Chapter XV – Replacements

I spent the next few days feeling like garbage.

I knew, intellectually, that it wasn’t worth worrying about what I’d done during the test. I’d failed anyway, after all, and there were far greater matters of import in my life.

And it wasn’t like I’d been entirely forthcoming with everyone about everything else in my life, anyway. I wasn’t above withholding information if I thought it was important.

And graduating was important. My goals might have expanded lately, but that didn’t mean I could give up on graduating.

Still, I couldn’t help shaking the feeling of disappointment in myself.

Ultimately, I think it was because I’d let someone down that I actually respected.

I was used to being a failure in my father’s eyes.

And my mother? Well, I had no idea what she felt about me now, because she hadn’t seen fit to write me or visit.

Vellum had always been critical of me, but she’d also been eminently fair. I think that was why I respected her as much as I did.

And by omitting a little detail on that test, I’d violated a contract in my own mind. I didn’t feel like I deserved her trust.

But I also didn’t have the confidence to just go and tell her about it.

It was silly. I’d failed the test anyway. It wasn’t like she could double-fail me.

Probably.

Either way, that wasn’t what I was worried about.

I was just ashamed.

It was fortunate that most of my finals were already over, otherwise my scores might have suffered during that time.

Maybe it would have helped if I’d shared my feelings with someone else.

But I’d never been good at that.

Why am I so weak?

I asked myself that question many times, but I never found a good answer.

* * *

I still wasn’t in a good frame of mind when Jin came to visit, and seeing him certainly didn’t make things any better.

Neither did his news.

“I believe we are both being followed.”

I nodded to him. It was hardly a surprise at this point.

I knew someone had broken into my dorm, and I’d figured out a plan for following the trail, but I hadn’t followed it yet. I’d had too many other things going on.

I also knew that Derek was having someone follow Jin. I wasn’t sure if that was still what was going on, or if whoever was following me was also following Jin.

Either way, it was worth finding out what Jin knew, and looking into it further. “Do you know who it is, or why they’re doing it?”

Jin shook his head. “No, but they appear to have countermeasures for my attunement.”

“That implies that they’ve done their research on us, and that they have considerable resources.” I rubbed my chin. “Okay. Let’s go find them.”

Jin blinked. I think I startled him. “I didn’t think you trusted me.”

“I still don’t. But I’m reasonably confident you’re not involved in what I found, I’m in an awful mood, and I’m tired of waiting for potential enemies to act against me. I’d rather get ahead of this. You up for some walking?”

“Yes,” Jin confirmed. “I am.”

“Give me a bit to get my things. I’ll meet you by our dorms in around an hour or so.”

Jin nodded and headed out.

By “my things”, I meant putting on Selys-Lyann, my sigils, and my demi-gauntlet. I was going loaded for a potential fight.

The next thing I did was check in with Derek. “Are you still having someone follow Jin?”

Derek shook his head. “No, Jin was stuck in the hospital for so long that I told my contact to stop bothering with it. I’ve considered putting a tail back on him now that he’s up and about, though. Why? Is he acting suspicious?”

“Because someone is still following him.”

Derek frowned. “Well, that’s awkward.”

I sighed in agreement. “Yeah. I’m going look into it. Can you help?”

“I’m busy. But use the stick if you need me?”

I nodded. “Will do.”

Then I excused myself to go tell Keras where we were going.

“Do you want me to follow you?” Keras asked. “I’m not great at stealth, even with the mask.”

I considered that, then agreed. “Give me a few minutes.”

It took me about a half an hour to put together a basic Arrow of Direction enchantment. It was a two piece item, like a return bell. When active, the main item would show the user a glowing arrow that pointed toward the anchor.

I threw it together in a hurry, so it was the weakest version of each of the runes. That meant the range was limited to about a mile, but I still thought that would be plenty. The concept was useful enough that I wanted to make more of them later, but this would be good for the moment.

I kept the anchor in my bag and handed the detection item to Keras. “You can use this to follow us from a good distance away. If you see us, you’re probably too close. Jin is pretty perceptive.”

“Are you expecting trouble?” Keras raised an eyebrow as he asked.

“Very possible.”

Keras grinned. “Good. I haven’t had a decent scrap in a while. Let me get my trouble coat.”

* * *

I met Jin back at the dooms, then we headed into my room.

“What’s the plan?” He asked.

“We start here.” I pulled up the cut in the carpet, revealing the enchantment that someone had placed on my floor.

“And that is…?”

Right. It was easy to forget that other people didn’t necessarily read runes the way I did. “It tells someone that we’re here. Someone planted it here while I was away.”

“And we’re going to ambush them when they show up?”

I shook my head. “No.” I drew my sword, causing Jin to take a step back. “Oh, sorry. Not attacking you. I’m taking this with us.”

After a moment of consideration, I re-sheathed Selys-Lyann and pulled out the Jaden Box. “Retrieve: Transference Sword.”

I used that sword to cut out the section of floor that had been enchanted. I’d used the other sword because Selys-Lyann had a chance of freezing the whole thing, which I didn’t want to risk. Moreover, a cutting aura was more suited to this sort of job. Sawing at wood with a sword blade would have taken forever, but the transference sword’s aura made it easy.

“What are we doing with that?” Jin sounded curious now, rather than scared.

“Store: Transference Sword.” The sword vanished. “We’re going to trace it back to the source.”

I hadn’t just learned the Arrow of Direction spell to find Sheridan — I’d learned it because it could trace the connections between magic in general.

Using Trials of Judgment to find Tristan was one option, but that wouldn’t work as long as he was inside the spire.

Tracing an enchantment to an anchor, though? That was basic stuff.

I slipped the enchanted floorboard under my coat and we headed out of the room, locking it behind us.

“Let’s go find some trouble.”

* * *

I was pretty excited about using the Arrow of Direction spell at first. Seeing a glowing line that led straight toward whoever had planted the enchantment in my room sounded great in theory.

In reality, though, we had two major complications.

First, distance. The enchantment was much further away than I’d expected. My initial Arrow of Direction spell didn’t work at all.

With some effort, I managed to cast the Citrine-level version, rather than the Quartz one I’d been practicing. That found the target, but the spell still only lasted a few seconds.

I didn’t have the mana to cast that repeatedly.

So, after we walked for a bit, I stopped and changed my plan.

“I’m going to try to make a second enchantment on the floorboard that traces the first enchantment.”

It was almost identical in concept to what I’d just made for Keras earlier. I didn’t have the second item to use as an anchor, but I didn’t need to – the two items were already connected.

I still couldn’t make it stay on all the time, but by making it an enchantment, I could pass it to Jin and he could use his mana to activate it. That way, we could share the mana costs by passing it back and forth.

The enchanting process was a little shorter this time, since I didn’t have to make the anchor part, and I’d just done something similar earlier in the day.

“You sure this is going to work?” Jin asked.

“No,” I admitted, “But I want to know if it will.”

If it did, maybe I could eventually modify Trials of Judgment in a similar way. It would need to be a much more powerful version of the enchantment than I was capable of casting right now, but anything that fed into my longer-term plans like that was useful.

The enchantment worked perfectly.

I was almost surprised, honestly. I’d been in such a bad frame of mind after what happened with Vellum’s class that I’d been beginning to doubt my abilities as an Enchanter in general.

Seeing that glowing line appear when I turned the enchantment on… there was something magical about that.

I grinned and passed it to Jin. “Try it yourself.”

“This rune?” He asked.

“Yeah. Just a bit of gray mana.”

Jin activated the rune, then stumbled back a step in surprise.

I laughed. “Yeah, the arrow is a little startling at first.”

“Indeed.” He chuckled, straightening his stance. “Shall we go?”

* * *

We followed the arrow for an hour. Then another hour.

I felt bad for Keras, who presumably was still following us.

After a moment of questioning that, I reached into my pouch and tapped the anchor, casting an Arrow of Direction. I knew anchors could be traced in reverse now, so…

….Yeah, Keras was still behind us. I couldn’t tell the distance without a different spell, but it was clear that he was following the same path that we were, rather than being in the direction of the mansion or something.

I gave him a silent thanks as Jin and I continued toward our unknown destination.

Most of the walk had been relatively quiet, but I didn’t mind that.

I was getting used to working with Jin again, and I was pleased to have someone with a better stealth skill set for this kind of mission, even if I didn’t entirely trust him.

“Any idea if we’re getting close?” Jin asked.

I shook my head. “There’s an Evaluate Distance spell, but I haven’t learned it. It’s on my list.”

We walked a little further.

It was sort of nice, for a while.

“Corin, I’d like to apologize again. I should have been honest with you.”

I sighed. I’d hoped this wasn’t going to come up, but I’d known it was probably inevitable. “I still can’t forgive you, Jin. I’m not sure if I ever will. But I’m willing to work with you on this, at least. We’ll see how that goes.”

Jin nodded. “I will endeavor not to disappoint you again.”

Our destination was not what I’d expected.

I’d imagined a lot of possibilities.

The Vice Chancellor’s office seemed plausible. He was one of the few people who knew about what we were up to at all, and keeping tabs on us made a degree of sense.

A mansion for a noble, like Elora Theas or Lord Teft, also seemed like a strong possibility. Both of them had the means and potentially the motivation.

I’d even considered the possibility of running into my mother, and learning that she was back in Valia and watching me from a distance.

Also, I may have pictured a wizard’s tower and a cave with a dragon.

So, when we exited the campus and headed into a residential area, I was a little surprised.

I was doubly surprised when I found myself wandering into an area with run down older apartment buildings.

I was triply surprised when we headed into a dark alley adjacent to one of those buildings.

I was not, however, surprised when the dark figures dropped from the rooftops and surrounded us.

That part I’d been counting on.

Jin reached into his coat.

Someone in the front of the group — they were all wearing hoods and black neutral masks, so details were tough to discern — spoke up. “There’s no need for that. Don’t start anything and we won’t need to, either.”

Jin slowly nodded and removed an empty hand from his coat, opening it to show that he was unarmed.

The leader stepped forward. As they drew closer, I noticed a single green gemstone in the center of the forehead of the mask. “You’re a long way from school, kids. What brings you out here?” Something was altering their voice when they talked, giving it an unearthly quality. Maybe the mask itself, if I had to guess.

I decided to be direct. I tossed a glowing floorboard into the gap between them and us. “That.”

The leader snapped their fingers. Another figure stepped forward, knelt down, and picked up the board. Then they walked back and whispered something to the leader.

The leader spoke again. “Ah, that. Just a routine bit of work for hire, nothing personal.”

I shrugged. “Okay, nothing personal, then. Just point me toward whoever hired you.”

I heard a chorus of laughter from all around us.

More laughter than there should have been, given that I could only see six people.

I turned my attunement on, but that didn’t reveal any invisible watchers. Every one of the cloaked people was attuned, though, and showing Sunstone-level.

Not good odds, even if there weren’t others hiding invisibly, and I couldn’t be confident of that. My attunement couldn’t break through stronger forms of concealment magic.

Jin spoke up. “Perhaps we can make some sort of arrangement?”

The leader waved a hand. “Afraid not, friend. We have a reputation to maintain.”

I frowned. “And who are you again?”

“My, my.” The leader tapped their mask. “You haven’t heard of us? We’re the famous crew of the bravest of rogues — the Blackstone Bandit!”

My jaw opened for a moment before I regained control of my expression. “The train thief? The one based on a fictional character?”

Another series of laughs from around us.

Fortunately, the leader did not appear offended by my statement. “The very same! But I must assure you, our leader is both quite real, and most proficient at the art of roguery.”

“…Roguery? Is that an actual word?”

I was pretty sure that was not a word. It sounded made-up.

The leader waved a hand. “That’s not important. Either way, I must commend your efforts for making it this far, but your quest is at an end here. Run home, children.”

“Wait.” Jin raised a hand. “What if, hypothetically, we wanted to join the Blackstone Bandits’ crew?”

I shot Jin a look. I don’t know what kind of look it was. I’m not sure there’s a word for a combination of shock, horror, and admiration occurring all at once.

I’m going with shorrorulation. If they can make up words, so can I.

There were a series of whispers from among the hooded figures.

