Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors

Kaelen remained standing at the head of the table. He was far too anxious to sit, and everyone was now comfortable with his assumption of that position, though they would never say it to him directly.

After an early breakfast of fresh sorofruit and sweetflour cakes, everyone else seemed content. Kaelen had brought some maps downstairs. Blena had moved the breakfast dishes to the other end of the table, stacking them into an unbalanced pile which bothered Tajan, but not enough for her to say anything. They realised it was time to work.

“There,” Blena said. “We’ve eaten. We’ve slept. I’ve cleaned up. You may now ask us to save Kefar.”

Rahkhan set his wrapped bundle of precious papers beside Alster’s notes. Drue dragged over a chair, close enough to read over Alster’s shoulder. Beyond the terrace, Dasher was investigating something the tide had left behind on the beach.

“I was sent to find out why the Heartwell was losing power,” Kaelen began. “We still haven’t answered all of that.”

“We know someone who is helping it along,” Blena said.

“Yes. But removing Delrona from power won’t mend what was failing before she arrived.”

Kaelen opened his notebook at a page worn soft along the fold.

“I believe we need to first consider what we know to be true. The Heartwell is the remnant of something we haven’t fully understood. Do you remember? Kahleen told us to stop the Water Mage. That was well before we knew about Delrona, who we now presume he was talking about.”

“I am not sure we know whether any of what that guy says is real,” Blena said. “Some really out-there conversations that were pretty hard to follow, if you ask me.”

“Granted,” Kaelen continued, “but he also spoke about the infrastructure degrading. He wanted equilibrium restored so transfers could continue. We believe now that he meant the movement of people through the rings. We have all seen what they can do. We still don’t know where Kahleen is, or where those people were coming from. But if we have understood him correctly, this was their machinery, and it is no longer working as it should.”

“And we believe Delrona is the Water Mage he wanted us to stop,” Anderix added. “Though we do not know how he became aware of her.”

“Or whether he meant the damage she is doing or the power she is taking!” Drue said.

“Both are possibilities,” Kaelen answered.

“We have rather more reasons to stop her now,” Blena said.

“Yes. I understand what she’s doing to people. I’m less certain what he thought she would do to the connection.”

Anderix leaned towards the notebook.

“At Ruodoon they asked us to increase the power and eliminate the fluctuations. They were trying to keep communicating.”

“Then we preserve what still works while we find out,” Kaelen said. “There may be someone trying to communicate with us.”

Rahkhan looked towards the wrapped leaves.

“The machinery beneath the Heartwell had deposits joining one wheel to the next. Whatever those mechanisms once did, they had been standing untouched for a very long time.”

“We need to see what they were meant to do,” Anderix said.

“And put them back to work?” Blena asked.

“Perhaps. I have not seen them. We may find something we can repair. We may find something none of us knows how to make again.”

Kaelen looked down at the Heartwell’s position on the map. What seemed like a long time ago, he had believed he would return to Kefar a champion, armed with an explanation. He would show the Council where the fault lay, what needed to be done and that he was a truly accomplished young Mage.

Now there was no Council to report to. A despot controlled Kefar and threatened the rest of Aethoria, and he still had no solution to the problem.

He remained silent for a moment too long. The others turned towards him.

“Then we find out,” he said, “and we do what we can.”

Anderix slid the map closer to Kaelen. He could see a new determination on his face. It was what he had been hoping for, and he waited for Kaelen’s next direction with a smile.

“First we have to reach Delrona. But where?”

“Alfadin would be the harder place to attempt it,” Blena said.

Rahkhan pointed to the mountain approaches.

“She can hold these with very few people. Anyone climbing towards the installation will be seen and challenged long before they reach it.”

“Kefar, then,” Blena said.

“She is most likely in Kefar,” Kaelen agreed. “We start there and find out where she is before deciding how to approach her. We also need to find the Keeper of the Heartwell and learn what she has connected to it...and whether we can stop the draw safely.”

“And find the Council,” Tajan said.

Rahkhan kept his finger against the mountains.

“If they are still being held in the city.”

“We ask,” Kaelen said. “Quietly.”

Blena leaned back.

“And when we find Delrona?”

“We make certain she cannot keep issuing orders to anyone.”

“I can be the first to make a move,” Rahkhan said. “I saw what she did to those monks… and others.”

Kaelen sat down.

“We all do it together, or we will all end up on a ledge somewhere.”

The breeze lifted a corner of the map. Anderix placed a cup upon it.

