The Brother’s Bargain

The Brother’s Bargain

The Veritas Temple Library, built to carry on from its aging neighbor had successfully survived the earthquake but it had certainly been humbled.

Three shelves had fallen against one another and remained upright only because the last had lodged against a wooden column. Scroll cases covered the floor. Dust lay across the reading tables in pale sheets, disturbed by the tracks of scholars who had spent the morning rescuing anything older than themselves. A crack ran from the eastern window to a fresco that covered the entire northern wall, dividing a procession of ancient Virielian Elders precisely between their torsos and their legs.
“That ought to slow them down.” said Blena when she saw the crack.
Alster regarded the damage with the solemn expression of a medic examining a difficult patient.
“It could have been worse,” he said. “It could have been their heads.”
They both had a little laugh unsure if they were upsetting anyone.
Blena lifted a book whose pages had been compressed into a single damp block. “Could it?”
“The western archive did not collapse.” Tajan said encouragingly.
“Oh you are talking about the damage and we were making fun of the men without bottoms.” Blena threw in.
A section of plaster fell from the western archive and shattered on the floor.
Alster closed his eyes.
“You were saying?” Tajan asked Blena.
Felib Skan had brought them as far as the upper landing before turning back towards the Medic Gardens. Half the city’s healers were still tending injuries from the quake, and though the unusual roots beneath the Gardens had begun to disappear he felt he could be of service elsewhere. He had left Alster with a letter granting them access to the oldest records and Kaelen with repeated instructions not to damage anything.

Felib had then looked at Blena.
“That instruction applies to everyone,” Kaelen had assured him.
“I understood whom it applied to.” Blena said a little slighted.
Now the six of them occupied a long table beneath the eastern windows. Kaelen, Alster, Tajan, Blena and Drue searched maps and histories while Anderix surrounded himself with diagrams of waterworks, mining channels and early irrigation structures whose builders had been dead so long that even their names had become uncertain.
They searched for the mechanism beneath Veritas Temple. They searched for the fitted tunnels below Lake Vera, for power carried by water and for any mention of a crystal large enough to have rested within the machine’s empty cradle. They searched for towers, elemental signs and the words revealed when the earthquake stripped the temple wall bare.
That All May Be Made One.
By midday, they had learned that an Elder named Parn had once banned dancing on temple steps and that the southern lake district had replaced its drainage pipes three hundred and twelve years earlier.
“The drains were clay,” Alster said. “That was considered innovative.”
“I am so glad their use of pottery was recorded in such detail,” Blena replied.
Kaelen turned another page. “Anything beneath the temple?”
“Only a warning that anyone entering its lower chambers without permission would be assigned six months of public irrigation work.”
Anderix looked up. “That is evidence the chambers were still accessible when the warning was written.”
Alster brightened. “It is.”

Blena stared at both of them. “We have found a punishment for trespassing in the place we already trespassed. Excellent day.”
At the far end of the table, Tajan rolled a tiny ball of paper between her fingers and flicked it at Anderix.
Without looking away from his diagram, he moved his head. The paper passed his ear and landed in Drue’s open book.
Drue glanced from it to Tajan.
She smiled innocently and prepared another.
This one travelled towards Anderix’s shoulder. His hand rose and caught it.
“Your accuracy has improved by three finger-widths,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“It was not praise.”
“It sounded like praise.”
Anderix placed the paper beside his ruler. Tajan flicked a third.
It hit him squarely on the lens and which he slightly recoiled.
“What outcome are you attempting to produce?” he asked.
“I wanted you to look at me.”
Anderix looked at her.
Tajan rested her chin on one hand. “There. It worked.”
He appeared to consider several possible responses. None survived examination. He returned to his diagram with the forced concentration of someone attempting to ignore a minor problem even if it had changed the temperature of his face.
Drue closed his book.

