Chapter 147: Chapter One Hundred-Forty-Seven: Out of the Gilded Cage

//CLARA//

The stable smelled of piss and that particular ammonia-sweet rot. I pressed my back against the rough-hewn wall, my lungs still burning from our sprint across the kitchen gardens. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Gary’s hand found my shoulder, his fingers damp through my sleeve. Hattie’s breath came in shallow sips beside me, her small frame tucked into the shadow of a feed barrel.

"Guards," Gary mouthed, tilting his head toward the yard.

I heard them too. Boots on gravel, they were circling the main house.

The cart we’d spotted from the kitchen window sat twenty yards distant, its canvas covering flapping in the morning breeze like a flag of surrender.

"We’re not going to make it," Gary whispered, his breath hitching in the frigid air.

His eyes darting toward the main house where lanterns were swinging like frantic fireflies. The light caught the sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the sub-zero wind.

"They’re bottlenecking the exits. If we walk out there, we’re just target practice."

He was right. The estate guards were fanning out. I needed something to break their focus. I needed a riot.

My eyes adjusted to the gloom. Stalls lined both walls, most occupied, the horses shifting in their sleep. At the far end, separated by a gate of iron bars thick as my wrist, stood Snow.

The stallion was a beast of pure, pale malice that Casimir had tamed through nothing but sheer force of will and a darkness that matched the animal’s own.

To anyone else, the horse was a four-legged executioner. He was currently pacing his stall, his nostrils flaring, sensing the frantic energy of the night.

"Snow," I breathed, a reckless idea taking root in the part of my brain that had stopped caring about consequences. "We need a distraction. Something big enough to make them think twice about stepping into this yard."

Hattie followed my gaze, and her eyes went wide.

"No, miss. Please. That horse is a monster. He’ll trample us before he touches them."

"He won’t, I promised."

I didn’t wait for her to talk me out of it. I crept toward the stall, staying low, the scent of hay and horse manure filling my lungs.

Snow’s ears flattened against his skull as I approached, his white eyes rolling in the dim light of the stable lanterns.

Then I hurled the rock with everything I had.

CRACK.

The stone hit the wooden wall directly behind the stallion’s hindquarters like a gunshot.

The reaction was instantaneous. Snow let out a shrill, piercing neigh that sounded less like an animal and more like a woman screaming in a burning building.

He reared back, his massive hooves striking the air, before he slammed his full weight into the stall door. The latch, never meant to hold back a panicked half-ton of muscle, gave way with a sickening splinter of wood.

"Go! Now!" I hissed, grabbing Gary’s sleeve and Hattie’s hand.

Snow bolted into the courtyard like a white blur of fury. He bucked, his hooves whistling through the air, and charged at a group of guards who were closing in on our position.

"The stallion! Get back!" a guard screamed into a high-pitched yelp of terror. "Where is Mr. Guggenheim? Nobody can hold that beast! Get the nets! Get the guns!"

"Don’t you dare shoot that horse!" another voice bellowed, likely a stable hand who knew Casimir would skin him alive if a drop of his prize stallion stayed on the cobbles.

The yard dissolved into a beautiful, violent chaos. The guards’ line broke as they scrambled to avoid being trampled. The three of us moved, slipping past the panicked men and toward the line of delivery wagons waiting by the rear service gate.

Hattie led the way, her small frame nearly invisible in the gloom. She pointed to a heavy cart laden with goods, covered by a thick, tattered canvas cloth.

"Inside," she urged, her voice a frantic tether. "The driver is in the office signing the manifest. We have thirty seconds."

Gary hoisted me up first. His hands were trembling. I scrambled over the crates. I reached back to pull Hattie up, and then Gary hauled himself in, pulling the heavy, freezing canvas down over us just as the office door creaked open.

We buried ourselves deep. I was pressed into a corner between a crate of hard cheese and a sack of grain. Gary was to my left, and Hattie was curled into a ball at our feet.

A minute later—a minute where I forgot how to breathe—the cart groaned. We heard the heavy, muffled footsteps of the coachman climbing onto the bench.

