No Place Between Us

No Place Between Us

“Receiver restored.”

Tajan stopped on the path.

Behind her, Anderix took another two steps before noticing that the lamplight had ceased to accompany him.

“What is it?”

She raised one hand.

From the broken ring came a hiss like rain falling into a hot pan.

Then another voice.

“They found us.”

Neither moved.

The light in Alderat’s fractured arch thinned, leaving a pale green smear across the darkness. Through it, Tajan could still see the stones on the other side, although they appeared farther away than they should have been.

Anderix set down his case.

“You said it was a receiver,” she whispered.

“That was my working conclusion.”

“Something has just spoken into it.”

“Yes.”

“Does that improve your conclusion?”

“Considerably.”

He was already opening the case.

Tajan looked towards the path, where their footprints descended into the dark.

“We were going to sleep.”

Anderix unfolded a brass support.

“I remember.”

• • •

By dawn, three strips of marked paper lay beneath stones beside the broken ring.

Anderix had wound a length of copper wire into a loop and connected its ends through one of his power crystals. Each pulse from Alderat stirred a faint light inside the crystal without him supplying any energy of his own. Turning the loop changed the brightness. He rotated it slowly, marked where the glow faded most sharply, then repeated the movement when the next pulse arrived.

“The same direction?” Tajan asked.

“The same two possible directions. The loop cannot yet tell me which way along the line.”

“So we have narrowed it down to somewhere ahead of us or somewhere behind us.”

“Considerably more useful than somewhere.”

Beside him lay a page recording the strength of each pulse, the orientation of the wire loop and the interval between the faint shudders passing through Alderat’s floor. He had also recorded two changes in temperature, a brief disturbance in his optical lens and Tajan telling him that if he said one more reading again, she would feed him the instrument.

“That last item has no bearing on the ring,” she said.

“It has a bearing on the conditions under which the observations were made.”

She crouched beside him. Beyond the broken tower, the first sunlight touched the mountains, leaving their lower slopes submerged in blue shadow. Water dripped from a crack in the stone, each drop loud in the stillness.

“Put those beside each other.”

“They are in order.”

“Beside each other, Anderix.”

He moved the strips.

Tajan pressed a finger against three closely spaced marks, then against the next group.

“There.”

“The energy levels differ.”

“The spaces do not.”

He leaned closer.

Three pulses. A pause. Two more.

Then a longer interval before the sequence returned.

His lens clicked.

Tajan watched his face.

“That is your interesting face.”

“I have one face.”

“It does several things when you forget to stop it.”

Anderix reached for his timing device.

“The fluctuations are occurring within a repeated interval.”

“Something is waiting for its turn.”

“Possibly.”

“Or several somethings.”

He looked up at the remaining pieces around the arch.

The voices had not returned. Whatever had spoken through Alderat had left them no name and no clear direction. Yet the instruments had registered energy arriving through the ring’s inner channels before the sound emerged. The stones had received it from somewhere beyond the mountain.

“We cannot locate the other site from this,” Anderix said. “The directional reading changes before it settles.”

“But they are keeping time together.”

He considered that.

“Yes.”

For a little while, they listened to the water dripping.

Then Tajan began rolling the papers.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping our discoveries portable.”

“I haven’t finished.”

“Sella’s lookout saw loyalists on the lower road yesterday. We have enough to take to Kaelen.”

Anderix glanced at the ring, then at the pale path beyond it.

“Ironroot.”

“Eventually. First Pyrathis.”

He closed his eyes briefly.

“A city containing people actively searching for us.”

“Yes. But also a place where we can hide amongst the masses. Then we will try to meet the others.”

• • •

“You are holding yourself like an ambassador,” Tajan murmured, adjusting the strap of her travel satchel as they navigated the crowded concourse.

“I have previously been required to hold myself like an ambassador,” Anderix replied smoothly, his back straight despite the heavy weight balanced across his shoulders. “Old habits resist small alterations.”

“Today you carry my bags.”

“I am carrying my bags,” he corrected without breaking stride. “You have simply placed your embroidered scarf on top of them.”