“Dasher needs feeding,” he said.
“You fed him two hours ago,” Alster replied.
“He is a growing Griffon.”
“He is fully grown.”
“Then he must work harder to maintain it.”
Drue left before anyone could challenge the medical basis of his claim.
The afternoon brought them three references to sacred water, two contradictory histories of Veritas Temple and a botanical catalogue that Alster read long after everyone agreed it contained nothing useful. When the light faded, Kaelen closed the final volume.
“Enough,” he said. “We are no closer than we were this morning.”
Anderix continued writing.
Kaelen placed his hand over the page.
Anderix looked at it. “Your hand is obscuring a pressure calculation.”
“It will still be wrong tomorrow.”
“That is a compelling reason to correct it tonight.”
Before Kaelen could answer, hurried steps sounded on the stairs. Felib entered carrying a blackbird message tube and the expression of a man who had received news he expected but did not want.
“Six Kefarian Guardians landed at Bloomland Beach this morning,” he said.
The room became still.
Kaelen removed his hand from Anderix’s work. “How do you know?”
“Magnus Pactum sent word.”

Blena frowned. “The guy who owns the chain of Caveat Emptors?”
“Yes, although he is from Pryprast Bastion his favourtie store is at Bloomland Beach so he is often here. He and I have known one another for years. Magnus finds rare medicinal goods before respectable merchants admit they exist, and I ensure he does not sell anything that will dissolve a customer from the inside.” Felib removed the message from its tube. “It is a mutually corrective friendship.”
“Why was he watching Kefarian Guardians?” Tajan asked.
“Magnus watches everyone who enters his establishment. That is why he remains in business.” Felib passed the note to Kaelen. “In this case, he heard them discussing their targets. They had been told that the fugitives were last heard of heading for the Medic Gardens.”
Alster looked towards the city below. “Then they know we are here.”
“They know where you were yesterday,” Felib corrected. “Magnus recognized the reference to the Medic Gardens and thought of me.”
“And decided to warn you?” Drue asked from the doorway. He had returned unnoticed.
Felib’s mouth tightened. “Kefar taxes all merchants heavily. When the written tax does not satisfy its officials, they have occasionally discovered additional charges. Inspection fees. Northern road fees. Fees for the privilege of paying the original fees. Magnus is a not a native Virielian or a privileged Kefarian and so is an overtaxed man. Disliking Kefarian authority has become something of a modus operandi.”
Drue read over Kaelen’s shoulder. “Bloomland Beach is a minor port. They avoided Contanium because they did not want to be noticed.”
“They were noticed anyway,” Blena said.
“Magnus regards suspicion as an invitation to look deeper,” Felib replied.
Kaelen studied the distance written beneath the message. “How long?”

“If they travel directly, no more than two days from their landing. One of those days is nearly gone.”
Tajan leaned back in her chair. “So we have tomorrow.”
“At most,” Kaelen said.
He loosened the drawstring of the crystal pouch at his belt and emptied it onto the table. Two blue crystals rolled between several smaller fragments. Neither was fully charged.
Alster added the contents of his satchel. One usable blue crystal and another whose colour had faded almost to grey joined Kaelen’s.
Blena did not need to open her pouch. “My last was spent on the shield.”
“And my last on the wheel,” Tajan said.
Kaelen gathered the crystals again. “One more day. We find what we can, and then we leave. We cannot face six Guardians with Blena and Tajan powerless and the rest of us running low.”
“Where will we go?” Alster asked.
“Tomorrow we decide. For now, double down on reading.”
---
Drue walked without choosing a direction.
Amaryn was settling into an uneasy night. Families cooked outside damaged homes. Lamps hung from trees where walls were no longer trusted, and every low vibration beneath the street caused conversations to pause. Drue crossed Veritas Square, passed the dark lake road and found himself beside a fountain that had cracked cleanly through the face of a stone fish.
He sat on its edge.
Tajan had flicked paper at Anderix. Anderix had caught it. None of this should have mattered.

