Jade gripped the rail that was fixed to the inside of the carriage door as Saela steered them around the corner of another estate. Quickly glancing down to check on Nina before drawing her own pistol, she took a moment to steady herself as she drew one of the curtains to look outside. They wouldn’t know how long it would be before they encountered anyone from the Royal Guard, but every second that they could remain in the carriage was precious. If they were caught out early in their escape and forced to leave it behind, Nina would more than likely end up costing them their lives.

One thing that was going for them was that the Royal Guard didn’t have a barracks. Confining nobility to such a space was apparently improper, so the members of the guard were allowed to live at home and report for duty when required. Jade assumed that there was a response protocol in place for this type of situation, but the fact was that if they could remain in the carriage they would likely beat most of the guard to the wall.

She figured that the reinforcements would be split between fortifying the wall to stop their escape and actively hunting them down. Reaching the wall before the bulk of the guard did was one thing, but completely evading the net that would be slowly closing in on the Inin Estate was something that she didn’t think they could manage. It was true that they were using the smaller streets that ran between the estates instead of the main thoroughfares, but one chance encounter could be enough for the search to be redirected in their direction.

“How are we going to get past the wall?” she asked over the ringing bells while nervously glancing through the rear window. Saela was driving quickly now, and the wooden wheels of the carriage were loud as they rattled over the stone below them. Expecting their now conspicuous attempt at escape to attract attention at any time, she tightened her grip on the pistol in her free hand.

“Just shut up and do what I say,” Saela replied without taking her icy gaze off the road before them. “No questions, there isn’t time.”

Jade frowned, but didn’t respond. She felt apprehensive over the fact that Saela had taken their lives into her own hands, but at the same time she didn’t have any other ideas on how to escape either. She didn’t even want to think about how much trouble she would have been in if Saela hadn’t turned up with the carriage in the first place, and on top of that she seemed to have a plan. If it was a good plan or not was something that she would find out sooner or later, but anything was currently better than nothing.

The carriage continued to race down the stone street as it snaked through a curve between a pair of grassy hills before shooting across an intersection with abandon. Looking out from the small window at the front, Jade eyed the lights at the top of the wall that loomed in the distance, gauging the distance from their position. While trying to make out exactly where they had climbed over, however, she suddenly ducked back inside the carriage as she saw a light appear in the middle of the road before them.

“Halt!”

Jade held her breath as she felt the carriage begin to decelerate. Thumbing the safety release on her pistol, she quietly eased her way over to the door before gripping the handle in case she needed to spring into action. She had thought that Saela may have actually just charged through them, but apparently that wasn’t the plan.

“Help me!” Saela cried out with a voice that sounded more distraught than anything Jade had ever heard escape from her lips before. “My driver, h-he…”

“Ma’am, please tell me wh-”

Jade sucked in a breath as the unmistakable whir of a pulse handgun cut off the man’s offer for help before a second shot immediately followed it. Saela hadn’t even stopped the carriage, and now she increased their speed again as the wheels bounced along the street. Giving into temptation, Jade looked out the rear window of the carriage to see two Royal Guards collapsed in an unnatural heap by the side of the road, their bodies soon fading into the darkness behind them.

“Saela!” Jade cried. “You…”

“I said shut up,” Saela spat as she focused on the road. “Just do what I say, when I say.”

Jade wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with death, but the ease in which Saela had brushed off what she had done had left her startled. The Cloud Orchestra had of course run into trouble before, and many times at that, but Saela was a relatively green member and this was the first time that she had seen her placed in such a situation. Svanda or Trim would have been able to do it, but Jade didn’t know if she herself would have been able to deceive someone as such and then simply leave them to die. Shaking her head as though brushing off the thought, she pictured Nina’s pathetic figure sitting in the chair at the lab.

She too would have to be cold if she didn’t want to share that fate.

It seemed as though the reinforcements were using the main corridors of the district to move about, as neither their carriage or what they had done seemed to attract any attention. What they had just run into was probably a routine patrol, so she hoped that they wouldn’t run into any more in the immediate future. The bigger problem, however, would be that sooner or later they were going to have to abandon the carriage as they organized their approach to the wall.

The gate obviously wasn’t an option, and once the Royal Guard had successfully tightened the net around them their chances of escape would become even slimmer. Fortunately they had already made it about three quarters of the way to the wall from where they had started, and now she was ready for action as surely it would soon be time to work out their final approach.

“Can you run with Nina?” Saela finally asked as they reached the T-junction that sat at the end of the fringe estates. Turning onto the road that ran in a circle around the inside of the gardens by the wall, she looked ahead and frowned when she saw that the lighting on the street was now much more generous.

“I can, but not for very long,” Jade replied as she looked out through the small window at the front to examine Saela’s expression. It was a mixture of concentration and displeasure, which was an expression that she seemed to show more often than she should. Jade wouldn't say anything though, as right now she was probably wearing something similar.

