aha, so that was what she was worried about. “If you get extra training too, it’s fair, right?”

She looked dubious. “But Captain Alea won’t allow it.”

 “That’s why we won’t tell her.”

Looking torn, Arden shifted, glancing towards the captain and then at me.

“How would we do it?”