“An excellent start to shared labor.” She offered a faint smile, though her eyes scanned the bustling crowd continuously.

Pyrathis rose around them in tiered terraces of warm yellow stone, steep slate roofs, and narrow, winding streets crowded with people who moved with the sharp, purposeful pace of those who had urgent business elsewhere. Thick summer heat gathered beneath the woven awnings of the lower market. High above a spice seller’s arched doorway, long banners of crimson cloth snapped briskly in the sea wind, each stamped with the sharp black crest of Kefar.

More banners hung draped over the heavy ironwork of the city gate ahead.

Tajan disliked those most. They were a vivid reminder of how far a watchful guardian’s authority reached.

She wore an ordinary travelling robe of dyed linen, a broad leather belt, and a sun-faded shawl pulled low over her hair. A Solaryn mage seeking routine passage home required little explanation to casual observers. Anderix, however, required a considerable amount of careful preparation.

They had wrapped his mechanical case in coarse canvas. His eye mechanics removed and lay beneath a loose coat, and he had procured some locally styled Emberwild clothing from an unguarded clothes line that was now short some shirts and a long pair of course woolen pants.

Unfortunately, nothing disguised the way he examined a badly balanced gate mechanism.

The guard noticed.

“What is he looking at?”

“My technical servant,” Tajan said, with the tired patience of someone explaining a longstanding inconvenience. “He does that.”

“Does what?”

“Finds fault with hinges and gears.”

Anderix opened his mouth.

Tajan stepped on his boot.

The guard looked at the canvas bundle.

“What is in there?”

“Tools,” Anderix said.

“For what?”

“Repairing faults to hinges and gears.”

Tajan sighed.

The guard waved them through.

They walked until the gate disappeared behind a bend.

“You stepped on me.”

“You were about to explain his gate.”

“The upper hinge is completely grinding against the lower one and the stress of that heavy gate will cause it to seize if they don’t lift it and grease the leaves, in short its failing.”

“Thank the Veyl that is your short version…. I am sure he will remember you fondly when it falls off.”

• • •

Sella’s contact worked in a sailmaker’s shop above the eastern docks on the quiet side of the city.

Mara had working hands, a white scar through one eyebrow and the habit of looking at the doorway before answering a question. She had been married to a Rider that was chronically underpaid by Kefar even on the last mission when he had carried an “urgent” financial message to that city's dignitaries through a storm. She listened to their names without repeating them.

Then she turned the sign in her window.

“Four days,” she said.

Tajan lowered herself onto a chest of folded canvas.

“Four?”

“The captain I trust is out. The captains I do not trust are here. You may select from those circumstances.”

Anderix stood beside a half-mended sail.

“Can we remain upstairs?”

“You can sleep upstairs. If you remain there for four days, my neighbours will decide I am hiding either fugitives or a lover.”

“Which would concern them more?” Tajan asked.

“The lover. They already suspect the fugitives.” She laughed and Tajan smiled to support her.

Mara drew the curtain across the window.

“There is a harbour catch festival tomorrow. Go. Buy something. Be seen complaining about the price.”

“That part should require little preparation,” Anderix said, “Your economy is heavily supported by Kefar’s gold and your prices reflect the undersubsidised results, particularly on imported items. I mean have you seen the price of Virielian flour?”

“Oh he’s a forestine fruit, that one! Wherever did you drag him up? Perhaps try to complain with a little less touristic judgement seeing how you want to blend in.”

• • •

By evening, the wide harbour square smelled of hot spiced oil, spilled wheatwater and sourfruit peel crushed beneath hundreds of shoes.

Paper lanterns hung between the buildings. Their small flames trembled inside painted fish, birds and badly proportioned griffons. The crystal lamps along the harbour wall remained dark.

“Reserved for official traffic,” Mara had explained.

Across the square, the Kefarian customs house shone blue from every window.

Tajan watched a woman relight a paper bird whose candle had guttered out.

Then the musicians struck a faster tune.

“Oh, this one.”