It mattered enough that Drue had invented a meal for a Griffon who had already eaten.
He had been flattered by Tajan’s attention during their travels. She teased him, listened to his stories and sometimes stood close enough that he allowed himself to misunderstand what that closeness meant. It was pleasant to be noticed by someone so alive to everything around her.
It was also foolish.
Drue was twenty-five. Tajan was young enough that it was obvious. They often talked about liking different things and Tajan though mature, was still interested in adventure before all else. If she had flirted with him, perhaps she had been testing her own charm. Perhaps she had simply enjoyed watching a confident man become uncertain. Neither possibility made her cruel, and neither gave him the right to resent where her attention went next.
He rubbed water from the unbroken half of the stone fish’s mouth.
“You are too old to sulk at fountains,” he told himself.
The fish offered no disagreement.
By the time he returned to the library, his jealousy had not vanished, but it had become small enough to carry without placing it in anyone else’s hands.
---
Alster’s family lived in a white house on a rising street north of the Medic Gardens. The building was narrow, but every room seemed to contain twice as many people as its walls should allow. It had lost an exterior storage room attached to the house but nothing else.
Four younger brothers met Alster at the door. Two embraced him. One demanded to see the warrant he had supposedly earned in Kefar. The fourth tried to search his satchel for foreign sweets.
His sisters called from the dining room that the food was getting cold and that no one cared about the warrant unless it had a picture.

Alster, who could face wounded strangers with complete calm, turned red before he had removed his cloak.
“You told them?” he asked Drue.
“I told them nothing.”
“Felib told us,” said the smallest brother.
“Plant Master Skan said there might be several,” another added proudly.
Blena put a hand on Alster’s shoulder. “Your achievements have reached home before you.”
“I will poison your dinner.”
“You are a Healer.”
“I know exactly how much poison to use.”
Their mother pulled him into an embrace before he could defend his professional ethics. Their father welcomed the company as though six unexpected fugitives were a perfectly ordinary addition to supper.
The meal covered every available surface. There were bowls of roasted roots, lake greens, soft bread, pepper-glazed fish and a dish Alster’s youngest sister insisted was not burned because the black portion could be removed.
Drue was seated beside three children who demanded stories about soaring on a Griffon or carrying a message to a king. Kaelen was questioned about Thalorian ships but as a mage that left Thalorian Tide very young to study in Kefar he had only a few memories of some of the great ocean going ships. Blena allowed one of Alster’s sisters to inspect the buckles on her Guardian armour. Tajan learned from a very impertinent oldest sister that Alster had once attempted to treat a wooden doll for spotted fever. Tajan promised never to mention it again while visibly committing the story to permanent memory.
Anderix sat very straight at the end of the table.
At first, the noise appeared to trouble him. Five conversations crossed one another. Plates moved without requests and some food was handled, in their hands and fingers when it was far away from the one requesting it Anderix noticed while trying not to judge. Alster’s brothers and sisters interrupted each other and their guests, some apologized and immediately interrupted again. Alster’s mother placed more food before him whenever he looked away.
Then one of the younger boys asked whether the lens over Anderix’s eye allowed him to see through walls.
“No,” Anderix said.
“Can it burn things?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Has it ever?”
Anderix considered this. “Once.”
Every child at the table moved closer.
By the time he finished explaining the failure of an early focusing lens, the children had decided that he was the most interesting person in Aethoria. Anderix corrected their questions, objected to their conclusions and answered every one.
Warmth passed through his chest and down both arms.
He flexed his fingers beneath the table.
The sensation had troubled him before. It appeared when the company laughed together, when Kaelen trusted him with a task or when Blena insulted him in a manner that somehow included affection. He had considered mineral exposure, fatigue and several deficiencies of diet.
Now, surrounded by Alster’s disorderly family, he understood.
It was a feeling of genuine belonging.
Anderix loved his mother and father very much. In fact he even missed them right now. He had never doubted that they loved him. Yet Mechanum children were trained to contain emotion before it interfered with judgement. Feelings are acknowledged in consideration that they wouldn’t interfere with making the reasonable choice first.

