A clue

Alex and Ares sat in awkward silence for about another hour. At around 3am their observing finally paid off. They saw 5 guards walking together towards the jail, they seemed to be holding some rope or maybe cloth, it wa shard to make out from afar. Alex and Ares' awkwardness quickly dissolved as they squeezed together to look out of their viewing hole in the wooden wall. All five guards walked in together, and then about 15 minutes later, walked back out with someone between them all. He seemed to be gagged and blindfolded, his hands were also bound. They walked him clear across the grounds, toward the main mansion, and in through the back door.

Ares and Alex looked at each other and Ares' brows crinkled into a furrow.

"Well, they obviously have someone of at least minor importance in that jail. Why else would they take all that time to bring a prisoner into the main mansion."

"Exactly." Said Alex, "Either they are taking him in to be interrogated, or Hector must know him personally somehow. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll bring him back out while we're here."

They never did get lucky, and just as dawn was breaking and the guards were making their move to switch shifts, Alex and Ares quickly left their hideout and made their way back towards the sleepy city square, and to their headquarters.

They updated everyone with that they saw, but obviously without the blindfolded man up close, everything was purely speculation. They quickly got something to eat and then went to the back bedroom to take a short rest.

"We definitely need to find out more about that man. But I feel like the only way to do that would be to infiltrate the royal guard somehow." Alex was really getting into this whole espionage thing, and the thought of getting into the royal mansion and sneaking around was really getting him fired up!

"We had considered that a few times, but we wanted to make sure it was worth the risk before we went for it. After seeing that they have someone of a possible high profile in that jail, we'll start discussing that."

There were two cots in the back room, so Ares was incredibly thankful that he didn't have to take turns sleeping. I'm still trying to shake off that dream I had! But now everytime I look at Alex, everything is just exentuated by 100! Good thing we're both going to sleep, I can't imagine embarrassing myself again in front of him.

They both took a cot and quickly fell into a deep sleep. And this time Ares' sleep was dreamless, but Alex couldn't quite get Ares' moans out of his head and woke up from his nap with a certain little friend popping up to say hi. He quickly got up from his bed and ran out the back door to save himself the embarrassment of Ares seeing him like that.

Ares woke up to an empty cot beside him, and lazily rubbed his eyes before getting up and going into the main meeting room again.

He entered the room and found Alex in there with the rest of the group.

"I hope you don't mind, Ares', but we started discussing the option of kidnapping a couple guards and using their uniforms to get into the mansion safely. Though we still need to figure out what to do with the guards afterwards. Any ideas?"

"I actually thought about this before, and I had an idea. There is a hot spring that the mansion uses for its personal guards, and if we can somehow get in there and steal a uniform or two, that should give us the opportunity. We just have to make sure we get them back and maybe trash them a bit so the guards think that animals snatched them instead. What do you all think?"

Everyone agreed and the two women of the group, Phoebe and Iris, volunteered to track the guards movements by the hot springs for the next day or two. No one argued with them, because it would be much less troublesome to explain away two women getting caught spying on men at a hot spring.