<span style="font-style: italic">Surprise </span>was the most difficult emotion to conceal. Everyone had a 'tell'. Professionals like Mouse had their faces carefully trained to be still and sullen at even the most outrageous sights. Yet, one could never eradicate their ‘tell’ completely. Her ‘tell’ was not in her face, but in her toes. They wiggled as Navarez knelt before her. To think that he called her an<span style="font-style: italic">Angel</span>…<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">So… That’s what he thinks of me?</span>She smiled.<span style="font-style: italic">Or perhaps they have deprived him of food to long, and he’s gone loopy on me.</span>Sane or not, she was still determined to save him.<br/><br/>“Pace.” She held out her gloved hands toward his, touching him gingerly. “Only God himself shall judge his children. Rest assured that he<span style="font-style: italic">shall</span>indeed judge all his children… As he has for you tonight.” She tried to sound foreboding and ominous.<br/><br/>The actual idea of<span style="font-style: italic">forgiving</span>the bishop made her want to laugh in his face, or throw up, or both. Yet, the mouse knew how to behave himself, and she kept her face a stone and all her emotions neatly tucked away in her toes.<br/><br/>“You have been sentenced to die this day, yet the holy father above has judged you and found you worthy of a second life.” She turned over her hand and revealed the key to his cell. Mouse had used a simple slight-of-hand-tequnique to make it appear in her her palm. To the untrained eye it would seem like magic. “Stand, and I shall lead you from this place.”<br/><br/>The lock ‘clicked’ softly and she opened the door and stepped into the cell. She left the iron gate dangle open behind them. But instead of turning back, she walked toward the princes…<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Despondent, depressed, ill.... close to death already...</span>Mouse noticed. The girl did not seem to notice nor care for the appearance of an Angel.<br/><br/>“My dear, you must stand now. Rise that you might escape to live another day in God's glorious sunlight!” Mouse was inspecting the girl more carefully now. She was not one to take small detailed for granted. This girl was a rose… once beautiful and proud… Yet, this rose that had been crushed under the foot of the church and scorched by it’s greed. Who knows what horrors had befallen her so far, perhaps she looked forward to her death this night…<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">And Navarez wants to forgive them... ugh...</span><br/><br/>“No really. You need to move, you are sitting-upon the way-out...” Her voice flattened, perhaps a bit out of character...<br/><br/>Mouse rolled her eyes, then she leap upon the wall. Then, she would clamber up with spider like quality, her little fingers and toes finding the smallest of footholds ancient masonry. It might look almost ridiculous or comical in her over-sized outfit…<br/><br/>It might seem to be an odd place for an escape tunnel. But not to a mouse.<span style="font-style: italic">Up.</span>but not so. If it were on the floor or along the walls then<span style="font-style: italic">they</span>would have found it already.<br/><br/>Above the head of any guard the ceiling of the cell was straddled by rafters and hanging chains. Mushrooms and fungus grew on the rotting wooden beams and rust made the dangling chains red. It was dark, and the two below would have trouble seeing mouse/monk clearly as she disappeared around a rafter...<br/><br/>She pulled a rope out from under her chestplate. Securing it on a less-rusted beam, she threw it down toward the others. Then, with that task finished she jumped down herself to the cell-floor. Mouse landed quietly in a crouch. (Not the slap of feet and armor on stone as one might expect, only the soft purr of stirring straw that she touched.)<br/><br/>“You first.” She spoke in her gruff man-guard-voice as she turned to Navarez. He was the largest, and therefore the most difficult to get up. (It was always best to do the hardest thing first). He also had enough brute strength to pull the princess up after him easily. Mouse could easily take care of herself after that.<br/><br/>She knelt on the ground with one leg. Set against the wall under the rope she set her hands on her knee. She would be his stepping-stool to the rope, which was not quite long enough to touch the ground.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">I hope he is not disappointed in his Angel…</span>Mouse found herself wondering. Did he expect the angel to rescue him in a flash of holy light? Or perhaps he would be disappointed after all these years to discover who Mouse really was… Surely he’d call her a devil.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">I’ll keep the truth from him as long as I can</span>she smiled, she liked this angel-character.