“While we are honored that you wish to join our most prestigious crew, you’ll need to wait a year or two. When you’ve graduated, we’ll find you. There will be tests. You may or may not know when you’ve been tested.”

Well, that was an interesting gamble, but it certainly didn’t get us what we needed right now.

Another question occurred to me. “Does your group have any relationship with the servants of the Tyrant in Gold?”

The group went tense, and I realized I may have made a mistake.

The leader simply folded their arms. “Now, why would you ask something like that?”

“The original Blackstone, the fictional one, had a connection with the Tyrant, yes?”

“Ah,” the leader made a hand signal and the others seemed to relax. “Yes. That’s all purely fictional, I assure you. We have nothing to do with those cultists.”

I nodded.

That was not what their reaction told me.

I’d hit a nerve somehow. That didn’t necessarily imply that they were actually working with the Tyrant, but there was clearly some kind of history there.

I glanced from person to person briefly, but I didn’t see any of the glowing marks on shoulders that Keras had warned me to look for. Just normal attunement marks, in normal locations.

That was good enough information for now. If they’d had the shoulder marks, I might have tried to signal Keras somehow to come in and do something, but for now, I didn’t have enough information to make a move.

And with at least six people, in their own territory, starting a fight without a good reason was a bad idea.

“I don’t suppose you could at least give us a hint about who hired you?” Jin asked.

“A hint?” One of the hooded people behind us said. “I love it. Go ahead, Jade. Give them a hint.”

Ah, so the person in front wasn’t the actual leader, then.

That made sense. It meant the actual leader was able to watch us without being watched in return, and lowered the risk that we’d attack them directly.

“Jade”, the person I’d previously assumed was the leader, raised a hand to their mask, giving a look of consideration.

After a moment, they said, “Someone with great power who may yet be your friend or your enemy, depending on how you play your hand.”

That was absolutely terrible hint.

But I’d take what I can get.

“Thank you. We apologize for intruding on your territory. We will leave you now.” Jin replied.

“We didn’t say you could leave,” Jade replied.

We tensed. I almost reached for my sword.

“Ah, just kidding. Get out of here, kids.” Jade waved a hand. “And walk safe. There are unsavory types about this late at night.”

* * *

Jin and I headed back toward the dorms at a rapid pace. We did not want the Blackstone Bandits’ crew to change their minds.

“I’m sorry that we failed to learn the identity of our pursuers.” Jin offered after a time.

I shook my head. “We did. We just didn’t find out who hired them. I’d call that a success.”

“Perhaps.” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

“It’s progress, at least.”

We slowed down a bit when we got back to the school grounds.

I turned toward Jin. “Any ideas on who that clue might point to?”

He shook his head. “It could be any number of people. The ‘with great power’ is the only true hint, in my mind. That could be political, economic, or magical power — but it still narrows the field to a degree.”

I nodded. “I concur. We can most likely rule out other students, and probably our teachers.”

Leaving powerful nobles as options, independently powerful attuned like Derek, and foreign powers like Keras or the Tyrant.

We stopped before reaching the dorms to talk a bit more.

“What are our next steps?” Jin asked.

I frowned. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Derek and see if he has any ideas. Maybe he’d have some ideas on who might be connected with the Blackstone Bandit.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type to work with thieves.”

I shrugged. “You never know. It sounds like whoever hired that crew has either lost interest in us, or decided to take a different approach. For the moment, I think we’d best just keep our eyes open, and communicate if either of us learns anything.”

Jin nodded. “I can agree to that.”

“Good.” I hesitated for a moment, then added. “Thank you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “For?”

“Coming to me about someone following us. I appreciate the information.”

“Of course.” He hesitated, looking like he wanted to say something more, then simply concluded with, “You’re welcome.”

“It doesn’t change what you did before,” I added hastily.

Jin shook his head. “I did not expect it to. But I hope that perhaps, over time, you can learn to trust me at least a bit again?”

I drew in a deep breath. “I’d like to. But I don’t know.”

Jin gave me that crooked smile of his. “That’s a better answer than you gave me before, at least.”

“It is.” I acknowledged. “Good night, Jin.”

“Good night, Corin.”

* * *

I met with Keras on the way back to the manor.

“So, did you pick up anything I may have missed?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t presume to know what you noticed, but there were a considerable number of additional members of their group still waiting nearby, both inside the building and atop it. That is not a small organization, Corin. And I believe you found one of their bases of operations.”

I frowned. “Or that whole encounter could have been staged. I don’t see why they would have had a monitoring device in that sort of location. It seemed like just an ordinary neighborhood.”

“Operating out of a seemingly ordinary neighborhood seems like a pretty good way of keeping your group of thieves from being obvious,” Keras pointed out. “It’s not like they’re going to have a big building that says ‘Blackstone Land’ on it.”

I chuckled. “I suppose. Although given how lighthearted they sounded, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Don’t take their levity as a sign of weakness. They were well-organized. Professional. They had people with ranged weapons aiming at you at all times. You were wise to withdraw when you did.”

That only made me more nervous. “Any clues on who they work for?”

Keras shook his head. “No. Did you catch any names? I wasn’t close enough.”

“Jade.”

“That’s not a good sign.”

I nodded. “Because it’s a gemstone name?”

I remembered what he’d told me before.

“It might just be because they’re mimicking the stories about the Blackstone Assassin,” he offered, “But I wouldn’t want to bet on that. I’d advise you to stay as far away from those people as possible.”

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t notice any of those shoulder marks you told me about.”

Keras gave me an approving expression. “Good of you to check. Keep watching for those.”

“I will.”

We got back to the mansion without incident. “Thanks for watching over me.”

“No problem. Get some sleep.”

“You, too.”

He shook his head. “Not just yet for me.” Keras cracked his neck. “I’m still wearing my trouble coat, and I never got to use it.”

* * *

I never found out what kind of trouble Keras got into that night, when he came back in the morning, his clothes were torn and he was in the best mood I’d seen him in a long time.

I asked him if he’d gone back to fight the Blackstone Bandits, but he just replied, “Nothing like that, Corin. Don’t worry about it.”

I didn’t ask any more questions after that. I had a feeling that I didn’t want to know the answers.

* * *

I spent just a little bit of time trying to research the Blackstone Bandits. Unfortunately, articles about their group were interspersed with so many references to their legendary namesake assassin that I couldn’t find much reliable information.

Derek told me that he didn’t think they usually did work for hire, but he didn’t know too much about them, either. Most of what he’d heard was that they considered themselves to be “heroic thieves” working against the corruption of large banking institutions like Haven Securities.

That certainly explained the number of bank heists and train robberies that were attributed to them, but it was hard to tell if there was really only a single group, or multiple groups using the Blackstone Bandits’ name. I was leaning toward the latter, since so many of the crimes seemed to be in Caelford, rather than Valia, and the Caelford heists seemed to have slightly different methodology.

While I found it fascinating to read about them, I couldn’t justify spending more time on it. If they really were just hired to watch me for a while, it wasn’t worth investing my time and minimal resources into trying to dig deeper.

I’d have to find way to figure out who had been following me eventually, but for the moment, I had higher priorities.

* * *

At the beginning of week twenty-seven, the entire student body was called to a meeting on the same grassy area where the orientation had been held.

“Good morning, students,” Chancellor Wallace began. I hadn’t seen her much during the semester, but she still had a powerful presence on the stage. “Congratulations on making it this far into the year. Your dedication to this point is commendable. But you’re not quite finished yet.”

She folded her hands, turning her head to scan from side to side. “As I’m sure many of you remember, the traditional final exam for the first year as a whole involves a climbing expedition into the Serpent Spire. Normally, this involves a group of five students entering with a teacher. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to hold that exam this year.”

There was a murmur in the crowd.

The chancellor waved a hand. “Quiet.”

It was surprisingly effective, nearly instant. I felt a tingling in the back of my mind…some kind of mental attunement at work?

Whatever the effect was, it was so brief that I didn’t have a chance to analyze it or try to chase it out of my body. It was already gone.

Out of curiosity, I activated my attunement. I immediately regretted it.

I couldn’t see the chancellor’s aura through the haze of thousands of others.

I turned it right back off, rubbing my eyes.

The chancellor continued. “The reasons for the change are unimportant, but they have required the implementation of a replacement exam. Over the next two weeks, groups of students will be sent to complete their final examinations. Vice Chancellor Bennet will provide the details.”

She stepped back, allowing the vice chancellor — once again in a military-style uniform — to step up to the lectern to speak.

The vice chancellor’s expression was always stern, but he looked unusually grim today. His eyes showed exhaustion, and his jaw looked like he’d been clenching it tight.

He took a deep breath before speaking. That probably wasn’t a good sign. “The spire test is what normally separates students who are merely academically proficient from those who are truly ready for the next step in their training for service. You’ve all survived simulated spire exams throughout the year, but a few hours in a test room can’t show how you’d survive in a dangerous environment for an extended period of time.”

The vice chancellor paused, taking another breath. “For this examination, you will be broken down into teams of five. Those of you who still have an existing team that has survived up until this point will retain that team. Your team will be assigned a second-year student and given a deployment date. On that date, you will be sent into a training facility to the north of campus.

“You will be given an assignment and seventy-two hours to complete it. You will be expected to pack equipment for surviving in the wilderness for three to ten days. You will be briefed for your mission when you are on-site, and mission-specific equipment may be provided to you at this time.

“This test will be a culmination of everything you have worked on this year. You will be graded not only on the successful completion of your mission, but also any casualties to your team, your efficiency, and your judgment.” He turned to the chancellor, nodding to her.

The chancellor stepped back into position. “Your deployment information should have been delivered to your rooms this morning. If you have not yet received it, you can check with the administration department. Deployment dates will vary, but they begin in two days. While you all have done well to reach this point, bear in mind that last test will be your hardest, and you would be wise to earn any additional points you can through other means. Your graduation is not assured, but if you work hard, it is achievable. Good luck. You are all dismissed.”

With that, we dispersed.

Sera nudged me. “I’m going to go check my mail. Strategy session back at home in a few?”

I nodded mutely. We walked together toward the dorms for a few minutes, splitting off when our buildings were in different directions.

I was still a little hesitant to go back to my old dorm room. Not because I had any real fear of assassins at this point, but because I still wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of running into Jin again.

I was feeling a better about him after we’d done the whole thing with finding the Blackstone Bandit’s crew together, but there was a part of me that also felt like any sort of renewed trust in him was a trap.

I needed to sort through that at some point, but I wasn’t quite ready to talk to him again yet.

And I definitely wasn’t ready to to potentially spend seventy-two hours with him during our next test. That was going to be challenging.

Aside from Jin, I was still worried about the possibility that people were watching my room. I checked the area first, but I didn’t see anyone overtly suspicious.

I cautiously made my way inside.

Nothing inside the dorm itself looked to have been tampered with, but I found multiple pieces of mail that had been slipped under the door.

Most of it was junk, simply because I hadn’t visited in a while.

There were three things of note.

First, I found the deployment assignments.

Deployment Date: Snow 8^th, 413, 7:00AM

Platoon Designation: Serpent Epsilon

Platoon Assignment:

Students are expected to meet with their supervisor at the Beaufort Train Station at the date and time listed above. Tickets to the station nearest to your training area will be provided.

Details on your mission assignment will be given when you reach the training area.

It was Snow 3rd, so we had less than a week before our deployment. We were probably in the second or third group, depending on whether or not they deployed people in overlapping groups or not. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Next, I had a few report papers listing my grades for various classes. I found the most recent overall report.

Cadence, Corin (Enchanter)

First Year

Overall Class Ranking: 987/8112

Phoenix Division Rank: 188/1564

Current Point Total: 584

Class Scores:

My scores were pretty respectable. I still wasn’t quite in the top 100, but I was in a healthy spot in the class as a whole.

My mana manipulation score was amazing, though. That must have been what Professor Edlyn had been talking about when she’d given me that ominous line about hearing about my score soon. I’d been worried about nothing; she’d just been talking about rewarding me with an extremely high grade.

That was a relief.

My overall grades still weren’t going to be high enough to please Father, but I wouldn’t have to be completely ashamed, either.

There were two remaining hurdles.

The first was Spider Division.