“The Sylvan Senate has recalled her,” Rahkhan said. “There are people who can take her into custody.”

“If they can reach her,” Blena answered. “And if Drell’s Guardians would allow it. There is little chance of that now. We may have to fight them before anyone gets near enough to explain the law.”

“Some may stand aside when they learn what happened at Alfadin,” Rahkhan said.

She looked at him.

“It’s likely they already know. They are a mercenary army of untrue Guardians with no honour. And they believe Delrona is some supernatural Mage with her new powers.”

Rahkhan lowered his eyes briefly.

“Then they are an obstacle too.”

“We should give them a chance to join us,” Tajan said.

“And if she or they attack while we’re giving it?” Blena asked.

Nobody answered at once.

Drue folded his hands on the table.

“We have been working together for long enough to know each other’s abilities and strengths. We protect each other, and we stop Delrona. That said, I would like to reach the city before agreeing that everyone between us and her has to die.”

Blena’s chair came forward onto all four legs.

“So would I. I would also like us to have thought about what happens if she won’t surrender.”

Kaelen looked around the table, giving each of them time.

“We try to take her alive. If she is hurting people, we stop her.”

“That was what I needed to hear,” Blena said.

Tajan studied the small mark indicating the Heartwell on the unrolled map.

“All right. That is Delrona dealt with, if we succeed. Maybe we even restore the Council. But whoever takes control of Kefar next will still control the supply of primary crystals to the Crestrealms.”

“There were already shortages under the Council,” Alster said.

“Yes. That is what I mean.” Tajan turned the map slightly. “We keep talking about getting the crystals moving again. What happens if we can’t get back the supply people remember? They would still have to come to Kefar and ask for a share of whatever is left.”

Alster’s hand stopped above his notes.

“What are you suggesting?”

Tajan thought for a moment.

“Maybe we start finding ways to live without one city deciding how much power everyone receives. So no one can threaten a whole Crestrealm by withholding its charge.”

“The healing houses and the heating and cooling systems all still need their share,” Alster said.

“I know. But if there is less each year…”

“Then we need something I can use in its place. I don’t want to have to decide who would die first if the supply stopped.”

Tajan looked at Alster, then down at the map.

Rahkhan touched the bandage beneath his cuff.

“My shield got me through the steam below the Heartwell. It failed before I reached the stairs. A little less charge and I would not be here.”

“I am asking whether we can live differently,” Tajan said. “I am not asking you to abandon crystal powers.”

“Then there have to be alternative systems,” Alster replied.

Anderix shifted his cup.

“There are ways of producing useful power without receiving charged crystals from Kefar. Machinery. Heat. Moving water. Some already work in Mechanum. We have been developing ways to live without a primary crystal from Kefar for decades.”

“Enough for everyone?” Kaelen asked.

“Not as things stand.”

“And who knows how to build them?” Tajan asked.

Anderix glanced at the crates waiting inside the door.

“That would become an important question. My people are generous to us. It does not follow that they would surrender every advantage to every government.”

Blena rubbed her forehead.

“I get the feeling that a lot of this is something others will decide. We are just a conduit for the restitution of what has been lost.”

“Did you learn the word ‘conduit’ at the academy?” Tajan asked.

“No. I learned not to make fun of people who are smarter than you. You know, good Ironroot manners!”

Blena smiled at her.

“So long as you don’t give us good Ironroot tea,” Tajan said.

Kaelen moved the maps aside, clearing space between them, scarcely hearing their exchange.

“Then we need to change the order of our plan. Finding Delrona comes first only if she gives us no choice. Otherwise, we find the Keeper and learn how to protect the supply people need to survive. We stop her experiments from taking more of it, then deal with her. After that, we find out what can be restored and what might be replaceable. And we make certain the knowledge gets beyond us. What replaces the present arrangements will need more people than the seven of us.”

Tajan nodded slowly.

“Then we should know what we are carrying before we decide who gets to see it.”

Rahkhan drew the bundle towards him.

“Yes,” he said. “We should.”

• • •

Alster laid out his transcription from the Library of the Astryx Arcanum.

“I have been to the Library of the Astryx Arcanum!”

He looked at Tajan, who rolled her eyes at his dig.

“Yeah. Who hasn’t?”

“These are the copies Drue and I were able to make,” Alster continued. “The warning belongs with the drawings.”

Drue moved his cup well away from the papers.

“Just in case,” he said to Alster.

Blena reached towards the cups, apparently considering another stack.