Anderix followed her gaze towards the dancers.

“What about it?”

“I know it.”

“That is fortunate.”

“For you.” She took his hand.

He looked down at their fingers, then towards the square with the alert expression he usually reserved for unstable machinery.

“Tajan.”

“We are trying to blend in with the crowd, remember?”

“Then selecting me for a public performance is a questionable approach. This beat is far too frenetic for my legs to match it without crossing them over.”

She pulled him between two turning couples.

The dance moved in circles that opened and closed, partners stepping apart before returning beneath joined hands. Shoes struck the paving stones in a sharp united “clack” so clear that it broke conversations around the square and forced them to look. Someone shouted encouragement at a man who had lost his place and decided to compensate by moving faster.

Anderix watched one complete sequence.

Then another.

“Four steps. Turn. Two back.”

“Yes.”

“The next movement repeats the first.”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

She turned beneath his hand.

He followed accurately, carefully and at such a respectful distance that another couple nearly passed between them.

“Come closer.”

“That will reduce our turning space.”

“It will also make us seem like a couple on a holiday, blend in.”

He moved nearer.

For a few moments, he managed extremely well.

Then Tajan changed direction.

Anderix stopped.

“You reversed the sequence.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because dancing isn’t science it's art and I wanted to.”

A laughing woman brushed past them, her skirts smelling faintly of smoke and cloves. Somewhere behind Anderix, a man clapped on entirely the wrong beat.

“I think I hear an artist behind me now. That syncopation is profoundly unscientific”

Tajan smiled and waited.

“You are watching everyone except me.”

“I am establishing the pattern.”

“I am right here.”

His gaze settled on her.

His arms made a few adjustments. Then his hand rose and touched her waist, cautiously enough that she could have moved away before his fingers reached her.

She did not.

“Tell me when you intend to turn,” he said.

“You will feel it.”

“That is a remarkably imprecise instruction.”

“Try.”

He did.

Once, he trod on her foot.

Once, she nearly led him into a barrel.

But when she changed direction again, he came with her.

The surprise in his face made her laugh.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was visibly something.”

“You stopped counting.”

He considered denying it.

Then the musicians quickened, and she felt his hand tighten around hers.

“I was being artistic,” he said.

• • •

The following evening, Tajan found him in Mara’s kitchen.

Every available bowl stood in a row.

A pot on the stove released a dense, greyish steam. Anderix was scraping a wooden spoon across its bottom with the concentration of a man preventing a dangerous accumulation of pressure.

“What is that?”

“A decidedly nutritious and most enjoyable meal.”

“I had narrowed it down to that or some sort of adhesive.”

“It is a well known preparation from home that I have eaten and made countless times.”

Her smile softened. “For me?”

“Yes. Some ingredients were unavailable.”

“What have you used instead?”

“Some locally equivalent ingredients…. In approximation of course.”

“Of course,” she approached the pot.

“Equivalent in what way?”

“Food values, some acids and salt content.”

The finished meal held the shape of the spoon after he served it.

Tajan sat at the little kitchen table. Through the open window came the squeal of a cartwheel and Mara arguing with someone over the distinction between a repaired sail and a new replacement.

Anderix watched Tajan taste a spoonful of his Mechanum Ascendancy stew.

The mixture was warm, grainy and unexpectedly bitter. Something within it resisted chewing before surrendering with the texture of wet bread.

She swallowed.

“Well?”

She reached for water.

“It is good.”

Anderix looked at her.

Then at the bowl.

Then at the water.

“No.”

“No?”

“Your breathing stopped before you swallowed. You have moved the bowl away from yourself.”

“I was making room for my elbow.”

“Your elbow is on the other side.”

She put down the cup.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Anderix sat opposite her.

“You need not eat it.”

“You made something from home.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to like it.”

He looked at the bowls again. A faint crease appeared between his brows.

“Because it belongs to me.”

Tajan rested her hands around the cup.

“Yes.”

Outside, Mara won the argument. They knew because the other person stopped speaking.