If our division hadn’t reported anyone correctly, I’d lose two hundred and fifty points, or nearly half of my total. I didn’t think that would put me below the passing threshold by itself, but it would hurt.

And more worryingly, our scores for this year would serve as our starting point for next year. I needed to plan for that as well. Starting out in a weak position for the following year was unacceptable.

The second hurtle was this new exam.

From the way the chancellor had been talking, I suspected a poor performance would result in failing out of the school outright.

Even a mediocre performance might include a significant point loss. That was also unacceptable.

I needed successes both with Spider Division and the next test to ensure I had the best score possible going into the second year.

But first, I had one more piece of mail.

My Dear Corin,

As you have no doubt already heard, matters in Dalenos have been somewhat tumultuous of late.

I have been rendering what aid I can to their beleaguered government, and as such, I remain indisposed for the time being.

My hope is to visit you shortly after the conclusion of your school semester.

I will once again remind you to avoid any dealings with Keras Selyrian. While I have been informed that he has been cleared from his criminal charges, he is nevertheless an extraordinarily dangerous individual.

There are also some family matters I need to discuss with you, but that conversation will best be held in person and in private.

You will be in my thoughts.

Love,

Your Mother

The letter’s date indicated it was sent just a week ago, so fortunately, I hadn’t left it sitting in my apartment for long.

There was…quite a lot to think about from that.

Most of it I didn’t want to think about, but it was too important to ignore.

There had been an attack in Dalenos just after I’d gotten out of the spire. The grand cathedral — a major center of worship — had been destroyed.

Dalenos was a theocracy, largely ruled by Katashi directly. They had an emperor and an empress, but those were largely ceremonial figures, at least in my limited understanding. Katashi and his priesthood had the real power.

Mother had left for Dalenos before that explosion had happened.

Had that been a coincidence?

…Or was she involved?

I couldn’t discount anything at this point. Now that I knew my brother was involved with the kidnapping of Tenjin, it was theoretically possible that other members of my family could be involved in similar affairs.

Moreover, Mother had approved the expedition in which Vera and Echion had entered the Serpent Spire. That meant she at least knew something about the god beast attunements. I didn’t know how much she’d been told, but given the other facts, it was likely her knowledge was significant.

Mother was also suspiciously powerful. She’d been in the council room during that vision I’d seen in the memory crystal Jin had given me, and she’d put up a good fight against Keras. She clearly had two attunements, and at least one of them was probably Emerald-level. As far as I knew, that put her in about the top ten people in Valia in terms of raw power.

I knew she’d spent many years in the military before I had been born, but Father had always been the one who was obsessed with fighting ability. When, how, and why had she gotten that powerful?

I hadn’t even known she had a second attunement — she’d just been an Elementalist when I’d been growing up.

What was going on with her?

I wanted some real answers. Unfortunately, she was abundantly clear that she didn’t want to talk about family matters until we could see each other in person.

Instead, I found Sera and asked her to talk to me in private.

“Read this real quick.” I handed her the letter.

Sera read it over, then handed it back to me. “Not sure how this applies to me.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the issue. I just find it…odd that she was in Dalenos at the time the cathedral was attacked. Could she have known?”

Sera frowned. “Think you’re chasing dragons, Corin. Your mom is in Dalenos all the time. She’s been visiting there for years.”

“Years?” I rubbed my chin. “Why?”

“Climbing, of course. She mostly climbs the Serpent Spire, but she’s been going up to the Tortoise Spire a lot over the last few years. Their culture encourages climbers more, so it’s easier to find groups for an expedition. Therefore, you get a lot more veterans, and it’s easier to climb higher.”

I’d known the parts about the Tortoise Spire having more veteran climbers, but I…hadn’t even realized that Mother was a climber. “What’s she been climbing for?”

“You can’t seriously not know that. Did you never read her letters?”

I frowned. “This didn’t say anything about the spire. Neither did the one that she sent earlier this year.”

“I don’t mean those. I’m talking about the ones we sent you back at home, before we came here.”

“I…” I felt my hands balling into fists. “I haven’t gotten any letters in years. Not from her or from you.”

Sera’s eyes widened just a little. “You mean… I always thought it was weird that you stopped replying a few years ago, but I just assumed… I thought you didn’t want to hear from me.”

I stood up, my fists tightening further, and turned toward the door.

Sera stood up, too. “What are you doing, Corin?” She sounded alarmed.

“I’m going to go punch my father in the face.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. I spun, just barely restraining my urge to take a swing.

It’s not her fault.

I took a breath, stumbling back a step.

“Corin. Calm down.”

“No.” I shook my head. “For once, I’m not going to be calm. This is not okay, Sera.”

“Maybe something just happened with the mail—”

“We both know that isn’t true. Magnus — reshing — Cadence has been screening my mail. Apparently, for reshing years.”

I punched a wall.

I barely felt it, but Sera took a step back, raising her hands defensively.

I processed that, taking a breath and lowering my hands. “Sorry, Sera. I’m not angry at you.”

“Okay, but you’re still scaring me a little, Corin. This isn’t like you.”

I balled my fists again, but I didn’t strike. “Resh it all. I trusted him. I thought Mother had abandoned me. I thought you had abandoned me.” I shook my head. “I sent you letters, too. Both of you. More than once.”

“We never…”

I nodded. “I know. I sent them by handing them to Father, because he always was the one who went to the courier’s office. He probably destroyed them just like he destroyed the ones you sent me. Or maybe he just read them and laughed.”

“Corin…”

My mind was running calculations it probably shouldn’t have been.

At my best estimate, Father was a Citrine-level Shaper. Provided he hadn’t been getting stronger somehow like Mother had.

I had no chance of beating him in a fair fight.

But as I’d discovered with Jin, it was quite possible to beat someone of a higher attunement level if I wasn’t fighting fair.

It wasn’t that I wanted to kill my father. I wasn’t in that frame of mind.

I wanted to hurt him. To humiliate him. To make him understand how much of a monster he was for keeping me away from the rest of my family for all this time.

And a part of my mind was angry at Mother, too.

Letters were great. Maybe she cared for me just a little bit more than I thought if she’d been writing all this time.

In some ways, that hurt more than if she’d abandoned me completely.

I’d been worth scribbles on a piece of paper, but not enough for a visit?

It had been three years since I’d seen her in person.

Three. Years.

Letters didn’t forgive that.

Maybe she’d written some excuses in there, offered a few pitiful explanations.

But ultimately, she could take train rides up to Dalenos — apparently repeatedly — but not make time to visit her son.

Why?

What was so important that she’d be climbing spires rather than visiting her son?

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just… I can’t.”

I fled the room.

* * *

I didn’t jump on a train to Hathridge to go see my father, as tempting as that prospect was.

Instead, I went to Keras’ room and knocked on the door.

He opened it a few moments later, looked me up and down, and gave me a quizzical expression. “Corin? Is something wrong?

I lowered my head. “Yes. I need to be stronger.”

Keras paused, then slowly nodded.

“I think I can help with that.”

* * *

We didn’t bring Marissa with us this time.

I stood on the rooftop across from Keras, hand on Selys-Lyann’s hilt.

I’d told Keras that I wanted to be stronger, and that was true — but there was a part of me that was just itching for a fight.

“So,” he began, “What did you want to practice?”

An image flashed in my mind, something I’d been trying not to think about since I got to the school.

The smirk on my father’s face as I spat blood on the stone and struggled to push myself to my feet, my arms and legs covered in cuts and bruises.

It wasn’t a particular incident I was remembering.

It was an ordinary day of “training”.

“Teach me a way to defeat an opponent that’s much more powerful than I am.”

Keras nodded, looking contemplative. “Lots of ways to do that. Given your skill set, the most obvious answer is ‘prepare’. You already seem to be doing quite a lot of that.”

I shrugged a shoulder, half-agreeing with him. “I am. But I’m already reaching the point where I’m carrying so many items that the auras are going to start interfering with each other soon. I can be more efficient about that, getting stronger items instead of a bunch of little ones, but I can’t carry hundreds of items for every possible scenario.”

“Doesn’t the box help with that? Seems like it’s perfect for what you’re describing.”

“It is, but I don’t want to rely on it. Other people are going to want to take it from me if they find out I have it. And as you’ve pointed out, I won’t be able to keep it forever. If Wrynn is alive, she’ll probably want it back eventually.”

“Oh, she’s alive. I’m sure of it.” He paused, glancing away for a moment. “Anyway, you’re right that the box isn’t a permanent solution. Okay, we’ll talk about some solutions that don’t involve making a hundred items.”

“Thank you.”

“Get your transference sword, I have an idea.”

I went and retrieved the sword, setting Selys-Lyann down nearby.

“Toss it here for a second.

I threw him the sword.

Keras drew the blade, glancing it over. “Good balance. But more importantly, the aura should work for our purposes.”

He sheathed it and tossed it back to me. I caught it without difficulty.

Keras drew a training sword. He always left his other sword — the one with the silvery aura he’d used against Katashi — in his scabbard.

“The foundation of most of my sword techniques is the manipulation of my aura. I use it in a variety of ways, the most basic of which is simply reshaping my aura into a cutting field, like what I taught Marissa.”

I nodded. “But I can’t do that, since I can’t manipulate my shroud yet.”

“Right. But you can manipulate the aura of an existing magical weapon. I’ve seen you do it. You’ve got a technique similar to my cutting wave. The one where you swing it, and you project a wave of force.”

“Sure. I just push some transference mana through my hand, which reacts with the aura around my sword and pushes the sword’s aura outward.”

He shook his head. “I think you’re doing a little more than that, even if it’s not conscious. If it was just making two auras collide, your blade’s aura would shift, but it wouldn’t fly outward in a crescent shape like that.”

That…made a degree of sense, but I didn’t think I was doing anything else.

Keras swung the practice sword in the air, and a wave of energy rippled outward. “When I cut the air like that, I’m not just slamming my aura into something and hoping it’ll go the right way. I’m shaping my aura into a blade and projecting it in the direction I’m thinking about. My intent determines the dimensions of the shockwave and the direction it goes.”

“And you think I’m doing the same thing, subconsciously?”

“Right. Which means that you have the ability to shape transference mana, at least to a limited degree.”

I frowned at that. “I have to be able to manipulate mana to force it outward, but only when I’m physically touching it. I had a little stronger sense for mana while I was inside the spire — the air was so thick with it that I could move the ambient mana just a little. But…” I drew the sword, inspecting the aura. “I don’t think I can do anything with this aura. Not without cutting my fingers off, anyway.”

“Well, figuring out how to protect yourself from your own weapon’s aura would be a good training exercise. But for the moment, I think I have a theory on how you’re doing what you’re doing.

“The first type of thing I learned to shape was metal, and at first, I couldn’t shape it unless I was touching it. The way I learned to work around that was to use a piece of metal — like a sword — to touch whatever I wanted to shape. That made a sufficient connection for me to manipulate the target.”

I pondered that. “You think that, in the instant my transference mana is touching the aura of the blade, I have enough of a connection to shape the blade’s aura?”

“Exactly.”

“Huh.” If that was true, how could I use that? Would that be applicable to other types of mana as well? Could I figure out how to reshape other forms of mana by connecting them with mine?

If that was possible, it was going to open up a lot of doors for me in the long run.

But I couldn’t get too far ahead of myself. All we had for the moment was a hypothesis. “Okay, can we test that?”

Keras nodded. “Sure. It’ll be good to figure out how much control you have. That can help determine what techniques I can teach you right now. Try this.” His aura stretched out over his sword, then he swung it in the air. A shockwave flew out as expected, but it veered sharply to the right, rather than directly following the trajectory of the swing.

I immediately understood just how useful that kind of technique could be. Everyone would expect an attack to come directly at them — if he could make a shockwave curve off to the side, that was an extremely useful trick in itself. He could anticipate someone’s attempt to dodge, or hit another enemy entirely.

What else could he do?

I was extremely curious, but I needed to focus.

I tried mimicking him, swinging in mid-air and pushing mana out of my hand as usual. The shockwave went straight forward before I could actively concentrate on guiding it another way. And once the shockwave was free of my sword, I couldn’t sense any connection to it.

But I could sense one, ever-so-briefly, when my mana and the sword’s aura met. Keras was right. It was faint, near instantaneous, but a connection was there.