“Just leave them,” Drue said sharply, then softened his voice. “I’ll take care of the cups later.”

Alster showed them the figures beside the circles, then the branching lines beneath them.

“The rings can carry people. We know this from our own experience, and these drawings suggest that was what they were designed to do. Passage and communication draw from a sustained flow of energy, but they cease when the supply falls below the required amount. The same flow appears to pass through the crystals we mine and support the growth of the Aethoria Trees with their huge crystals and the Primary Crystal Charging system in Kefar.”

Kaelen traced the diagram without touching it.

“So each attempt at Alfadin may be taking power from something already struggling below its required level?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“How old is this document you copied?” Rahkhan asked.

“The fragment is old. The commentary is later. Some of the library’s leaves are attributed originals; some writings survive through copies. What we carry is another transcription.”

“Another person’s mistakes, most probably,” Blena said.

“Possibly,” Alster answered. “Including mine. But I was very careful.”

Drue glanced at him, then drew the next sheet into place.

“We checked these together, and I think we got it all right. Though I’m not sure we understood it all.”

“That helps,” Anderix said. “It does not settle the origin of the material or establish who made the older copies.”

“No,” Alster agreed. “And the more recent writers do not always agree about what the older words mean.”

Rahkhan loosened the bindings around his precious plunder from the Alfadin tower. The cloth had been changed since his jump into destiny, but he still unfolded it as carefully as though every layer might contain secrets that could change the world...or tear it apart if lost.

Fine writing in thin black ink covered the first exposed leaf. Several corrections crowded one margin at an angle. A line had been struck through so heavily that the paper beneath it had roughened.

“The scholars said these pages continued beyond their own copy,” he told them. “I heard that much before I took them. I cannot prove what they suspect about the author, but they were astounded by these papers.”

Rahkhan looked up to see if he still had his audience.

Anderix bent over the opening lines. Alster shuffled to the front of his chair to be nearer.

They read slowly, stopping over unfamiliar terms and comparing them with the library notes. Kaelen wrote their uncertainties on a separate sheet. Blena took the pile of dishes to the kitchen and came back for the cups, just to feel useful in the quiet.

At last Alster looked up.

“She calls herself a scientist.”

Blena shifted closer.

“Who did? Syterra? She isn’t a Mage?”

Alster pointed to the name within the text.

“And this appears to be where she came from. Kasane.”

For a moment they listened to the rolling wave wash up onto the beach and out again.

Then Tajan said, “Read it.”

Alster followed the line with one finger.

“The Kasane administration hath returned my proposals with yet another demand for review. Those who have never stood upon Aethoria persist in instructing those who have made it habitable. They dispute my choice of staff, mine allotment of resources, yea, even the title under which my work shall be published.”

“She didn’t like being questioned,” Drue said. “That sounds very much like anyone who has to work with someone they don’t like. It doesn’t sound like a demigod at all.”

“We haven’t read their questions yet,” Rahkhan answered.

Alster continued.

“The advance party now perceiveth that our needs cannot be governed from Kasane. Each successful manifestation doth strengthen their confidence in my direction. The colonists who follow shall find a society already capable of surpassing the bounds within which they were born.”

Anderix studied the next paragraph for some time.

“I am not certain Kasane is another place on Aethoria,” he said. “This sounds as though they came from somewhere very far away. Somewhere quite different from here.”

Kaelen thought of the people they had watched saying goodbye beside the great gate. Gertina’s hand against another woman’s cheek. A promise to return. The strange clothes they wore and the unfamiliar tools they carried.

“They were asking Syterra to help with the receiver,” he said. “At Alderat. She was already on this side.”

“That would fit,” Anderix answered.

Farther down, calculations had been worked between two passages of writing. One carried a correction; the other ended in a question.

“Something about elapsed time,” Anderix said. “Time dilation. I would need longer with these figures… and the language.”

Blena looked from the leaf to him.

“How much longer? You are clever! Could you do it before lunch?”

“I am quite certain we had a large breakfast not an hour ago, and you are already planning the next meal. Actually, I think I would need long enough to avoid giving you an impressive answer that is completely wrong.”

She nodded towards the page.

“Continue,” she said as she popped a seedless toroberry into her mouth.

Alster read the next passage twice before speaking it aloud.

“The channels lie within the body. Through them may the crystal’s energy be directed into a field and given purpose. Though the manifestations differ, the process beneath them doth remain the same. Wherefore should the new arrivals be schooled in but one application, when they may be taught the whole?”