Kaelen’s company were not structured, organised or logical. They were noisy, impulsive, sentimental and frequently wrong but he realised that that is why he loved being among them.
The reflection produced another sensation beneath the warmth. Fear.
The Kefarians could imprison the others. They might return Anderix to the Ascendancy, where defection would be examined with less kindness than mechanical failure. Worse, they could decide returning him was inconvenient.
Tajan caught him staring at the table.
“Tingles?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her. “Yes.”
She smiled as though she understood the answer better than he did.
Alster’s father raised a cup. “To family found and family returned.”
Everyone drank except Alster’s mother, who looked at the empty place near the end of the table.
“Alfer should have been home yesterday,” she said. “He has been grinding and blending herbs for cooking in the style of traditional Virielian dishes, she said proudly. He took some 200 satchels to Bloomland Beach in a selling opportunity.”
Tajan’s cup stopped halfway to her lips.
“Bloomland Beach?”

Alster nodded. “Alfer sells wherever someone might possess money he does not.”
“The Guardians landed there.”
The warmth at the table thinned.
“They would have no reason to connect him to us,” Kaelen said. “They do not know him.”

“And Alfer does not know they are searching for me,” Alster added.
His father waved away the concern. “Bloomland Beach is full of traders. Alfer can find business in an empty field. He will be home when he has converted every satchel he carried into someone else’s coin.”
The younger children laughed. After a moment, the conversations returned.
The empty chair remained a point of concern.
---
At first light, the company returned to the Veritas Temple Library.
They searched differently on the second day. The previous morning had been a meandering exploration. This one was honed and energised.
Alster climbed into the damaged western archive with a cloth across his mouth, dust still settled every time he moved a book or document. Kaelen compared temple histories against records of Amaryn’s earliest streets. Anderix measured every copied diagram as though an incorrect scale had personally offended him. Blena and Tajan sorted map cases while Drue translated dates from an older calendar whose months had been named for agricultural pests.
Shortly after midday, Alster sneezed inside a cabinet.
“I think I found something,” he called.
“Dust?” Blena asked.
“Besides dust.”
He emerged holding a roll of linen-backed parchment. Its edges had darkened, and the ink was so faded that they had to debate whether the line was original or leaked from previous pages being stored on top. He carried it to the eastern window before the lines became truly visible.

Lake Vera occupied the centre. Familiar streets extended west from its shore, although many ended where modern Amaryn continued. The Medic Gardens were open fields. Veritas Square was narrower and bore another name.
At the place where Veritas Temple now stood, the mapmaker had drawn a tower.
Kaelen leaned closer. “No temple.”
“The map predates it,” Alster said. “The earliest temple records begin almost a century later.”
Anderix adjusted the lenses over his eye. “The tower’s foundation matches the eastern wall. The mechanism below may have belonged to it.”
Tajan placed a finger near the drawing. “Ruodoon had a tower.”
“So did Alfadin,” Blena said.
“Helion has the Spire,” Drue added.
Kaelen thought of the carved map beneath the temple and the fitted channels spreading away from Lake Vera. “Four places. Four Towers.”
“Then every Crestrealm has at least one,” Tajan said.
“No,” Anderix and Kaelen replied together.
Blena folded her arms. “That was impressively dull.”
Anderix ignored her. “We know of four locations connected to unusual crystal activity. Four examples do not establish a tower in every Crestrealm.”
“They establish that we should look,” Tajan said.
“Agreed, but we need to do it in a systematic way.” Offered Anderix.
“And you think we will find them if we do that?”
“If it is systematic and we use what we have learned.”