I tried it again and again, but with the same results.

I’d trained myself with my expectations for how the attack was supposed to work. In order to get it to behave differently, I had to find a way to reshape not just the mana, but how I was thinking about the attack.

“Try thinking about me as your target,” Keras suggested, “But I’m going to stand off to the side, rather than in front of you. Swing forward, but try to guide the shockwave toward me.”

I nodded. I wasn’t even going to mention that a success would mean an attack coming straight toward Keras. I knew by now that my attacks were no threat to him. He was clearly specialized in offensive combat, and he didn’t have a traditional shroud, but I was confident he could knock my attacks out of the air with his bare hands if he felt like it.

Even with a target in mind, forcing my attack to arc was surprisingly difficult. I swung and swung, pushing shockwave after shockwave out of the sword.

In the end, it was a moment of frustration that did it. I didn’t think about it — not consciously, like I’d been trying to. I just swung and wanted the aura to move.

And it did.

It didn’t get anywhere near Keras. Not due to his extraordinary skills, but because my aim was way off. The wave curved so hard to the left that it almost made a circle, and then flew off into the night air to dissipate.

It hadn’t been close to what I’d been looking for, but it had worked.

At least in the loosest possible sense. I’d gotten my shockwave to move in a different way, and that meant I could connect with my sword’s aura.

And that was where the real training started.

* * *

I only had a handful of days left before my final exam.

I threw most of that time into learning sword aura manipulation techniques.

Once I was in a little better state of mind, Keras went and grabbed Marissa to join us. She was already working on similar techniques, but using her own shroud rather than a weapon’s aura.

I planned to switch to using my shroud once I had the ability to work with it, but for the moment, this was excellent practice.

Keras nodded to us as we began our next lesson. “You both seem to have a solid grasp of the basics of manipulating your aura blade…even if Corin is still cheating a bit.”

I smirked. “I’m always walking the line between cleverness and cheating. If good tactics qualify me as a cheater, I’ll take that label and wear it with pride.”

After some trial and error, I’d figured out that only being able to sense the aura for an instant wouldn’t give me the kind of fine control that I needed in order to aim one of those blade shockwaves properly.

To fix that, I’d practiced manifesting a tiny thread of mana connecting my hand to the rune that generated the transference aura. Maintaining the thread required a tiny amount of my mana, but it created a persistent connection that let me sense and manipulate the aura freely.

Keras rolled his eyes at my remark. “We’re getting started. I’ve got something a little different in mind today. Marissa, make a blade aura.”

Marissa bent her knees in a combat stance and extended her right arm. The shroud enveloping her body shifted, with the section around her arm shifting and elongating into a blade-like shape.

When she’d first practiced this, the blade aura had only extended about the length of a hand. Now, it was a solid two feet, giving her reach comparable to holding a short sword. That made it more difficult to use, but vastly more dangerous. Presumably, she’d continue learning to extend it further as her skill level increased.

“Good. Corin, you can draw your sword as well.”

I followed his instructions, then focused for a moment to create a thread of mana connecting to the rune. After that, I fell into a default guard stance.

“Now, both of you, slash. No need to project a wave.”

We slashed through the air. I grinned as I heard the whirring noise from the mana moving through the air.

Magic was awesome.

“Now, let’s say you hit someone with that slash. What portion of the blade aura is actually going to be impacting the target?”

“Not much,” Mara replied. “Prolly less than ‘alf. It’s a double-sided blade aura, and we’re only hittin’ em with one side.”

Keras snapped his fingers. “Precisely. There’s nothing wrong with using a double-edged blade aura as your starting point. In fact, I encourage it, especially when you’re still learning control, or if you’re fighting too rapidly to adjust it. But you can adjust it.”

I lifted my own sword, pondering. “Mara could make a single-edged blade and save mana, sure. But this sword is already emitting mana all around it. That’s just how the runes work.”

“I’m not talking about saving mana, although that’s a valid approach.” Keras grinned, lifting his own practice sword.

I activated my attunement. I could see his aura just a little bit without my attunement active, but it was much easier while it was on.

Keras projected his aura over the practice sword, mimicking the style of my own blade. Then, as I watched, the aura shifted — with one half of the blade’s aura moving to overlap with the other half.

I blinked as I realized what was happening. “You’re pushing all the mana into one side so that it hits harder.”

Keras nodded, then shifted his stance with the point facing toward us.

The aura, too, shifted — until nearly the entire aura was concentrated on the point. “I call it aura compression. It’s similar to what Mara does when she focuses mana in her hands before she punches someone, it’s just to a greater extreme.”

“And my whole hand ain’t hittin’ anyone. It’d be more like if I just put my mana right on knuckles.” Marissa flexed her fingers on her left hand. “I should try that.”

“I’d be careful with that,” Keras cautioned. “When you’re focusing mana in your hand, you’re also reinforcing it so that you don’t break your fingers. You might be able to concentrate some more on the points of contact, but don’t abandon the rest of your hand entirely. With the blade aura, though, it’s extended beyond your hand — you don’t need to worry about hurting yourself. You can make the aura as dense as you can manage. Try it.”

I pushed the mana on my blade. The transference sword was a saber, meaning it only had a single striking edge. Moving all the aura to one side was an intuitive choice, and I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t considered it earlier. Everyone always seemed to have double-sided blade auras, regardless of the style of sword, so I’d just sort of assumed it was normal.

Always question everything.

It was a core part of my philosophy, but that didn’t mean I was perfect at it. I was only human.

Maybe that was something I could improve on eventually, too.

The blade aura moved easily enough, but it was powered by runes that were designed to continuously emit energy all around the sword. The moment I stopped concentrating, the aura snapped back to its original shape. And every moment I pushed on the aura, it took up just a little bit of my mana.

Someone like Keras probably had hundreds or thousands of times my mana. He didn’t have to worry about the cost of shaping an aura.

But for me? I’d have to figure out a smarter way to use this technique.

I swung in the air experimentally, concentrating as I moved the blade.

I imagined an opponent — and in the moment before I made contact, I pushed on the blade aura, compressing it.

For just a moment, the transference aura overlapped with itself, giving it twice as much force.

Good.

I repeated the process, cutting and thrusting.

I could see numerous applications for this.

Focusing the blade aura to add more force was a great offensive strategy, but if I could manipulate the aura of a blade, I could do it with other auras, too.

“Mara, punch me real quick.”

Marissa turned away from practicing with her own aura blade and grinned at me. “Sure!”

I chuckled. “You don’t have to sound that excited.”

Marissa waved a hand dismissively. “S’ what friends are for. Got a particular place you want me to hit you?”

Keras looked on with raised eyebrows.

I shook my head. “Surprise me.”

She jabbed me in the ribs before I was ready. I doubled over in spite of both shield sigils and two shrouds protecting me.

“Oh, goddess! Was that too hard? I was expecting you to have a trick or somethin’.”

I raised a finger and motioned for her to wait while I coughed. “Just…wasn’t…ready…” I took a breath, activating the ring of regeneration. She probably hadn’t hurt me seriously, but the ring gave me an immediate feeling of relief from the pain.

I straightened, bracing myself. “Okay, one second.” I took a breath.

Then I extended another thread of mana from my hand, touching a different rune. “Okay, let me try this.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated, pushing mana through the thread.

The barrier that Marissa had just cracked began to mend itself back together.

Marissa blinked, watching the cracks in the barrier disappear. “How’re you doin’ that without touchin’ the sigil?”

“I made a tiny thread of mana and attached it. It connects my attunement to the sigil, letting me feed power straight into the sigil and keep my hands free for other things.”

“Ooh, that sounds useful! Wish I had transference mana so I could do the same thing.” Marissa grinned. “Shame you still can’t take a punch, though.”

I groaned. “I said I wasn’t ready.”

“You came up with that just now?” Keras raised an eyebrow at me.

I shrugged a shoulder. “Seemed like an obvious application of your technique.”

“It might be for you, but not everyone is as good at extrapolating from existing styles as you are. You’ve got a good tactical mindset. I’ll try to keep teaching you more foundation techniques like that, and hopefully you can continue to expand on them when you need to.”

Was he…complimenting me?

I wasn’t sure how to handle that. I wasn’t used to teachers being…well, nice.

“Uh, thanks?… So, what’s next?”

“Next, you practice what I just taught you. Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. I noticed you refocusing your aura mid-swing — that’s a good exercise. Get used to doing it. Eventually, you’ll be able to do it almost unconsciously, and that’ll make it harder to predict.”

Marissa rolled on her heels. “Okay, but what’s going to be after that?”

Keras scratched the back of his head. “Haven’t thought that far. I’m…not really used to teaching people my fighting style. Maybe spell striking? No, you’re probably not going to get a lot of use out of that yet. Blade splitting would probably be the next logical step. Or spell cutting. Or maybe aura extension?”

“Ooh, blade splitting. I like the sound of that.” Marissa grinned, turning toward me. “Well, Cadence? You want to try mixing this into a little sparrin’?”

I shifted into a defensive stance. “You bet. Let’s get started.”

* * *

We kept practicing, but Keras didn’t teach us any more of those interesting — if unusual — sounding techniques before it was time to get ready for our final exam.

We did, however, get considerably better at aura compression. And, in my case, I got in a more practice with recharging my shield sigil with mana threads, too.

I drowned myself with practice. It was easier to do that than to think about the possible implications of what my mother was really up to, or about the things my father had hidden from me.

We had a couple brief strategy meetings, but without the details of our mission assignment, we didn’t have much to go on.

Sera and Patrick gathered a little bit of information from other students — we weren’t strictly forbidden from discussing this test like we had been with the fake spire exams.

Unfortunately, no one knew much about it until some of the first students came back from their tests. And every group Sera talked to was given a completely different scenario.

One team was told to reinforce a fortress that was under siege. Another was given the assignment to attack that same fortress and steal a flag from it.

Another team was sent into a wilderness area and told to search for a magical item. That sounded similar to the test I’d taken with Marissa, but much larger in scale. And they’d been attacked by monsters repeatedly. Actual monsters, as far as they could tell.

That made me a little nervous. I stopped by Researcher to ask her for information — one of my new favorite “clever bordering on cheating” tactics — but apparently this test was so new that nothing had been filed on the assignments of specific groups. The teachers were making them up on a day-to-day basis.

We tried to glean what we could from the returning teams, but we didn’t learn much else. As such, we made our preparations as broad as possible.

I considered some options for enchantments I could work on in the last couple days, but I’d been spending most of my time on practicing spells and combat, rather than saving up money. I couldn’t afford many more raw materials, so I didn’t have a lot of options to work with.

I wanted to upgrade the standard shield sigils and bring them up to the same level of power as the phoenix ones, but they were standard school issue and we weren’t allowed to tamper with them.

The phoenix sigils were already close to their mana capacity, so I couldn’t safely upgrade them much further, either.

Instead, I convinced Keras to help me out a bit.

I handed him a small stack of coins.

“You want pure silver?” He asked.

“Yep. It has the best enchanting capacity per volume of anything we have on-hand. Unless you can make valden?”

He shook his head. “I can change some of the properties of a material, but I’m not sure what that would do to the enchantment capacity on it. Might make it better, might make it worse. Probably not worth the risk.”

I nodded. “Just extract the silver from the coins, then.”

“That’s easy enough. You want the results in any particular shape?”

I handed him my phoenix sigil. “You can use that as a mold.”

The coins we were using weren’t pure silver, but they had enough silver content that he could easily separate it from the rest of the metal and reshape it into what I wanted.

After that, I actually went to the Divinatory and did what I was supposed to be doing from the beginning — I had them run tests on the metal to check the enchantment capacity. I didn’t want to take the risk that Keras’ manipulations had somehow altered the metal in a way that would make it unstable.

And it was always good to know if Keras was really doing what he claimed, too. I didn’t have a lot of reason to distrust him on this subject, but I always liked to verify things in general.

The metal was perfect. It was, as Keras claimed, perfectly pure silver.

Silver had roughly twenty times the capacity of copper for an object of equivalent size. The phoenix sigils I’d made before weren’t pure copper, but they were close.