Tajan’s eyes moved towards her own hands.

“No separate schools of power control.”

“Not here… or there… or back then,” Alster said.

“They teach Syterra as some sort of mystical exception,” Kaelen murmured.

“Sounds like she expected to teach everyone,” Tajan replied.

Drue was reading ahead.

“Listen to what she expects in return.”

Alster’s finger moved down.

“When every colonist possesseth abilities that Kasane cannot bestow, no sound cause shall remain for our continued dependence. The connection serveth their authority more than our needs. Whether it should be closed forever must therefore remain mine to consider.”

Rahkhan looked at the struck-out line.

“Her consideration.”

Alster turned the sheet.

“Master Minz and Librus,” he said. “The two figures we saw talking to each other around the tree in the library. Tajan, you would remember them.”

He paused for his dig to find its target.

“I was twelve!” Tajan responded.

“Anyway, they made about as much sense as Gertina. But Minz called Syterra a usurper.”

Alster told them about the interrupted voices, the altered sequence and the missing return instruction. When he faltered, Drue helped recall the words he thought he had heard more clearly.

When they finished, Kaelen looked back at his notes from Alderat.

“Kahleen had asked someone to send Syterra a message about…”

He searched through the pages.

“Here it is. ‘Send an emergency audio signal. Tell Syterra there is a problem with the Aethorian receiver. She’ll know what to do on her side.’ Then a person in the ring spoke into a stick and said, ‘EM for Syterra. Critical overload requires reboot before collapse.’”

“Well, first I think you win the note-taking award. Professor Doran would be so impressed with you right now,” Tajan said. “But that doesn’t tell us what she actually did.”

“Nor does asking her to stop this critical overload prove how the system failed,” Rahkhan said. “I mean, all this suggests Syterra was behind it, but there is no direct proof.”

“It’s all history now, and there may never be,” Tajan answered. “But we have to consider the possibility.”

“I suppose, in the absence of any other information…”

Anderix had reached a passage near the lower edge of another leaf.

“Here. Listen to this part. This concerns the crystals themselves.”

He and Alster compared and confirmed the wording before Alster read it aloud.

“The designation of a crystal according to its customary use should not be mistaken for a limitation of its energy. Any charged crystal may support the manifestations described above, provided that…”

He stopped.

Blena waited.

“Provided that what?”

Alster lifted the leaf carefully. The writing ended at a torn edge.

“We haven’t got it.”

They searched the remaining sheets. There were diagrams, incomplete calculations and a few lines of further writing, but no continuation they could confidently connect to the missing sentence.

Tajan sat back.

“Delrona has been learning something.”

“She studied the old practices before these were found,” Rahkhan said. “I don’t know how much of this she heard. Fateese caught the papers when I pulled them away. Part of one sheet tore.”

“Could someone have copied them?” Drue asked.

“Not in the few moments they were in that room. Perhaps some words from memory, but that would be all.”

Kaelen looked at the sentence fragment Anderix was still studying.

“An unfinished sentence could become a big promise very easily,” he mused.

They had spent the morning discussing all the people who would suffer if the supply ever failed. And now here was writing that seemed to offer a way beyond those limits, ending just before it explained the conditions.

“There is so much we don’t understand here,” Kaelen said. “These people were far more advanced than we are. But the idea that one person might learn to use all these powers through the body’s channels...that could have consequences today.”

Anderix nodded.

“Then we keep these originals out of Delrona’s hands and get this knowledge to good people who will use it for all of Aethoria,” Rahkhan added.

“What about the triumvirate professors at the academy?” Alster asked.

“Who are they?” Drue asked. He had never studied there.

“The triumvirate consists of three tenured professors at the Kefar Academy of Mage Powers,” Kaelen said. “Caska, Maeka and Rek. Each is a specialist in their own field, and together they oversee the teaching of Fire, Water and Earth powers. They also have permission to access materials on direct loan from the Library of Crysalise. We should try to reach them. They would find this material very valuable.”

“Will they help?” Blena asked.

“We need to ask. And we need people with the best education who can examine this with us.”

Rahkhan folded the cloth back over the exposed leaf.

“Let’s be cautious and speak to them before we bring these out. Things in Kefar aren’t what they used to be when you were studying.”

“Agreed,” Kaelen said.

“We should make a second copy before we leave,” Drue said. “Maybe leave a copy here so that Delrona cannot get her hands on both.”

Kaelen drew a clean sheet of paper towards himself and took out a pencil.