Anderix pushed Tajan’s bowl away.

“My mother prepares it differently.”

“Better?”

“Less structurally.”

She laughed, and relief moved through his face before he could conceal it.

“Tell me about her version.”

So he did.

He told her about the shallow pan his mother used, the browned edges he had failed to reproduce, and the way his father always ate the centre first and left the crisp pieces until last.

“Does your mother know?”

“She serves him additional edges.”

Tajan smiled into her cup.

“That sounds like love.”

Anderix ran his thumb along the wooden spoon.

“I believe it is.”

• • •

They carried bread, cheese and two apples beyond the city the next afternoon.

“A light and more colloquial meal,” Tajan said.

“I have withdrawn from food preparation pending further study.”

The field lay beyond an old retaining wall, where the grasses grew high enough to hide them from the road when they lay down. Seed heads moved above Tajan’s face. Bees worked through small white flowers beside Anderix’s elbow.

Pyrathis sounded distant there.

Only the highest roofs showed over the wall.

“Could I live there?” she asked.

He turned his head.

“In Mechanum.”

He did not answer immediately.

She watched a beetle climb a grass stem until its weight bent the stem towards the ground.

“I have been thinking about your mother’s pan.”

“That would be an insufficient basis for relocation.”

“I was thinking about the kitchen around it.”

His expression changed.

Tajan folded her hands over her stomach.

“You would need permission to enter. Permission to stay. Someone would object to your training, or your crystal uses, or the fact that you say what you think before checking whether anyone has requested it. That last concern would arise quickly and you are already a fugitive."

“Yes, it seems a bit of a challenge.” Tajan said demurely. “Would they punish your family if I was able to live there or visit you?”

Anderix looked back at the sky.

“They could remove my father from the Command Center. His support helped obtain my permission to study abroad. If my absence continues to be a defection, they may decide that his judgement was compromised from the beginning.”

Tajan waited.

“They could investigate our household. Restrict correspondence. Withdraw my citizenship to the capital, and I might be banished to the provinces.”

“And your parents?”

“They might be required to condemn my decisions publicly.”

She turned onto her side.

“Would they?”

“If doing so protected them, I would want them to.”

His voice remained level but that made it worse.

A breeze moved the grasses between them. Tajan reached across and eased a seed from the seam of his sleeve.

“Come to the southern coast,” she said. “Near my town. There are houses above the water. Small ones. You could repair things. There would be no shortage of work.”

“And complain about how they had been repaired previously?”

“That would form part of the work.” She smiled.

“Your family could get permission for a visit. Perhaps when things are quieter.”

Anderix watched her fingers on his sleeve.

“If I refuse to return, they may never be permitted to leave.”

Her hand stopped.

“Oh.”

He nodded once.

Below the wall, a cart passed on the road. They listened to its loose wheel knocking until the sound faded.

“I was trying to give you somewhere,” Tajan said.

“I know.”

“There must be a place.”

“We have not examined all of them.”

“Somewhere entirely different, then.”

He turned towards her again.

“With a workshop?”

“A small one.”

“Dry?”

“Mostly.”

“That is an important distinction.”

“A garden. A roof that does not leak.”

“Then I would repair the roof before establishing the workshop.”

“You would make the door open by itself.”

“Only if there were a reason to.”

“The reason would be that you could.”

He thought about this.

“Yes.”

She lay back, smiling.

For a little while, they furnished a house neither had seen.

Then a low bell sounded from Pyrathis.

Beyond the wall, the public water pump had stopped. They had passed it that morning: a queue of people with jars, a keeper measuring each release, a fresh notice explaining that reduced crystal allocations required shorter hours.

Tajan’s smile faded.

“Our house needs water.”

“Yes.”

“And the town needs power.”

“Yes.”

“So wherever we go, someone still gets to decide how much we are allowed.”

Anderix lifted himself onto one elbow.

“The machinery could distribute far more than the present allocations and the Mechanum Ascendancy has technology that with power could change Aethoria forever. You would be amazed if you were allowed to go. The problem would still be power and access to it, the needs would be even higher if everywhere were to use increased technologies as we have.”