That meant these new silver phoenix sigils were going to have plenty of mana capacity to work with. More than I could possibly fill at my current skill level, which was good.

I wasn’t going to have time to make a full set before the test, but I got to work.

The first enchantment was an upgraded shield. The next level of barrier had twice the total capacity of the previous phoenix sigils, and four times that of a standard shield sigil.

Next, I added a higher tier version of the self-recharging rune, which would allow these sigils to recharge within the same period of time as the old ones.

Finally, the hardest part — a regeneration enchantment. I’d barely been practicing with life mana, but I knew how to use it now, and that meant I could make basic healing and regeneration enchantments without crystals.

Up until this point, I’d only had two regeneration items to work with — the ring being the strongest, and the bracer I’d made by transferring the mana from the healing rock. Ultimately, I wanted everyone in my group to have some form of healing. Anything else was irresponsible.

Also, it fit the phoenix theme. That was important.

The best I could manage was a higher-end Carnelian enchantment, which made the regeneration function comparable to that of the bracer, but much weaker than the ring of regeneration.

I still was concerned about wearing too many regeneration items at the same time, especially when I was working on enchanting. I hadn’t forgotten what had happened with my hand. Still, regeneration was too useful of an ability to ignore. I just had to be a little more conscious of how much I was pushing myself while I was wearing regeneration items.

I had a couple options on how I could distribute the items. Giving four out of five people a regeneration item of some kind was a good option, but keeping the ring in reserve for emergencies was another idea.

I also considered giving the ring and one of the new sigils to Marissa, since she was our front line fighter, and thus the most likely to take a lot of damage.

Ultimately, after a discussion with the rest of the group, I went with spreading the healing out as much as possible.

Marissa and I wore the newly-made silver phoenix sigils. We were the most likely to be in close-range combat, and thus we needed the strongest shields we could get.

I gave the regeneration bracer to Patrick, and the ring of regeneration to Sera.

Patrick and Sera both tended to burn through their mana quickly, so they were both good options for the mana regeneration bracer. I ended up giving it to Patrick, simply because we still weren’t comfortable with the idea of feeding more mana into Sera’s body from an outside source, even if we were confident it was pure.

We still weren’t allowed to bring the extremely dangerous magical weapons for this test, so that meant leaving Ceris, Selys-Lyann, and the Dawnbringer replica behind.

As such, I held onto the transference sword, and I handed the demi-gauntlet off to Sera. She was getting used to casting spells again, but having a weapon to use was helpful. She took an ordinary dueling cane, too, just in case.

After that, I had another decision to make.

Was I willing to use the Jaden Box during this test?

Using the box would potentially save our entire team from having to carry camping equipment, as well as other general supplies. The Jaden Box theoretically had a maximum capacity, but from what Keras explained, we hadn’t gotten anywhere close to reaching it.

It was clear we would be observed to some extent, but mostly by a second-year student, not a teacher. It wasn’t likely they would recognize the box, or understand that I wasn’t supposed to have it. But if I used it to carry all our gear, there was a high chance they would talk about that in a report to the teachers after our assignment was over.

I talked to Sera about it.

“What are the odds you could get the box officially released into your care?” Sera asked.

“Doubt it. It was being researched by Professor Orden. With Orden gone, it’s more likely they would want it returned to the Divinatory, or maybe another member of her research team. I can claim that Orden wanted me to hold onto it, but ultimately it was never really her property in the first place.”

Sera nodded. “Okay. What about disguising it?”

I blinked. “Disguising it how?”

“There are other items that can hold things in a storage space, right?”

I frowned. “Sure, there are bags that can summon linked items that are held in another location. They’re kind of the reverse of jump bells. But they summon everything around the anchor at once, and they’re also extremely expensive.”

“I’m a Summoner. You’re an Enchanter. How plausible is it that we could have made one? Maybe with some unusual altered characteristics so we could summon one item at a time?”

I rubbed my chin. “I don’t know. I haven’t really studied that type of item in detail. Maybe we could sell another student on it, but I doubt a teacher would believe it.”

“People tend to believe things if you don’t give them a reason not to. As long as we can make a somewhat plausible explanation, I doubt they’re going to dig into it. Our team is going to be carrying tons of items you made. Do you really think this one is going to stand out that much?”

I frowned. “I…don’t know. It’s too hard for me to see from an outside perspective.”

“Let’s go with a middle route, then. We’ll still all bring bags, but we’ll put most of the heavy stuff in your box. Tents, that sort of thing. If all you’re storing for us is the tents, and you summon the tents all at once, it will probably look much less suspicious. Does that sound right?”

I nodded. “Sounds plausible. I’ll see if I can study up on other storage enchantments tonight, just so I can have a plausible explanation if necessary. I’d rather still say we got the box from a teacher, though, and just not explain that it’s the Jaden Box. That would make having a higher level item more likely. One more thing, though.”

“Hm?”

“If I’m going to do this, you need to go shop for our supplies. I’m not going to have time.”

“You just hate shopping.”

“…That may true, but I’m still making you do it.”

Sera sighed. “Fine. Deal.”

* * *

I spent the rest of that evening studying storage and summoning enchantments, just as I’d promised. Much as I’d suspected, they were all higher level than I could possibly accomplish.

The most basic were Sunstone level, and those just summoned a single grouping of items that were within a few feet of an anchor.

Higher level enchantments were required for longer range, for a higher summoning area of effect, or for transporting larger objects. More importantly, however, I did find that it was possible to connect a single item to multiple anchors, and to tie summoning effects to different key words for activation.

In essence, it was possible to fake most of what the Jaden Box could do with standard enchanting, at least in theory. I didn’t see any established item designs for multiple anchors, though. I was just speculating.

The Jaden Box’s function for summoning people was the hardest part to mimic, but I didn’t intend to use that, so I didn’t have to figure out a way to fake it.

Learning this all was useful — both because I did intend to make a copy of the Jaden Box for myself in the future and because it helped me realize just how potent the box was.

Even if I used high level enchantments to get similar functions, the box had the advantage of actually storing things — it didn’t need anchors in other locations. That made it far more secure and easier to use.

It did raise the questions of how and where the box was storing things. The notes had indicated that it was somehow utilizing an extra-dimensional space, which was outside of the scope of any enchantments in my books — even the advanced ones I’d taken from the restricted section.

Maybe there were higher level Enchanters or Summoners who knew more on the subject, but I didn’t have the time to ask them.

I finished my studying, packed the supplies that Sera asked me to, and went to sleep.

The next few days were going to be exhausting.

* * *

On the way to the train station, I checked my mana levels.

The Arbiter mark on my right hand was up to 138/138 mana, and the Enchanter mark on my forehead registered at 105/105. It had been about two weeks since I’d last marked down my progress, and I’d been going up by just about one point of mana per day.

That wasn’t the most I’d ever gained, but it was pretty consistent with what I’d been getting recently, and I was happy with it. It meant I was still on-track for hitting Sunstone in the following year, which would put me easily toward the top of the class.

Sera had been pushing herself hard in training, and as a result, she’d recovered substantially. Her mana was up to 44/44, which was almost twice what it had been two weeks before. At that rate of growth, she’d be back to Carnelian-level in another two weeks. It was unfortunate that she wouldn’t get there in time for the exam.

I didn’t bother checking the others — they wouldn’t have had significant changes in the last few weeks.

We reached the train station. Finding our second-year student guide wasn’t hard — she was holding up a giant sign that had “Serpent Epsilon” written on with sparkling letters.

I hadn’t even remembered our division name from the paperwork, but Sera headed that direction immediately and the rest of us followed her.

“Hihi!” The student greeted us. “I’m Katherine, but you can call me Kathy! You must be, what was it, Seiran?”

“Sera.” Sera smiled and extended a hand.

“I am so bad with names.” The student fumbled with trying to hold the sign and shake Sera’s hand at the same time, failed, and dropped the sign with a loud thump. “Ack! I am so sorry, let me just…”

Marissa picked up the sign and handed it back to Kathy. “Here ‘ya go. I’m Marissa, but you can call me Mara.”

“Thank you! And that’s a great name. I really like it.”

I could already tell that this person was extremely nice, and that she would make me horribly uncomfortable.

I was not good at handling people that were that energetic.

Still, I made my introductions along with the others. Kathy visibly jumped when Jin said his name. Apparently, he still had his Mesmer abilities that prevented him from being noticed active.

Maybe he couldn’t turn them off? It was worth asking at some point.

We boarded the train shortly thereafter. Mercifully, I was seated next to Jin, and we were both content to spend the trip in awkward silence, which was vastly preferable to awkward conversation.

* * *

When we arrived at our destination, Kathy ushered us to a waiting carriage. Not one of the Caelford horseless models — a traditional horse-driven one, which was still much more common in Valia.

We piled in. The seats were barely large enough for all of us to fit — it would have comfortably accommodated four people, not six.

Apparently, the school was willing to pay for some degree of transit, but not enough to make it comfortable.

I distracted myself from being pressed awkwardly close against my friends by looking out the window and admiring the scenery. We were outside of Beaufort now, heading north along a road from Calloway Junction toward what I presumed was the previously mentioned testing grounds.

I’d initially assumed that we’d just be going to the same area where I’d helped Marissa with her test, but this was much further to the north.

Small cities gave way to towns, and towns gave way to farmland.

The cobbled roads gave way to dirt.

The broad plains and fields of crops vanished as the carriage entered a thick copse of trees.

“Vanway Forest,” Sera explained. “We’re just south of the Vanreach Mountains. And, like the mountains, this forest is filled with monsters.”

I remembered the Vanreach Mountains — that’s where those herbs were that could be used to make a potion to heal nearly any injury. From Sera’s explanation, I surmised she’d been studying the whole area.

She hadn’t been making a big deal out of her condition now that she was able to speak and cast some spells again, but I was sure she still wanted a long-term solution. Her voice still sounded scratchy, like she had a perpetual cold, and her magic was still uncertain at best.

“This close to civilization?” Patrick asked. “Why not just move the army in to clear them out?”

Marissa scoffed. “You kiddin’? They don’t care ‘bout anyone this far from the city. ‘Sides, you think they want ‘em all gone? Monsters got all sorts o’ parts people harvest. They’re a natural resource. Soarin’ Wings keep an eye on the borders and make sure nothin’ creeps out too far.”

I blinked. I wasn’t surprised by that explanation, but I wouldn’t have expected it from Mara.

I had a tendency to underestimate her knowledge, probably because I assumed that her martial focus meant that she wasn’t much for studying. It was easy to forget that she’d been assigned to the Tortoise’s Heart, and that meant great academic scores, not just solid fighting abilities.

That explanation did raise questions, though. “If what they’re looking for is monster hides and crystals and such, why not just breed monsters in captivity?”

Marissa turned toward me while she explained. “Some people do. Got a place just off campus that breeds Ironweave Spiders for makin’ dueling tunics. Military’s got big bases where they grow all sorts of ‘em, too, both for harvestin’ and for Summoners. Most monsters don’t do well in captivity, though. Won’t breed or don’t grow as large.”

She paused, making a contemplative expression. “Might be because of different food sources, or it might be that they get more mana from the nodes out in the wild. Either way, monsters in cages or on farms never get as big. That means they’ve gotta leave some out here if they want bigger crystals, scales, that sort of thing.”

“Also means they’ve got strict monster hunting laws,” Jin chimed in. I was used to him by now, so I didn’t jump at the sound of his voice, but it was still a little startling. “That helps prevent any species from being driven to extinction.”

“It’s also why some people move out to the Unclaimed Lands. Easier to hunt monsters without restriction out there,” Patrick chimed in. “It’s just really, really dangerous.”

That explanation made a degree of sense, but it still raised more questions in my mind. Would it be possible to find a way to breed full sized monsters in captivity?

I had some moral concerns about that even if it was possible, though. Some monster species were extremely intelligent — even comparable to humans.

I had to hope that the monsters they were talking about hunting were the bestial kind, or even less intelligent, like slimes and golems. There were certainly plenty of those, too.

I was, of course, already aware that most people wouldn’t care about that distinction the way that I did.

The carriage finally halted a bit later, stopping at the base of a large stone structure. It was a jarring sight among the tall trees, which otherwise surrounded the whole area.