“Good enough,” Saela nodded as she scanned the street in front of them for movement. It seemed that there were a few people who were now trickling towards the main artery that ran to the nearest gate, but that wasn’t stopping them from driving straight in their direction. Thankfully, the gardens that ran between the road and the wall were giving them some cover on one side for now, but Jade’s main concern was that the main road would act like a funnel. Lined on each side by high trees, fountains, and luxurious arrays of flowers, the carriage would have nowhere to go but straight to the people waiting for them.

“Miss?”

Saela didn’t even bother with a story this time as she quickly whipped her handgun up from behind the front dash and shot the puzzled man who was jogging in their direction. Opening his mouth in horror as the carriage whipped past him, he tried to cry out only to find that no sound would emerge. Unable to even fumble for the weapon that was slung over his shoulder, his eyes looked up to meet Jade’s gaze as she stared out from the back of the carriage that was rapidly speeding away. Fear plastered across his face, he reached out to her in a final gesture before falling to his knees and then keeling over.

“I can’t reload while I’m driving,” Saela stated nonchalantly as she ignored what had happened. “Give me your pistol and reload this one.”

Jade passed her pistol through the small window to Saela without a word, who in return tossed hers inside. Both of them were currently using the same K-Point model which was a variant of what Nina had once tried with a five round magazine, so Jade reloaded the pistol from her own reserves before returning her gaze to the rear window. Due to the street lighting she could still see the hunched over guard who had been left to die, but she couldn’t let herself become unsettled over it. This was Rucille’s fault, not hers, and she was going to make it back to Reina no matter what she had to do.

Putting what had happened into the back of her mind, she again changed her focus to the front window. Soon they reached the intersection of the street that they were on and the main road which ran through the centre of the district, and through the ringing of the bells overhead she could hear shouting behind them. Saela whipped the speeding carriage to the left without warning and pulled them onto the open stone, and as a result Jade had to hold Nina to prevent her body from banging into the side of the interior.

Ahead of them she could see a carriage speeding along in the direction of the wall. If she had looked behind, them she would have soon seen another. Considering that it would be a waste of time to have the members of the Royal Guard cross the interior gardens on foot, carriages were currently transporting them from the edge of the estates to the district wall as quickly as possible.

The fact that there weren’t foot patrols was a good thing for them as everyone traveling in the same direction at similar speeds would mean they wouldn’t directly encounter anyone. Jade, however, was getting nervous as they were rapidly approaching the heavily guarded main gate. If Saela had a decent plan, now was probably a good time to tell her about it.

“A grenade would have been nice,” Saela muttered as she eased the carriage away from the centre of the street. Now running close to the edge of the gardens, she looked up to judge the distance between them and the gate before turning her head in Jade’s direction.

“We’re going to jump,” she said as she fumbled with something under the wheel that Jade couldn’t see. “You’re going to have to jump with Nina, so try not to hurt yourself on the landing. We need to be quick, so follow me as fast as you can once we’re up.”

“Are you crazy?” Jade asked as she looked out the window to the shrubs and trees that were whipping by her. “This is too fast!”

Saela ignored her complaint as she placed Jade’s pistol in her pocket before examining the streetlights that hung at regular intervals. “The fifth gap in the lights. It’s dark and there seems to be some shrubs. Get ready.”

Realising that Saela was going to ignore her, Jade quickly put her pistol away before wrapping her arms around Nina’s chest. She didn’t have any idea what the best way to avoid injury was while carrying someone else, so she was simply going to pray that she didn’t incapacitate herself upon landing. Opening the door slightly, she frowned as the air rushed past her face, but still kept her foot wedged in the gap.

“Two sets to go,” Saela said.

The brightness around her faded once more as they passed through the darker space between streetlights. Watching a tree fly past her, she gulped when she thought about what would happen if she had jumped out into it. They weren’t traveling fast enough to seriously injure themselves just from the landing, but if she managed to wrap herself around a tree she certainly wouldn’t be getting back up.

“One set to go.”

Being inside the carriage didn’t help her nerves either. Saela would be able to judge where she was going to land by eye, but she would essentially be blind. The fact that she would also have to cling onto Nina as she jumped wouldn’t help her odds of landing safely, but there wasn’t much that she would be able to do about it. Saela was already single-handedly dragging them out of a potential disaster, so her faith in her would just have to persist for a little longer.

“It’s coming,” Saela said as she moved from the driver’s seat to the side of the carriage. “Three, two…”

Banging the already ajar door wide open with her knee, Jade tightened her grip around Nina’s chest as she grit her teeth.

“One, jump!”

At Saela’s call, Jade pushed herself off the edge of the platform and threw herself out into the darkness.