This time, when they began copying, he recorded their doubts and possible interpretations in the margins. He marked each clearly as their own conjecture. Where the original was torn, he left the missing words blank.

• • •

An Ironroot trader arranged by Chief Parnaf arrived offshore to collect them two days later.

The captain agreed to carry them towards Kefar and put them ashore north of its inspected berths, on a beach sheltered by woodland near the eastern approach. The Ascendancy crates would remain aboard except for the supplies they could carry without attracting attention or needing help from shore.

Drue was reluctant, but he knew the dangers. Dasher would remain aboard too. The duplicate of Rahkhan’s pages was secured inside her message cylinder.

He spent longer explaining her care and grooming to the captain than he did preparing his own belongings.

“I will come back,” he said, resting his forehead briefly against Dasher’s. “And you will leave the ropes alone and be a good girl.”

Dasher caught his sleeve.

“All right, all right. So my sleeve is also a rope for the purposes of this instruction.”

They landed northeast of the city and followed a woodland track towards the eastern road.

By late afternoon, they had taken rooms at an inn busy enough that seven more travellers caused inconvenience but almost no interest. They arrived in two groups, some time apart, wearing the sort of clothes often seen on graduates returning to the Kefar Academy. Reunions were common, and former students frequently came back to reminisce and share their current fortunes.

Drue and Anderix were the hardest to disguise. Their accents identified their homelands quickly, so they spoke as little as possible.

While the others settled in, Tajan spent the rest of the afternoon watching the eastern approach. Blena later joined her, and the two negotiated passage with a wagon driver at the inn’s bar.

“Until morning,” Kaelen told them when they gathered upstairs. “We leave early. If anyone starts asking about us tonight, we go sooner.”

“Okay,” Anderix replied in a distinctly Mechanum tone.

Tajan slapped his hand.

Below, the wagon driver began arguing over the price of his room. His discontent and the innkeeper’s rebuttal echoed upstairs.

Blena listened.

“That is our ride for tomorrow.”

The others raised their eyebrows when they realised she meant the driver she and Tajan had hired. He was hardly keeping a low profile.

Tajan described the gate, the afternoon traffic and the patrols above it. The entrance had two successive gates with a short passage between them. During the day, both stood open, but either could be closed to halt arrivals.

The sea wall offered a long, exposed climb. The northern traders’ route would put them through further checkpoints. At the eastern gate, at least, Tajan had seen how the watch handled carts and travellers. The city depended on food and goods from the surrounding towns and markets. There would be more arriving in the morning.

“They still check people,” Rahkhan said.

“Yes.”

“And once we are through, there will be more Guardians.”

“Yes,” she repeated. “We separate again inside.”

They chose a meeting place using Rahkhan’s more recent knowledge of the streets, and a second place in case the first was watched. The leaves stayed wrapped against his body beneath plain clothing. Alster carried the library transcription; the duplicate they had prepared remained aboard the trader with Dasher.

Kaelen was considering the road when a distant rumble began to grow, like a herd of galloping gulathers approaching the inn.

The cup beside his hand made a small scraping sound as it shifted across the table.

Then water spilled over its rim, and the floor moved beneath his chair.

Blena caught Alster’s shoulder as he rose. Tajan moved clear of the window. Somewhere below, crockery broke, followed by a shout that stopped before it became a word.

The shaking deepened.

Kaelen felt it through his feet and up the bones of his legs. The hanging lamp swung towards the wall. Rahkhan reached for his bundle before remembering that it was already beneath his tunic.

Before any of them could say “quake,” the movement eased.

They stood listening while the inn settled. Downstairs, somebody began asking whether everyone was all right. A child was still crying. The wagon driver had changed his demand for a discounted room to a demand to know whether the building was safe. The answer came too quietly for them to hear.

Anderix set the fallen cup upright.

“Rahkhan, you said these were becoming more frequent? Though we cannot tell from here what caused that, I think we all have a good idea.”

Kaelen looked towards the dark line of the city.

“Agreed. Time is not on our side.”

He moved his chair back to the table.

“Tajan, tell us about the gate again.”

• • •

At dawn, Tajan joined the people waiting outside the eastern gate.

A plain green tunic reached below her knees. A maroon-and-yellow cape covered her shoulders, ordinary enough among the returning graduates and even many Mosaic travellers. Her closed-toe gulather sandals belonged to a different part of Aethoria, but she could do little about that without acquiring a different pair of feet to go inside them.

Ahead of her, an elderly man waited with empty hands.