“We’re here!” Kathy announced. “Finally get to stretch my legs!”

We all groaned in agreement, exiting the carriage.

We bid the carriage driver a safe trip back, and I offered him a few extra coins for having to deal with the obnoxiousness of listening to teenagers banter for hours.

With that, we approached the building.

Upon closer inspection, the structure was a three-story fortification surrounded by heavy stone walls.

I saw the tower-and-wings symbol of the Soaring Wings flying from one of the two flags atop the structure, and the blue-on-black flag of the nation of Valia above it.

Kathy approached first, waving at one of the two bronze-armored guards standing out front. “Yo, Jody. These are my kids.”

“You made good time, but the other team is already here.” Jody explained. “I’ll need your team to sign in here, then we’ll head inside.”

Other team?

I already didn’t like the sound of that.

We signed some paperwork at the entrance to verify that we’d all arrived safely…and that we accepted the risks involved in this test.

Lovely.

Then Kathy led us inside.

“Stay safe out there,” Jody said, slapping Kathy on the back.

“Always do.”

For some reason, though, Kathy’s usual grin had faded. Her lips had flattened into a hard line.

* * *

The fortification had several buildings inside, but Kathy led us to the central structure. Within, she took us to a large room that looked to be a cafeteria.

Inside, we found another team waiting for us.

“Oh, ye have to be kidding me.” Marissa tensed, pausing in her step, her hands tightening.

“Well, well. I knew we were having another team join us, but this is a pleasant surprise.” Rupert Kent stood up from where he’d been eating and turned to regard us.

From the sound of his tone, he was still intent on harassing Mara, even after she’d beaten the tar out of him earlier in the year.

Without thinking, I laid a hand on Mara’s shoulder. She turned to me with a look of surprise, then took a breath and relaxed.

She gave me a nod of thanks, then I put my hand down.

It was a simple exchange, positive without any words needed. I…wasn’t used to that. But it was nice.

I couldn’t focus on that, though. I turned to look at the rest of the group. I recognized them just as easily, aside from the second-year student with them.

Loria Marshal was an Elementalist, much like Rupert and Patrick. She was sitting next to Kyra Dyson, her usual dueling partner, and one of the few duelists with the Shadow attunement.

I knew the other two even better. Desmond Vyers was a Shaper, and currently one of the top students in the dueling class. He probably had the highest overall score, maybe tied with Marissa.

The last was Roland Royce. My old friend, who had been raised to be my brother’s retainer.

I hadn’t seen him in months. From Sera’s expression, she was equally surprised, but she rushed past the rest of us to give him a hug.

They’d been getting close at the beginning of the school year. Was there something going on there?

Eh, none of my business.

“Well, it seems like some of you are already acquainted, but let’s do introductions regardless.” Kathy clapped her hands together. “Let’s form a circle and say our names.”

We followed her instructions. The second-year student for their team introduced himself as Jordan Jaldin. He was apparently a Mender.

Kathy didn’t say the name of her attunement, and her mark wasn’t visible.

“Great!” Kathy beamed. “Now that we all know each other, on to the fun part. Your mission briefing!”

Literally no one else, including the other second-year student, seemed excited about this “fun” part.

“Okay, so! For this scenario, you’re going to be sent into a simulated version of the Unclaimed Lands. Your two teams will be working together to deliver a shipment of useful supplies to a ‘new settlement’, which consists of several other teams of students. The supplies you’ll be carrying are real, and they’re going to be useful things the other students will want, so don’t lose them or let them get broken!”

Kathy folded her hands together. “Naturally, that means that there will be other teams working to steal or destroy your stuff. You see, you’ll be moving through territory known to be inhabited by servants of the Tails of Orochi. You all know who they are?”

There were a series of uncertain noises from the group, but Patrick jumped right in. “They’re a cult that worships the children of the God Hydra. They’re not as common as Tyrant cultists, but they’ve got a lot of influence. There are nine tails of Orochi, and they’re—”

“That’s good enough!” Kathy waved a hand. “They’re a cult, and some of the other students are on their team. The Tails groups will be harassing the settler groups, including your own team. We have a map that should lead us to the settlement. If we get there in time — which we should, if you don’t mess this up — you’ll be given another assignment by one of the teachers there. Any questions?”

Marissa stood up from her chair, looking nervous. “Um, why’ve we got two teams ‘ere? This a tough one?”

“Good question! No! There’s a good reason for that, but you’ll probably figure it out when you read your individual assignments. Which you have. All of you. I’ll get those handed out in a few.”

“Individual assignments?” Roland asked.

“Oh, yeah, you should probably know the rules for those. Each of you has individual tasks you’ve been assigned in addition to the main task, which is delivering the goods. Those individual tasks are just as important for your score, maybe more so — it’ll say in your papers. This is important, though.

“You can’t show your individual tasks to anyone else. You can ask for help with them, but you are not allowed to show your papers to other students. And no leaving your papers around so people can find them, either — that’s cheating.”

Why wouldn’t we be able to show our assignments to someone?

Unless…

Oh.

Resh, this is not going to be good.

“Any more questions?”

Sera stood up. “Will you and Jordan be traveling with us?”

“Yup. But we won’t be helping you unless there’s a good reason. Some of your individual tasks may allow you to ask us for specific kinds of help — it’ll say in your papers if so.”

“One more question. Do you have any estimates on how long our particular assignments will last?”

Jordan stood up. “That depends on how long you last. My friend neglected to mention this, but you’ll each be wearing a sigil monitor on your shield sigils during this exercise. If your shield sigil is depleted, it will send us a signal and your location.” He raised a hand-held device that looked like a compass, but marked with several runes.

If that could locate something based on a signal from another item, I definitely wanted to study it later.

Jordan pocketed the item and continued his explanation. “If that happens, we’ll find you and make sure you’re safe, then signal the Soaring Wings to send someone to escort you back to safety. You’ll be done with the test. Needless to say, if this happens before you’ve finished your objective, you fail the test. If it happens after you’ve finished some things and not others…well, you’ll just have to see how you score.”

“Any more questions?”

I was thinking about some, but I decided to wait until after I’d read my assignment. If my suspicions were accurate, it was potentially advantageous for me to avoid asking questions that would give the entire group information.

Kathy retrieved a box containing several sealed envelopes. Each envelope was addressed to one of us. I accepted mine, then went and found a place to sit as far from everyone else as possible to open it.

Cadence, Corin

Platoon Designation: Serpent Epsilon

Primary Assignment: Delivery of goods to designated settlement. When you have reached the designated location, goods will be checked by your contact (see Student Supervisor for information on mission contact).

Secondary Assignment: Discover and eliminate Spider Infiltrator(s).

I had to take a deep breath before I could continue reading.

Resh. Yep, there it is.

I kept reading.

Your platoon and/or the platoon you have been paired with has been infiltrated by one or more members of Spider Division. Some, but not all, of your platoon members have been made aware of this.

The Spider Division member(s) will attempt to sabotage your primary mission, as well as the missions of other teams. For the purpose of this scenario, they are considered infiltrators working for the “Tails of Orochi” organization, who serve as the antagonists for your team during the exercise.

Even if you do not discover your primary mission being actively sabotaged, the Spider Division member(s) may be collecting information that can be passed to other Spider groups already at the settlement, or coordinating with other Tails of Orochi teams (e.g. providing them with location on your information and capabilities). As such, you should be alert at all times, and attempt to discover and eliminate these agents at your soonest opportunity.

You will be rewarded for each Spider you successfully eliminate. This includes Spider operatives in your own platoon(s), as well as Spider agents that you discover in other platoons if applicable.

You will be penalized if the Spider(s) that are associated with your platoon(s) successfully achieve their goals.

You will be penalized if any non-Spider members of your team are eliminated. This penalty will be doubled if they are eliminated directly by a Spider.

As a reminder, you may not show this paperwork to other members of your platoon. You may discuss it verbally, however, or attempt to prove your case through other means.

Good luck.

Now I had many questions.

Unfortunately, I’d been right. The more questions I asked here and now, the more information I’d be giving the one or more Spider agents in our group.

This was not the type of thing I was looking forward to.

Social engineering exercises were much closer to Sera’s — or even Patrick or Jin’s — skill set.

Which, of course, immediately made me wonder if they were the Spider agents.

Resh it.

I wasn’t going to be able to trust anyone, was I?

That was probably the point.

A classic exercise in figuring out who I could trust.

That might have been fun if I wasn’t already actively playing that kind of game every day of my ordinary life.

* * *

I pulled Kathy to the side before we left the building to ask her a couple quick questions. “My assignment refers to ‘elimination’, and you mentioned we’d be sent home if our sigils were damaged to the point that the alarm went off. What if I just took off my sigil monitor?”

“Not allowed.” She shook her head. “The sigil monitor is set up to send us an alert if you take the monitor off.”

“…And if I disabled that function, or turned the shield monitor off entirely?”

“Wow, you really like to skirt the rules. I like the cut of your jib, kid. But nah, that’s cheating. Sorry.”

I pondered that. “What about taking the sigil off entirely? I mean, we’re going to have to take it off for brief periods of time when we bathe and change and stuff anyway.”

“Sure, people will take them off for a few minutes here or there. That’s guaranteed. But you’ve gotta sleep with them on, and you can’t take them off just to avoid a way of being eliminated, sorry. If we find you doing that on purpose, you’ll be sent home. And I’d advise you to bathe with your shield on out here, even if that means just pinning it to your undergarments and keeping them on. There are actual monsters out there, and you need to stay safe. I’ll tell the others the same.”

Kathy paused. “Look, I know you’ve got to be nervous about your test scores. Everyone wants to pass. I want you to pass. Sometimes finding little tricks can make a test easier, I get that. But here? You’re working with a team. You’re not doing them right if you’re just trying to save yourself. Put that brain of yours to work on the mission.”

I nodded. She had a point.

A point that I fully intended to ignore.

My questions had never been about trying to save myself in the first place.

I just wanted to know what variables I had to work with in terms of methods of triggering and avoiding elimination.

I couldn’t ask her too many more questions or she’d get suspicious of what I was up to. “One last question. I brought my own supplies, but does this facility have a general store or something we can go to before we leave?”

“Yep. You’ll all get a chance to stop there and buy a few things before we head out if you need to.”

Excellent.

I was beginning to form the foundations of a plan. I’d brought a ton of supplies in the Jaden Box, but if I had a chance to shop, I had a few more things I wanted to pick up now that I knew what we were up against.

I headed back to the group.

I couldn’t work while I was being observed, but I could think.

And, if I was going to stay ahead of all my potential adversaries, I had quite a bit of planning to do.

* * *

As promised, we had a chance to shop for about an hour before we departed. Most people bought extra food, warm clothing, or other small supplies they’d forgotten at home.

I bought other things.

I considered trying to find the time to talk to some of my platoon members in private, but we didn’t have a good window to do it while no one from the other team was around.

From the suspicious glances I was picking up, though, I could tell at least a few people had been given similar information to my own.

Jin and Roland in particular seemed to be paying a lot of attention to everyone else…but I couldn’t tell how much of that was just my own mind playing games.

I couldn’t trust Jin about anything after what he’d done, and he’d always been mysterious.

And Roland had been missing for weeks — that clearly could have been because he’d been assigned to the Spider Division and decided to prioritize those assignments.

Of course, it could have just meant he’d dropped out of the dueling class elective. That was the only class we shared, and I didn’t keep track of him outside of class.

And even though those two seemed to be paying a lot of attention to everyone else, that didn’t mean they were Spiders…it could just as easily mean they were like me, and they’d been given an assignment to find the Spiders.

I’d be able to check them for visible tells if I confronted them, but that would let the Spiders know I was aware of their presence…and that would make me a target.

I had to weigh the advantages of talking to any individual person against the risk that they would be a danger if they were a spider.

Or, of course, I could find another way to check that couldn’t easily be traced back to me.

That would be my first move.

* * *

An hour later, we headed into the forest, now escorting a pair of wagons drawn by horses.

The wagons were filled with boxes of supplies. Given the sheer number — I counted twelve large crates per wagon — I suspected the settlement had to consist of a large number of students. Probably a hundred or more.

Since we’d presumably be joining the “settlement” once we arrived, it was in our best interests to ensure the boxes were intact, even aside from it being responsible for some of our points.