“AndKefar allots power crystals like it is wheat in the winter.”

Without more crestrealms controlling their own power and being able to increase their energy use there would be conflict again amongst them. That’s why the Ascendancy does not share its knowledge.

“So that Ironroot does not have to protect Ironroot and Mechanum protect Mechanum?”

His silence answered.

Tajan plucked a grass stem and twisted it between her fingers.“We went looking for crystal anomaly. We found connected systems being treated as separate possessions.”

“And if the powered rings send information across vast distances.. It could change everything. Either bring us all together or tear us all apart.”

“One authority could control movement between the Crestrealms as well as power.”

She let the grass fall.

The little house had become harder to imagine. Every road to it passed a guarded door.

“I don’t want to spend my life asking someone whether I am allowed to love you,” she said.

Anderix became very still.

Tajan looked at him. “That wasn’t intended as a new subject.”

“I know.”

“You may respond.”

“I am trying to do so accurately.”

She waited.

At last, he said, “When I imagine returning home, I do so with the hope that you might be there, even with the whole world against us. The practical difficulties appear after I see you in an apartment in Voltaris.”

Her eyes shone.

“That will do, though we may have to discuss real estate.”

He touched her hand.

“We should go to Solaryn.”

She blinked.

“Now?”

“From this coast, westward passage is short and almost comparable to Ironroot. “You have been thinking about that house.”

“I have been thinking about my father. And the original purpose of my work. If I can contact him from Solaryn, perhaps I can explain before someone else defines my absence for me.”

“And Ironroot?”

“We send word through Mara. Kaelen and Blena should know what Alderat is doing. We tell them what we know then we repair our present diplomatic and legal status questions.”

Tajan considered the rooftops beyond the wall.

Then she nodded.

“Home first.”

Anderix looked down at their hands.

“Yours.”

She turned her fingers between his.

“We can begin there.. At least they won’t arrest us.”

• • •

Their ship cleared Pyrathis under a pale morning sky.

Mara stood beside the mooring post while the crew hauled in the final rope. She had their letter for Kaelen hidden inside an invoice for canvas that would make its way via Rider to Inronroot.

“Try not to become famous before you reach the next port,” she called.

“We have been attempting that for some time,” Tajan replied.

The vessel carried them west beyond the coastal headlands, then turned north to journey across the ocean that divided The Solaryn Reliquary and Emberwild Dominion.

On the third evening, Anderix’s crystal energy direction instrument began to click.

He had placed it beneath the rail, wrapped against spray. Tajan was eating a slightly underripe muddyberry beside him when the needle struck its stop.

There were three brief movements that the loop could detect. Then a pause. Then two more.

She lowered the muddyberry and wiped brown juice from her lips.

“Anderix.”

“I see it.”

He looked towards the north. Beyond the northern horizon, a blue-white sky turned into dawn.

Light from the rising eastern daystar washed the undersides of distant clouds. For one breath, the sea ahead looked like hammered metal afire from a forge.

Anderix looked back, bent over the instrument and thought. “The interval signal is coming from that direction?”

“You mean Verdant Expanse or Ironroot ,” Tajan asked.

He checked it again. “It is unclear from this device which of those two but definitely that direction.” He pointed due north as he stood on the starboard side of their transport.

Sailcloth cracked overhead. A sailor muttered a prayer and returned to the rope he had forgotten to pull as the morning winds picked up.

Tajan moved closer. “I hope they are safe up there.”

“Kaelen and Blena?.”

“Yeah. They have both grown on me and I think we all made a good team.”

She watched the empty morning horizon.

Anderix recorded Alderat’s marked strip beside the fresh trace from the north in small ledger.

“This is the same sequence that was being sent out from Alderat.”

“Something in the north answered?”

“Well, north from here which would rule out Alfadin.”

“So Alderat was connecting with another site and now they are sending the same signal, like a message or a synchronisation?”

“I knew there was a reason I decided to go with you and not Kaelen and Blena. That was a very astute assumption for a non scientist.”