Kaelen looked again at the tower. “Swati saw fallen stones and found the conclusion he wanted. We cannot do the same because our conclusion is more appealing.”
Blena pointed at the map. “You both believe it.”
“Belief is not evidence,” Anderix said.
“No, but your face is.”
For the first time that day, Kaelen laughed.
The tower did not answer every question. It answered enough.
By mid-afternoon, sunlight had crossed the library floor and touched the separated feet of the painted Elders. Kaelen rolled the map carefully.
“Time,” he said. “We leave Amaryn today.”
No one argued.
They gathered around the table with their packs and their diminished supply of crystals.
“We could return to Kefar,” Alster said without enthusiasm. “We know we can get crystals there at a fair price.”
“We also know where warrants are issued,” Blena replied.
“Prison food cannot be worse than your dried fish,” Tajan told Alster.
“My dried fish prevented mineral deficiency in Alfadin Tajan.”
“By making people prefer death?”
Anderix fastened a tool case. “I could open most Kefarian cell locks.”
Kaelen stared at him. “We are not planning an escape before deciding whether to be arrested.”
“Planning after arrest provides fewer opportunities for tool selection.”

“If the arrest is unjust, does escaping count as another crime?” Blena asked.
“Yes,” Alster said.
“Then we probably don’t want to get arrested. What’s another plan?”
Drue spread a map across the table. “We could go to Emberwild Dominion. I know Griffon riders who could get us there in less than a week. With enough friends and favourable wind, we could all be there in a few days.”
“I didn’t bring my winter coat.” Tajan was almost serious.
“It's summer.” Drue responded a little offended even though the reputation for the mountainous crestream is that high altitudes don’t provide warmth.
“Its the Emberwild Dominion.”
“It takes us away from the towers and locations we know so far that are connected to the ancient network,” Kaelen said.
“It also takes us away from the Guardians.”
“Anderix?” Tajan asked.
“Emberwild provides distance, not crystals. Unless Drue’s friends possess an unreported charging method, we would arrive with the same deficiency.”
Drue nodded. “Fair.”
Kaelen traced the central waters of the continent. “Thalorian Tide.”
The name felt different in his mouth. Home, spoken as geography.
“The Solaryn Reliquary lies to the east,” he continued. “Virielia Bloomlands is west of it, where we are now. Kefar lies north, and Mechanum Ascendancy south. Thalorian Tide stands central to all those surrounding Crestrealms.”
“And between us and several places we may need to investigate,” Alster said.
Kaelen nodded. “Power crystal sales are controlled in every Crestrealm. They are too important to trade without records, and purchasing enough to supply us would attract attention. But crystals do not always need to be replaced. In Thalorian Tide, I know a place where we may be able to recharge them.”

Blena placed her grey crystal on the map. “Without giving a regulated merchant our names?”
“Without buying anything.”
“You have been withholding useful information.”
“No one asked where I would recharge an empty crystal while fleeing across Aethoria.”
Tajan collected her pack. “Thalorian Tide.”
“No one even thought about suggesting Ironroot Bastion.” Complained Blena.
“Well next time we are on the run in the northern hemisphere I am sure we will drop.” Alster quipped.
One by one, they all agreed the Thalrorian Tide was the right next choice.
Kaelen folded the map before anyone could see how pleased the decision made him.
---
Alfer was sixteen years old and had already learned that people respected a man carrying a ledger, provided he frowned at it often enough.
He sat beneath the painted sign of the Caveat Emptor in Bloomland Beach and counted the profit from three bolts of medicinal cloth he had purchased as damaged stock and sold as conveniently shortened. The result was not impressive, but it was his. Combined with his sale of the sachets of cooking herbs he now had gold enough to double his purchases for another batch and still be able to bring some coins home to his father and mother.
Alster would have understood the medicinal use of the cloth and at a stretch the herbs. Alfer understood what someone would pay for them. Their parents rarely praised that distinction.
Six Kefarian Guardians occupied a table nearby. Their armour bore road dust, and they spoke too quietly for men discussing nothing important.