My first order of business was gathering information.

I activated my attunement and scanned the group.

Marissa, Patrick, and I currently registered as Carnelian.

Sera’s aura was colorless. She’d been Carnelian, but with her mana level as low as it was, she was registering as Quartz right now. Presumably, she’d hit Carnelian again soon, but that did mean she’d have to be careful during this assignment.

Jin’s aura was clear. I knew he was stronger than that, but he was apparently playing it safe and keeping his shroud suppressed while others were around.

On the other team, Roland and Kyra were showing up as Carnelian. The other three were either Quartz or suppressing their shrouds.

I had a hard time seeing any aura on Loria Marshal at all. Either her attunement was particularly weak, or maybe she had an item to conceal it. I did see a couple auras from magical items on her belt, but they were faint, too.

Both of the second-year students had brilliant orange auras that meant they were Sunstone-level. That put them toward the top of their class; hitting Sunstone as a student was relatively rare. I presumed we were assigned two of the stronger students because our own aggregate mana levels were higher than average.

We also happened to be two of the groups consisting of finalists from Teft’s dueling class. That probably wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe Teft had selected our two teams to match us against each other? That sounded like the type of thing he’d do.

Aside from that, I picked up on several magical auras from items the other students were carrying.

I knew the equipment for my team pretty well — no surprises there. We hadn’t coordinated with Jin, but he was carrying at least some of the things I’d enchanted for him earlier in the year.

The other team had fewer magical items, but I did notice a handful. Roland seemed particularly well-outfitted.

I could see several Carnelian-level auras emanating from things he was wearing, including a pair of canes in holsters on his hips. Upgraded dueling canes, most likely.

Was he an Enchanter himself?

That…actually would be a pretty good explanation for why he’d been skipping so many dueling classes. Dueling was hard as an Enchanter, and he might have needed to spend time on studying runes and manufacturing items for other classes.

I couldn’t confirm it right this second, but maybe it was worth asking him directly at some point. He hadn’t volunteered the information, but it was a reasonably harmless question.

I also tried to pay attention to the location of everyone’s attunement marks. That would be relevant if I had to figure out how to fight them later.

And there was very little chance I was getting out of this without a fight.

With that information in mind, I turned off my attunement and headed to the front of the wagons, where most of the others were walking.

The second-year students were the ones driving the wagons themselves. This was good for saving us the trouble, but it also meant that all the students were free to roam and observe each other. Pulling someone to the side was possible, but if I did it this early on it would be conspicuous.

I decided to wait just a little bit before trying to have any private conversations. Instead, I found a cluster of people looking at the map toward the front of the group.

“Looks like it’s about thirty miles to the settlement,” Kyra was saying. “Wagons are going pretty slow. What do you think it’ll take, two days to get there?”

“Low as a day and a half if we can keep up a good pace. Depends on how much we stop to rest. Could be more like three days if we get hit by monsters.” Sera replied. “Or Tails.”

“What kinds of precautions can we take for that?” Patrick asked.

“Might want one or two people riding in each of the wagons at all times. The weight probably wouldn’t slow them down much and they’d be able to defend against any invisible attackers that show up inside.” Kyra offered.

Patrick frowned. “Are invisible attackers really what we’re worried about?”

“It’s what I’d do.” Kyra grinned, cracking her knuckles. “I know you’d probably just throw a fireball at them or something, but we’ve got three Elementalists and a Shaper. I’m not worried about conventional assaults. Sneak thieves are far more likely to do us damage.”

“Uh, not to be too under confident here, but I don’t think having a bunch of Elementalists means we’re guaranteed to stop a magical attack from a distance,” Patrick argued. “They could hit us from any angle at any time.”

I was hesitant to jump into the conversation. I wasn’t particularly comfortable dealing with the number of strangers that were around, especially with the knowledge that we had a traitor among us. But I needed to contribute, and not just to finding the Spiders. “I can enchant the wagons with shields when we stop for the night.”

Kyra turned to me. “You can do that to wagons?”

“Sure. I can enchant pretty much anything, as long as it has a high enough mana capacity. Most types of wood don’t hold as much as metal, but given the sheer size—”

“Okay, I get it. Good. Shields on the wagons. What about the boxes?”

I nodded. “There are a lot of them, but I could probably get to them eventually.” I paused, considering. “Assuming there’s nothing volatile inside the enchantments would interact with.”

Kyra frowned. “Define volatile.”

“Some particular materials react badly to enchantments, but I was thinking more in terms of other magical items. I doubt we’re shipping a bunch of magic swords, but there’s a good chance there are alchemical goods in some of the boxes. If that’s the case…”

“Case. That’s a box pun.” Patrick snickered.

It hadn’t been, but I chuckled anyway.

I continued my explanation. “The simple answer is that I probably shouldn’t enchant any boxes with magic stuff in them. Other boxes are fine, assuming I have enough mana to get to all of them. Might not be able to tonight.”

“Okay, that’s good. Useful. Should we start putting people in the wagons now?” Kyra turned to Sera.

Sera shrugged. “Probably a little early to bother with it. We’re not likely to be attacked immediately.”

“How do we know?” Patrick asked.

“We can’t say for sure, but that would imply a team has been camping out waiting for someone to leave the base. That’s possible, but it doesn’t sound efficient, unless they were told our deployment times.” Sera brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Although it would be nice to get an idea of what level of information our attackers do have, and what their goals are. That might help give us some idea of when they might strike.”

“Don’t think we’ve got much of a lead on that, unless someone’s got info on the Tails in their packet?” Kyra looked hopeful, but we all shook our heads. “Didn’t think so, but it was worth checking. I’ll ask the others later. Maybe someone has a lead.”

“In the meantime, I suspect our best bet is to take a look at the map for likely ambush points. Maybe here,” Sera pointed a finger at a crossroads a few miles down the road, “Or any similar area. Or just right near the settlement. If they’re supposed to be harassing any team, as opposed to our team in specific, their best bet is to set up near the settlement itself.”

“Good point. We should definitely plan to be on the alert when we get close, then, and any time we’re nearing a crossroads or another major point of interest.” Kyra waved at the map. “You holding onto that for now?”

Sera nodded. “I’d like to, if you don’t mind. I’d like to study it for a few hours at least. I can pass it to you later tonight?”

“Sounds good. I’ll go check in with the others.” Kyra waved as she walked away.

It was just Patrick, Sera, and me walking with the map at that point.

I glanced to the side to check on Marissa, just to make sure that Rupert wasn’t harassing her. Fortunately, she just seemed to be chatting with Jin.

I still didn’t trust Jin entirely, but Marissa could take care of herself. She was the only one of us I suspected could reliably handle Jin in a physical fight. As long as she was watching him, I didn’t have to be hyper vigilant about what he was up to.

With that worry dismissed for the moment, I had other worries to contend with.

I already had a few strategies in mind, but it wasn’t time to deploy any of them just yet.

Any sort of traitors would be likely to act either during the middle of an attack by the tails, during a monster attack, or while most of the students were asleep.

If there were multiple of them, they’d also be looking for chances to communicate with each other.

My opportunities to counter them were going to be similar. Anytime people were distracted or asleep, I could try to gather — or place — information.

Any time I could get a single person alone, I could try to interrogate them, directly or indirectly.

I had a few key decisions to make before I made any major moves.

One, I needed to decide if I could trust any of my friends implicitly. This wasn’t a question of whether or not I could know if they were Spiders — I’d decided early on that I couldn’t prove that immediately.

Rather, it was a question of if I trusted anyone enough to cooperate with them regardless of whether or not they were a Spider.

That decision was difficult, because I did not know to what extent we would have mutually exclusive winning conditions. Was it possible for both the Spiders and the non-Spiders on the team to earn enough points to count as a success?

If so, no problem. I could work with the Spiders to ensure we each had a partial success, and enough points to graduate.

If not, that would largely disqualify any sort of cooperative plan. I was not going to let myself fail for a friend, especially if that would mean sabotaging the majority of the group to do so.

So, I needed to know if a cooperative victory was possible before making any decisions in that regard.

Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing their goals yet, and I also didn’t know the exact details of how we were scored.

That meant I’d need to anticipate how the grading process worked and try to bet around that if I used that strategy.

I judged that strategy to be too much of a risk, at least for the moment.

My second decision to make was whether or not I was going to pretend to be a Spider.

I didn’t know if the Spiders were aware of each other’s identities or not. Similarly, I didn’t know if they were aware that people knew there were traitors in the group.

If they already knew each other, it was unlikely to work. Period.

If the Spiders didn’t know who each other were, and they were also unaware that there were people who knew about them, pretending to be a Spider and luring out the other Spider(s) somehow was potentially a viable strategy.

If they didn’t know each other, but they did know that other people knew about them, it was possible I could still pretend to be an additional “undisclosed” Spider.

For the moment, I considered the risks of that strategy too high for the potential rewards, but it was definitely an option to play that way later on.

We continued walking for a few hours. I chatted with people a bit, but not about anything important.

Desmond Vyers was apparently the leader for the other team, but Kyra was giving all the orders and he didn’t seem to care. I didn’t read too much into that; it wasn’t suspicious on its own.

Since Kyra was taking the role of coordinating the other team, she spent a lot of her time talking to Sera. They decided that we’d just have one person riding in each wagon at a time after realizing just how little room there was for anyone to sit with the boxes.

The first shift was Marissa and Jin. The leaders decided they wanted as many of the ranged combatants as possible outside, just in case they had to deflect magical attacks. It wasn’t a bad call.

The hours pressed on without incident, at least at first.

We stopped for a mid-day meal after several hours of walking. Kathy took care of feeding the horses.

The rest of us strategized.

I found Sera talking to Kyra again. Sera waved me over. “We’re talking about sending Vanniv to scout ahead.”

I considered that. “That’s definitely a way to get us some information. I’d be worried about how visible he’d be if he’s flying, though. If he comes back to you to report, it could give away our location.”

Kyra pointed up, and I followed her gesture. The tree cover was pretty thick. “People don’t usually look up very often. And even if they did, they’re going to have a hard time seeing through that canopy.”

I nodded in agreement. “Fair. Might be wise to have him circle around and land behind us or something, though, then fly low to the ground to get back to us. Just in case.”

“I can do that,” Sera replied. “He’s probably going to be happy just to be able to do anything. It’s been ages since I’ve summoned him for anything other than training.”

“Can he even tell? I mean, does he sense the passage of time when he’s not summoned?” If he could, that implied a degree of consciousness, even in an unsummoned state. That was…strange.

Sera seemed to come to the same conclusion, based on how her face contorted as she considered the answer. “He always sounds like he’s complaining about how long it’s been…but maybe that’s just his personality. I can’t see how he could be keeping track of anything unless he’s summoned.” She shook her head. “Anyway, not important right now. We can worry about the details of summoning theory later.”

“Right.” I was curious, though. “Okay, you summoning him right now?”

“May as well. We’ll probably be in a static location for a while. It shouldn’t take him long to scout the next ten miles or so of the road.”

Kyra nodded. “I concur. Go ahead.”

Sera clasped her hands together. “Vanniv, I summon you.”

The winged man of stone appeared at her side a moment later.

He was notably taller than last time. Meaning, of course, that he was back to being human height.

I admit to having been slightly disappointed. The tiny Vanniv was adorable.

“Ah! Excellent. You’ve finally decided to make use of me.” Vanniv beamed, glancing around. “What have we here? A forest, a few lovely maidens?”

“Fewer maidens than you’d think, karvensi.” Kyra replied. “Unless you’re talking about yourself.”

“Ooh, I like this one. She’s got bite.” Vanniv turned his head to Sera. “Can I keep her?”

Sera folded her arms. “Vanniv, don’t be creepy.”

Vanniv put a hand over his heart. “Creepy? Banish that thought from your mind, dear. I am the epitome of wit and charm. One should not mistake my debonair—”

“Quit it.” She poked a finger into his abdomen. “We’re on a timer here.”

“Aren’t you always?” He glanced around, then took in a deep breath. “Very well. I can appreciate the change of scenery, at least. What is this, Vanway?”

Sera nodded. “Surprised you know that.”