"Giddy up, you lazy mutts!" he barked, snapping the reins.

The cart jolted. My head hit a crate with a dull thud, and I bit my tongue to keep from crying out. We felt the slow grind of wheels on frozen gravel. Every pebble felt like a mountain through the floorboards. We felt the carriage slow at the gate. My heart stopped.

"Early run, Joe?" a guard’s voice drifted through the canvas.

"Mistress wants the market stock moved before the blizzard locks the roads," the driver grumbled. "Heard a horse got loose?"

"Thing’s a devil," the guard muttered. "Go on through. Keep your eyes open for a girl and a tall lad."

"Aye. If I see ’em, I’ll run ’em over."

The gate groaned open. The wheels hit the cobblestones of the public road with a violent jar, and I finally let out the breath I’d been holding.

We were out.

We stayed buried for hours. The night bled into a bruised, grey dawn that filtered through the chinks in the tattered canvas. The temperature inside the cart began to rise—just enough to stop the shivering and start the sweating. The air grew stale, smelling of us and the goods we were hiding among.

Eventually, the sounds of the city began to filter in. It started as a low hum—the distant cry of street vendors, the clatter of many horses, the pervasive, heavy vibration of Manhattan waking up. The silence of the estate was replaced by the cacophony of the gilded age chaos.

Gary shifted, carefully peeking through a gap in the fabric. His face, usually so expressive, was tight and pale while his eyes searched the passing buildings.

"We’re here," he whispered. "The outskirts. I recognize the tilt of these streets. The way the tenements lean over the alleys. This is where he... where I... used to walk when the world felt too small."

The cart slowed as it hit a congested intersection near the docks. The shouting of teamsters and the smell of salt and coal smoke filled the wagon.

"Now," I said, my voice cracking. "Before he reaches the main market. We jump on three."

I slipped out from under the canvas first, the sudden blast of city air hitting me like a physical blow. I tried to time my jump with the cart’s crawl, my boots skidding on the slushy, filth-strewn cobbles. I pitched forward, the world tilting, certain I was about to face-plant into the mud until a pair of strong arms caught me around the waist.

Gary steadied me, his breathing ragged against my ear.

"Gotcha. I’ve got you."

But he didn’t have time to let go. Hattie, eager to follow and clearly panicked by the proximity of the driver, leaped from the back of the cart just as it gave a sudden, violent lurch forward. She collided straight into Gary’s back like a cannonball.

The impact sent them both sprawling. Gary lost his balance, his boots sliding on a patch of black ice concealed by horse dung, and they toppled over in a messy heap of wool, limbs, and gasps.

Gary hit the ground first with a grunt of pain, and Hattie landed squarely on top of him. Her small hands were planted firmly on his chest to steady herself, her face inches from his.

Hattie’s breath hitched, her wide, dark eyes staring down into Gary’s. Her face was flushed a brilliant pink from the cold, a stray strand of dark hair caught on her lip.

Gary went absolutely rigid. I saw his throat bob as he swallowed hard, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air, trembling, unsure where to put them. He looked terrified.

"Oh! I—I am so sorry, Mr. Russell!" Hattie squeaked.

Her face turned a shade of red that rivaled a sunset.

She scrambled off him with all the grace of a startled fawn, tripping over her own hem in her haste to stand up.

She began smoothing her apron with trembling fingers, her head bowed low. Gary stayed on the ground for a second too long.

"It’s fine," Gary grunted, pushing himself up and frantically brushing the slush off his trousers. "Just... watch your step."

Hattie bit her lip.

"Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir."

I rolled my eyes, the tension in my gut making me irritable.

"Can we save the melodrama for when we aren’t standing in the middle of a street? Gary, for the love of God, lead the way."

Gary nodded, finally finding his feet and his focus. He looked toward a narrow, dark alleyway between two towering brick tenements.

"This way," he said. "The house is three blocks down. Near the old tannery. If my head is right... that’s where the ledger is buried."