“Non-scientist? I spent 2 years studying mathematics and the science of fire and heat energy to be a fire mage.. I’ll have you know I am very scientific.”

“Well then, your math will come in handy. I think the rings and towers are attempting to use the same signal pulses. Two sites can narrow the possibilities of sending information but a third response may allow the network to establish an exact location or point on a map.”

Tajan looked north again. There was nothing to see but open water to the horizon.

Beside her, Anderix put down his pencil and his ledger

Then he took her right hand in his left, noticed it was a bit sticky from muddy berry juice and wiped his hand on his pants then locked his fingers into hers. For once, he supplied no explanation and Tajan felt like aethoria was going to be alright.

• • •

The Solaryn harbour smelled exactly as Tajan remembered.

Hot oil roasting nongnuts. A salty wet rope smell from the many ships at port and a distinct, slightly sweet, iodine aroma that brought back memories of boarding ships and sailing to new shores.

She stopped beside the first cooking stall and closed her eyes.

“Oh, my Veyl.”

Anderix looked towards the pan.

“You have not eaten anything yet.”

“I am preparing.”

She bought two sticks of fried puff fish and handed him one.

Around them, fishing crews shouted over dripping baskets. A gull landed on a roof, screamed as though personally cheated by the morning’s trade, and launched itself towards a child’s lunch.

Tajan pointed with her food.

“That was where you came down the gangplank.”

Anderix followed her finger.

“The berth has been repaired.”

“You noticed that?”

“The stone was uneven.”

“I remember you nearly retreating when everyone waved.”

“There were more people than I had anticipated.”

“You waved first.”

“I had misunderstood the scale of the obligation.”

She laughed.

They found rooms above a cooper’s yard. From the window, Tajan could see the road towards her birthplace, less than two hours inland.

For the first time in many days, she unpacked instead of simply opening her bag.

Anderix covered the table with wire.

• • •

“Will your friend hear it from here?”

“If his receiving apparatus is operating and I can infuse enough energy into the crystal pulses.”

“And if it is not enough?”

“We will have produced an exceptionally careful disturbance.”

He wound copper wire around an iron core. Beside it stood a crystal converter, two magnets and a contact arm assembled from pieces that had previously served unrelated purposes.

A longer wire ran through the window to the roof.

Tajan held the lamp while he tightened the last connection.

“How does it work?” Tajan said, “That’s the scientist in me asking by the way.”

Well its a signal I send to a device my friend has made that is a Dial

It is a little like telling time. His receiver is a dial featuring all 28 letters around its rim. Edges. To send a letter I send a specific number of short, rapid electrical pulses down the wire from the crystal. On his end each pulse can moved an internal energy magnetic gear forward by one click. To send a letter "ð ", I would send 5 pulses, moving the clock hand to the 5th letter. I rotate a wheel to the letter I want on their end, and the needle on the receiving end mirrors the exact position. It is not a all simple and is only a very recent discovery.

“Its amazing. Why doesn’t the Ascendecy share such a tool. We could get rid of black birds forever! No more message stopping in Vierielian Bloomlands to eat before it makes it way across the world. “What does your message say?”

“My identification. A request for acknowledgement. Then a short message for my father.”

“Read it to me.”

Anderix looked at the paper.

“Alive. Acting voluntarily. Investigating failure of crystal infrastructure. Findings concern Ascendancy security. Request continued permission. Intend return.”

Tajan was quiet.

Then she said, “Add that you want to hear from them.”

“That is implied by the request for acknowledgement,” Anderix pointed out, his pencil hovering just above the fiber paper as he calculated the remaining space along the lower margin.

“Add it anyway,” Tajan said softly, her eyes fixed on the cold blue glow of the converter crystal. “Formal protocol means nothing if they think you are writing under duress. Let them hear your voice in it.”

He considered the available space, his optical lens making a microscopic adjustment as he measured the width of his fine copper nib against the grain of the paper.

Then he wrote another line, adding three concise words in the tight, disciplined script of the Mechanum academies.