Alfer heard the word Amaryn.
He moved closer under the pretence of examining a display of brass clasps.
One Guardian noticed his white-and-red Virielian coat. “You know the inland roads?”
“I know any road worth selling something on.”
The Guardian smiled. “We are seeking several travellers who may require official assistance. They were seen near the Medic Gardens.”
“My brother spends half his life there,” Alfer said. “He studied in Kefar before all this travelling nonsense.”
The smile remained, but something behind it sharpened. “Really? What is his name?”
“Alster.”
The Guardians exchanged a glance so brief that Alfer nearly missed it.
“Then fortune has favoured us,” their leader said. “Your brother and his companions may be in danger. Guide us to Amaryn, and Kefar will compensate your time.”
He named a sum large enough to quiet every suspicion Alfer possessed.
Alfer frowned as though considering the inconvenience.
“Half now,” he said.
---
On the second night of their journey and halfway to Amaryn, Alfer woke up needing to relieve himself.
The Guardians’ fire had burned low. He stepped beyond the tents, found a tree and was returning when he heard voices on the other side of the supply wagon.

“The Healer matters because he knows the others,” someone said.
“The order names all of them.”
“The payment is unchanged if resistance requires dispatch?”
“Alive where convenient. Dead where necessary. The Thalorian and the defecting Mechanum are the priorities.”
Alfer stopped breathing.
“And the guide?” another asked.
“Once we reach Amaryn, pay him. If he learns too much, recover the payment.”
Quiet laughter followed.
Alfer returned to his tent by the longer path. He lay awake until the first bird called, staring at the money hidden inside his boot.
Alster had always been the clever one. Alster earned badges, healed people and returned home with stories that made the younger children forget anyone else was speaking. Alfer had spent years discovering that jealousy did nothing unless a person could sell it.
But Alster was his brother.
By morning and back on the road Alfer had already come up with a plan. At the first fork, Alfer led the Guardians north.
He claimed the southern road had been damaged by the earthquake. He complained about lost time with sufficient irritation that they believed he cared only about his payment.
At a roadside trading house, he stopped to replace a supposedly broken sandal strap. The proprietor maintained a merchant’s note drop used by traders who could not wait for ordinary post.

Alfer paid for a blackbird message and wrote seven words.
Guardians delayed one day.Tell “A” make haste.
He addressed it to his family through Magnus Pactum and watched the blackbird rise and head south into the afternoon sky.
Then he returned to the Guardians and continued north.
---

The message reached Amaryn while the company packed.
Alster read it twice.
“This is Alfer’s hand.”
“He found them,” Tajan said.
“And sent them the wrong way,” Kaelen replied. “We have to use the time he gave us.”
Alster looked towards the road west. “He is still with them.”
No one offered the kind of reassurance that could allay his concern.
Contanium lay east, the greatest port in Virielia and their best route towards Thalorian Tide. They would be visible on the main road, especially as a group containing a Griffon and a Mechanum. So they divided again.

Drue would travel separately with Dasher, avoiding settlements where a Griffon would turn every head. Anderix would take another road and enter Contanium alone.
“Yes, yes, I know. I am on the back.” Anderix apparently felt not steering made the journey more intolerable.”
Kaelen, Alster, Tajan and Blena would travel as an ordinary company of young pilgrims returning from Amaryn after the quake.

They would reunite outside the western Thalorian port town Marinth Bay in the cargo yards before nightfall.
Felib embraced Alster before they left. “Your brother bought you a day. Do not waste it by surrendering the advantage.”
Alster secured the message inside his satchel. “I should go after him.”
“And lead the Guardians back to everyone he protected?” Felib asked gently.
Alster looked away.
Kaelen placed a hand on his shoulder. “We reach safety. Then we find him.”
It was not enough, but Alster saw the logic in the choice and acquiesced.
---