The Guardians opened both sets of heavy doors after the watch changed. One remained beside a board of notices to which he had just added a fresh sheet. The others began admitting the queue.

A watch stick dropped across the old man’s path.

“No baggage, old man?”

“Got caught outside when you shut the gate. Stayed with my cousin in Shoreline Village. I don’t see well enough to walk those roads by lamplight.”

“I’ve seen him before,” a Guardian called from the other side. “Let him through.”

The stick lifted.

Tajan followed. She met the nearest Guardian’s glance and nodded.

He looked at her cape.

“Class of 4880?”

She gave him a small smile. He returned it and let her pass.

Beyond the inner gate, she stopped beside a stall whose shutters were still closed. From there, she could see through the passage to the road outside without standing obtrusively in the middle of it.

The driver they had hired the previous evening was approaching with his empty wagon. He had asked twice whether he would be paid if the watch confiscated it.

Drue had given him more gold pieces than the wagon and gulathers were worth before he could ask a third time.

The rest of the company waited at intervals along the road, close enough to move with the traffic. If the inner gate closed before the distraction began, they would abandon the attempt. If anyone was detained, the others would keep clear until they knew where that person was taken.

Tajan watched the wagon’s rear wheel catch in the shallow roadside rut they had chosen.

The driver urged the gulathers forward, then pulled them up as the wagon slewed across part of the approach.

“Bit of help?” he called.

A Guardian stepped forward, annoyed.

The driver climbed down and took the gulathers by their bridles. The Guardian moved towards the trapped wheel.

Beneath her cape, Tajan brought a small blue crystal into her palm. It began to glow.

For a moment, she remembered the warm sand at the resort and the fire burning low while Drue sang. Then she concentrated on the small prepared charge concealed against the wagon’s inner side.

Smoke rose between the boards.

“Your cart!” somebody shouted.

The driver backed the gulathers away as far as the harness allowed.

The Guardian called for water.

A second charge caught. The two had been packed to smoulder and produce thick smoke, but the boards around them were beginning to blacken.

There was little wind at that hour. Smoke spread across the approach and drifted into the gate passage.

The Guardian beside the notices hurried outside. Another came running from within the passage, shouting for people to stand back.

That was what they needed: the watch looking outwards, towards the wagon, while the waiting travellers pressed towards the city.

Tajan had not counted on one of the Guardians trying to push the wagon clear of the road.

Its trapped wheel came free.

The wagon began to roll towards the sloping verge, dragging the gulathers sideways.

Kaelen was nearest. He caught the rear rail, planted his boots against the uneven stones and hauled back. The wagon rocked against him before slowing.

“Keep it here!” he shouted. “Away from the trees!”

The Guardian abandoned his attempt to push it and seized the side rail. Drue came up beside him as though he were another traveller helping clear the obstruction. Together, they turned the wagon slightly across the slope.

The driver held the gulathers steady while another Guardian hurried to release their traces. Once free, the panicking animals were led away from the smoke.

Alster passed through the outer gate first, coughing into his sleeve as an added ruse. Blena followed an old woman who was loudly demanding that the watch do something useful, like fetch water buckets or call a Water Mage and she joined her with loud demands.

Rahkhan kept his head lowered and moved with a cluster of travellers trying to escape the smoke. Anderix followed while the Guardians outside shouted competing instructions.

They passed through the gate passage and into the city.

From beside the shuttered stall, Tajan saw one of the remaining Guardians put his shoulder against an inner door.

The gate began to close.

Outside, Drue helped brace the wagon while the other Guardian shoved a loose stone beneath its wheel.

Kaelen released the rail only when the wagon held.

“Water!” the Guardian shouted again.

Kaelen stepped away, coughing. Drue followed him towards the gate with the last of the travellers already in the passage.

They slipped through the narrowing entrance.

A bucket struck the road behind them. Someone ordered the queue outside to stop.

Tajan left the stall and kept walking.

At the first junction, she saw Blena turn into a side street. Alster continued straight ahead. Neither looked back.

Kefar was opening for the day. Shop shutters lifted. A baker carried fresh bread past two Guardians standing at the next crossing.

Behind them, voices rose above the gate wall as more of the watch hurried to deal with the smoking wagon.

Tajan tucked her crystal away and chose the street leading towards their meeting place.

They were inside.

Thy Quest: Text to Self

When have you used a distraction or diversion before? Describe what happened and explain how your experience connects to the company’s plan to enter Kefar.