The boy let out a soft delight sound as he sampled the food from the table, the ambrosial taste just making him hungrier. A sound from behind him pulled him from his immersion in the foods smell. He knew his enjoyment would be ephemeral should he get himself caught. The punishment for stealing the king’s food was worse then the usual admonition he got for snubbing the guards, it could very well earn him confinement in the dungeon for anywhere from a month to a decade depending on the king‘s mood.

He was about to go back to his eating when he heard something that sounded like someone detonating a pound of explosives next to a megaphone in an echo pit. The sudden sound of foot steps running through the hall near the door behind him made him freeze, of course that sound would have the guards that weren’t insomniacs up on their feet.

He brought a hand up to bite on his knuckle till he feels hot blood running down his hand and arm to dripping off of his elbow. Get a grip already, you know the guards are gullible enough to believe that you’re the official food tester if you say it with a smile! He thought to himself as he let go of his knuckle and took a slow deep breath in and let it back out. As he remembers the map he bought earlier he grins a bit then pulls it out of his back pocket and looks at it. For a few moments he just stares at it grinning, then slowly that grin fades away and he quietly curses his own lapse of intelligence. He should have known better then to buy a map of the palace with a price low enough that he didn’t even have to haggle with the merchant to be able to afford it.

The sound of foot steps at the door again pulled him back to the reality of trying to escape. Turning back towards the table he slowly looked the room over, probing every inch of it with his eyes to try and find some way to get out of this dark chamber before it becomes the place where his partially free life is turned into a life in a 4 by 4 cell with no window.