The Guardians discovered the deception before sunset as they arrived at a small town along the northern inland road. The innkeeper of the town had no reason to hide the directions to Amaryn and was very forthcoming to a customer willing to spend coin.
Their leader returned from a hilltop inn holding a road map Alfer had claimed didn’t exist for this area of Virielia Bloomlands.
“Amaryn is east,” he said.
The other five had already begun to spread around him.
The leader’s expression settled into something almost pleasant. “Walk with me.”
“If this concerns my fee......”
“Bring your bag.”
They followed the road beyond the last buildings, where the inn’s windows disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill. Alfer counted all six armoured men and considered running. The open road offered nowhere to go.
He stopped. “I can give you gold pieces.”
“I can give you gold pieces.” One guardian mimicked him in a cold, childish voice which chilled Alfer to the bone. Alfer had offered what he determined was probably futile but thought what other recourse did he have and the response was a juvenile taunt that made him realise that it was going to be bad.
The first blow came from behind and he wasn’t prepared for it. The force of it knocked him against the wagon. As his face struck the wooden sides. Even then he still hoped they didn’t realise that he was Alster's brother and that his misdirectional ruse had some sort of financial motive. But as experienced investigators, he pushed to the back of his mind, they probably knew. As he slumped to the ground holding his head he thought that as a relative of one of the subjects of the warrant he might now also be subject to arrest.
“He must have gotten off word about us and led us here. There is no other reason for this feint.” The guardian spoke through gritted teeth, still holding the source of truth that had disclosed the deception of a stupid little boy.”
“We need to know what he told them.” Said another who then removed a dark blue crystal from a case at his belt.
Two of the men dragged Alfer up and held him between them. Their hands on forearm and underarms locking him between them. Without hesitation the guardian swung directly through his jaw knocking the young man’s head back so violently that it snapped forward in reverberation just as hard. Alfer was on the ground and still trying to work out what had just happened.
“What did you tell them whelp?”
Alfer tasted blood. “That Kefarian arithmetic is so poor you need six Guardians to follow one road.”
His defiance was noble but like the act of cornered prey tapping a hunting bear’s head in these circumstances. The guardian with the map closed his hand around the crystal.
He did not summon courage or duty. He remembered the pleasure of frightened merchants paying invented fees, prisoners pleading before a locked door and the pain he felt when beaten by his drunken father.
The crystal answered, sending cruelty and pain pulsing through the Guardians hands.
Dark energy struck Alfer beneath the ribs when he made contact. Pain folded him to the ground agian. It did not burn or cut. It travelled through him as though every nerve had been drawn tight and then set on fire at once.
“I said..What did you tell them?” the Guardian repeated.
Alfer could not draw enough breath to answer.
They asked again. When the crystal failed to loosen his tongue, boots and calloused fists continued the interrogation.
“Do they know I am only sixteen?” was the only thought Alfer could rally during the assault.
At last, their leader looked towards the darkening southern road.
“Leave him. The payment is the same.”
Five Guardians turned towards Amaryn. One stayed to kick Alfer off the road and into the shrubs below before joining his motley crew.
Alfer lay beside the northern road while evening gathered over the hills. The good profits from his successful sales inside his boot remained undiscovered.
He did not move.
---

Contanium’s towers appeared above the eastern fields shortly before sunset. Beyond them, hundreds of masts crowded the harbour like a leafless forest.
Kaelen, Alster, Tajan and Blena waited beside an abandoned cargo shed while carts streamed through the distant gates.
Anderix arrived first, carrying a dockworker’s coat folded over one arm.
“The western gate records cargo, not passengers,” he said. “We can enter with the night labourers.”
Drue and Dasher and their passenger would already be planning landing sites that provided food and water enough for a hungry griffon.
The harbour bells marked the hour. Somewhere beyond the city walls, a ship prepared to sail towards Thalorian Tide. Alster pined for knowledge of his brother's status and then his thoughts turned to his family who had left on a cart to his aunt's house in case the guardians came to his home. “This isn’t fair”. He thought.
Behind them, somewhere on the northern road out of Bloomland Beach, Alfer had purchased their escape with a day. None of them yet knew what it had cost him....or whether he had survived to see it.

Thy Quest: Did Alfer Survive?
Do you think Alfer survived? Suggest evidence from the chapter that supports your opinion.