The contact dial began rolling, its brass teeth engaging the notched drive wheel with a series of quick, rhythmic clicks that echoed against the wooden walls of the small upper room.

Each turn released a controlled burst from the crystal into the circuit, sending minute electrical impulses pulsing along the long wire that snaked out the window and across the steep slate roof. The copper coil gave a faint tremor with every contact, its binding wire vibrating in key with the pulse, while blue light travelled across the converter’s small glass chamber in shimmering, rhythmic intervals.

They sent the message via the dials in hope of reaching the device his friend had once used for their experiments in Voltaris, targeting the specific crystal harmonic signature they had catalogued years before.

At dawn, while the Solaryn harbour was still shrouded in grey sea mist and the first fishing vessels were untying their lines, the dial turned its full rotation, sending the sequence out into the quiet air.

After sunset, as the paper lanterns began to glow across the lower market terraces and the smell of roasted nongnuts filled the narrow streets, they ran the circuit again, watching the needle for the slightest twitch of response.

Again the following day, through the muggy midday heat and the constant clatter of cooperage barrels from the yard below, the apparatus continued its steady, methodical call.

No answer came through the loop of wire. The receiving gauge remained stubbornly inert, its thin indicator needle resting flat against the brass stop pin without a single shudder of returned energy.

On the fourth morning, a low metallic horn sounded beyond the harbour, its deep, reverberating tone cutting cleanly through the morning fog and vibrating the glass panes in their window frame.

Anderix stopped with his hand above the contact arm, his fingers frozen a hair's breadth from the sending key as the pitch resonated through the crystal converter.

Tajan was already at the window, pushing open the wooden shutter to stare past the crowded tile roofs toward the open water.

A dark vessel stood offshore, sitting low in the water like an iron wedge against the pale morning light.

No sails hung from its rigid metal masts; only a pair of heavy, armored paddle housings broke the smooth contour of its obsidian-colored hull.

• • •

The metal cylinder landed on the dock with a crack that scattered three gulls and caused a fishmonger to drop an entire tray of silver-scaled catch onto the wet cobblestones.

It rolled twice across the granite edge, struck a heavy oak mooring post, and unfolded three jointed legs with a sharp pneumatic hiss that sent a plume of pale vapor curling into the damp sea air.

Tajan stared down from the pier railing, her hand instinctively resting on the leather strap of her travel satchel.

“They have not improved that part,” she noted, watching the mechanical courier wobble as it calibrated its balance on the uneven stone.

Anderix was looking at the official markings.

The cylinder raised itself, clicked twice and opened.

Inside lay a document bearing the seal of the Command Center.

Beneath it was a smaller sheet of paper with smaller handwritten text in ink.

Tajan recognised the handwriting first.

“Anderix.”

He took it.

The first lines were cramped. The last had been pressed hard enough to score the paper.

I am alive. I am in the Mechanum Ascendancy.

They have informed me that I will be released when Anderix returns to their custody.

I have informed them what I think of this arrangement.

Blena.

Tajan read it again.

“How?”

Anderix unfolded the official document.

“Report to the vessel. Submit to return. The foreign national will be transferred following compliance.”

“Kefar?”

“I do not know.”

“They must have taken her from Ironroot.”

“I do not know.”

“Where is Kaelen?”

His fingers tightened on the page.

“I do not know that either.”

Tajan looked towards the ship.

“Is it a ruse?’

“Those are her words in her hand, but I suppose anything is possible.”

The Mechanum ship was still and silent waiting for a response but just as before, someone was watching.

Thy Quest: Send a Signal
With a partner, create three different messages using only claps or gentle taps on a desk. Give each message its own pattern of beats and pauses, and write down your shared code. Include Tajan’s pattern of three pulses, a pause and two more as one of your signals. Take turns sending five messages while the receiver listens without watching and writes down what each means. Compare your results, adjust any confusing patterns, and try again. Which change made your signals easier to understand? Explain how your experiment connects to Tajan and Anderix’s discovery at Alderat.