“Unlike some people, I have a broad body of experience. And a broad body in general.” He flexed his wings. And his muscles.

It was strange that his body moved like flesh, even though it seemed to consist of stone-like material. How did that work? Did he have ordinary muscles beneath that hardened skin?

I pondered that briefly while Sera filled him in on his assignment.

“Very well. I shall miss you while I’m away, my Summoner. And you as well, Miss…”

“I’m not telling you my name.” Kyra replied.

“That’s an unusual name to go by. Can I call you ‘Not Telling’ for short?”

“Just go, Vanniv.” Sera waved a hand. “Shoo.”

Vanniv rolled his eyes. “Always spoiling my fun. Very well, I’ll be off.”

He took a running start — which was entirely unnecessary, as far as I could tell — and jumped into the air, his wings beating and taking him into the sky.

With that distraction dealt with, I debated talking to Sera about what I knew. Unfortunately, Kyra was still with her, and Kyra was the single most likely person to be a Spider in my mind.

Kyra was both powerful for her age and had the Shadow attunement, which was the classic skill set for an infiltrator. Moreover, she was making executive decisions for her team in spite of not officially being the team leader.

Perhaps that was just an assertive personality at work, but it was certainly possible she was manipulating things deliberately so that the Spiders would have an advantage.

The fact that Sera was sharing information with her so openly was a concern.

Could Sera be a Spider herself?

It felt unlikely to me. I had a hard time believing any of my friends could have gone this far into the year without telling me something like that.

But Sera had always been ambitious and goal oriented. She had a keen strategic mind, even when we were young. Could someone have discovered her talents before the year started and selected her for the Spider Division?

Or maybe I was looking at this wrong — could Spiders be selected later in the year? Even if she hadn’t been a Spider at the beginning, could she have been tapped for that role later on?

That would have made it more plausible that she hadn’t told me, especially if she’d only been selected recently.

Anyone I wanted to share my information with would be a risk. But it was a greater risk if I shared with someone who I considered better at social games and manipulation than myself. Sera definitely fit that, more so than anyone else here.

That meant that in spite of feeling closest to her, she was the most dangerous person to confide in.

Was that risk worth the potential for her help?

I didn’t know.

How could I verify if she was a Spider or not? Or anyone else, for that matter?

The simple answer was that I needed to get ahold of everyone’s paperwork. They weren’t allowed to share, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t steal it.

There were a couple problems with that plan.

One, I wasn’t a trained thief. Basic tactics like doing it at night weren’t beyond me, but everyone would be on their guard here.

Two, if they were Spiders, they could have destroyed their orders or even altered them.

Three, their orders may not have ever contained anything to out them as spiders in the first place.

Those points made trying to search through everyone’s paperwork a risk that had a high potential for turning up nothing.

But it was still my best lead, at least for the moment.

What could I do to improve my odds?

I looked around, considering everyone present.

Was there anyone I could trust implicitly? No.

Was there anyone that would be extremely useful if I got them on my side for this activity?

It was the person my eyes never quite settled on — the person my mind seemed to be forcing me to ignore — that was the right answer.

If I hadn’t been deliberately going down the team list, I wasn’t certain I would have even thought to approach him.

The effects of the Mesmer attunement were subtle. It wasn’t like the brute force effects that we’d trained against.

I was able to resist the mental effect by deliberately purifying my mana and converting more of my mana into mental mana, but only once I was actively aware I was being influenced.

If I hadn’t been aware of Jin’s attunement, I wouldn’t have thought to do it at all. That made it terrifying.

It also meant he had a tremendous advantage in this exercise — if he was on my side.

I started to walk toward him uncertainly.

A hand settled on my arm, stopping me along the way.

I flinched at the sudden contact, turning to find Roland next to me.

He raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “Sorry, Corin. Didn’t mean to startle you. Can we talk a bit?”

I took a breath to calm myself. “Yeah. Sure. Talk.”

“In private?” Roland waved to a section of trees away from the path.

“Yeah. Sure.” I took another breath. Roland walked off the path, and I followed him.

My eyes scanned him again, my attunement activating instinctively.

Nothing on him was immediately alarming. No hidden magical weapons under his clothes.

Still, I couldn’t be too comfortable with him until I knew what his skills were.

Maybe now was the time to find that out.

We walked for just about a minute before he stopped. Even with that slight distance, we were deep enough in the trees that everyone else was out of sight.

I walked to stand a few paces away from him. Far enough that I judged I could easily draw my sword before he could reach me, unless he was even faster than my haste spell was.

I tried to sound casual, but my breath was ragged with nervousness. “What’d you want to talk about?”

Roland tightened his jaw, looking displeased. “I have a secondary assignment, but I can’t complete it alone.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “And you’re asking me…why, exactly?”

He sighed. This clearly wasn’t a comfortable conversation for him, either. “Let’s just say I have a strong indication that you’d be the right one to help.”

“Unfortunately, ‘let’s just say’ isn’t going to be good enough for me right now. I have a secondary assignment, too.”

Roland nodded. “I suspected as much. This appears to be some sort of trust exercise.”

So, he’s got a piece of the puzzle, too, even if it’s not the same one.

I can work with that.

“I gleaned something similar from my own orders. Unfortunately, they also give me a disincentive to share information with people unless I know I can trust them.”

Roland raised an eyebrow at that. “You’ve known me since we were kids, Corin. Of course you can trust me.”

I shook my head. “I mean within the context of this exercise. Although, frankly speaking, I don’t know you very well anymore. We’ve barely spoken in years.”

“I…suppose I’m at fault for that, at least to some degree. We should definitely talk about that. But maybe not right now?” Roland shook his head. “Someone is going to get suspicious if we’re out here too long, and I have a feeling that conversation could take a while.”

“Agreed. For the moment, let’s focus on these assignments. Can you share anything with me about what your paperwork says?”

“Very little. I have a high number of restrictions on what I’m allowed to say and do.”

I frowned at that. It could easily imply that he was a Spider himself — and he was a good candidate for that, given how much he’d been missing throughout the year.

But it wasn’t the only explanation, and I wasn’t going to let myself get trapped in thinking about the first option I’d considered. “Okay. What can you tell me?”

“My orders told me to find the Enchanter with two attunements and discover their mission. I wasn’t aware you had two attunements, but I know you’re an Enchanter. There are other people who it could be, but I know you, so I’m starting with you.”

Dangerous to confirm that, but it’s common knowledge within my group. If he doesn’t learn from me, he’ll probably learn from someone else, unless I can communicate for them not to.

“I’m most likely the one you’re looking for. I’m not telling you my mission without some confirmation that it doesn’t interfere with mine, though.”

Roland nodded. “Understandable. Thank you for that, at least.” He turned to leave.

I blinked. That had been…abrupt. “Hold on. What’s your own attunement?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Not allowed to say. But if you do happen to find out, I’m allowed to use it around you.”

That was an obvious nudge to figure it out on my own. Unfortunately, even with my own attunement active, I couldn’t see what his mark was. It was under his clothing somewhere. Most likely the center of his chest, from the glow I saw from that area — unless he was wearing something under his clothes.

His legs were glowing, too, though. That might have meant he had a Leg Mark, or maybe he was just wearing magic boots. The sheer number of auras on him made it hard for me to tell — and that was probably a deliberate effect.

“Can you tell me which attunements you don’t have?”

Roland smiled for the first time I could remember seeing in years. “That’s a very you question, Corin. But no, I’m not allowed to imply my attunement, either. Sorry. Wish I could make this easier for you.” He shook his head. “Let’s head back. The others will be wondering about us by now.”

He sounded sincere enough, but I had to question his goals.

I thought about it more as I followed him back.

The closest thing I’d heard to a restriction about discussing an attunement was Sera’s contract with Seiryu. I hadn’t studied Summoners extensively, but it was hypothetically possible he had a similar contract with an even greater restriction.

But it didn’t sound likely.

More likely, this specific assignment had instructions not to disclose his attunement. This was clearly a trust exercise — as well as an information gathering exercise.

But even more likely than that answer? He was forbidden to discuss his attunement in general, even outside this test. Just restricting him within one test was a nearly pointless exercise — almost everyone knew each other’s attunements by this point in the year.

But Roland had never disclosed his, even at the beginning of the year. And he’d never shown it off, even during dueling classes.

That strongly implied the restriction predated this test.

So, what possible reasons were there for that?

The simple answer was that Spiders were instructed not to disclose their attunements. If he was a Spider, that was a simple conclusion to draw.

But it wasn’t the only one.

Jin had hidden his attunement because it was a foreign one — and not from a nation that he wanted to be associated with.

Roland was a Valian native. That meant he probably had a Valian attunement…but it wasn’t a guarantee.

Derek had an attunement from Dalenos. It was expensive to take a trip to another country and get a foreign attunement, but there were some advantages. Notably, both Dalenos and Edria allowed people to take attunement exams at a younger age.

That was why Jin was as powerful as he was, and it was probably a good part of why Derek was already an Emerald. Dalenos offered Judgments starting at thirteen — so, four years earlier than in Valia.

Roland was just a little older than me.

My mother had started taking trips to Dalenos to climb their spire a few years ago. Roland had been a part of her household.

Could Roland have gone with her and taken a Judgment at a younger age?

That would have explained a great deal. If he’d taken a Judgment three years ago, he could be around the same level of power as Jin and just hiding it in the same way.

I was beginning to suspect the entire monster-infested forest was just a backdrop for an intelligence gathering activity.

Or, of course, maybe I was just overthinking all this. I had a tendency to do that.

We got back to the wagons. I fetched some food from my pack, ate quickly while pondering my next move, and then settled on my original approach.

I found Jin standing at the border of the woods, eating in silence.

I walked over to him and pulled my water skin out of my pack, offering it to him.

It was the one that provided an endless supply of drinking water, so I wasn’t exactly wasting anything.

He accepted it with a raised eyebrow, taking a quick drink before handing it back to me.

I took a breath. I was so bad at this. “Thought we could talk for a minute.”

“You would technically be correct.” He took another bite of his meal — a sandwich that appeared to consist of nothing but two slices of bread and a piece of cheese wedged between them.

I chuckled. “I, uh, not about us. About the mission. Or, rather, additional missions.”

He frowned, though whether it was at the world’s most boring lunch or my words was hard to judge. “Go on.”

“I could use your help with something.”

He took another bite. “Clearly. Why else would you approach me?”

I folded my arms. “Right. First thing you can help me with is not being dramatic.”

“But it’s part of my charm.”

“No, being brooding and mysterious is part of your charm, not being dramatic. Wait. No, you’re not tricking me into complimenting you.”

“Too late.”

“Resh.” I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, Jin. We’re not dealing with interpersonal things right now. Mission stuff. Focusing now.”

“Of course.”

He was clearly enjoying teasing with me. I was not going to fall for that.

Probably.

“Okay. So, I have a secondary mission that involves gathering information. You can go almost completely unnoticed.”

“Almost?” Jin made the slightest smirk. “Think you’re underestimating me.”

I hated how much I liked that smirk. “Right, clearly you’re an impossible to detect Emerald-level Shadow. Let’s go with that. I have two assignments for you, oh-great-bastion-of-invisibility.”

“I take it that at some point you will tell me what these assignments are.”

“I’m getting to that. Ugh.” I refused to be flustered. It was ineffective. “I need you to find out what Roland’s attunement mark is. It’s probably on his—”

“Diviner.”

I blinked. “What?”

“He’s a Diviner. The mark is on his right leg. He wears enchanted pants to obfuscate the aura. I figured that out ages ago. What else?”

My jaw moved, but no sound emerged.

“Take your time.”

I sighed. “Show off. Okay, fine, why’d you figure that out?”

“Is that important?”

“Maybe.”

“I was sizing up the people who were in your inner circle for anyone who might be able to work through my Mesmer attunement. I noticed that he was the only one who wasn’t disclosing his abilities in conversation. I asked Patrick, who didn’t know either. I had Patrick ask Sera. When she didn’t know, I had to find out myself. That was more complicated and I will save you the details.”

I suddenly had an image of Jin trying to find an opportunity to catch Roland without his pants. I laughed, and that helped me feel a little bit better. “Okay. That’s fine. It’s good information. Great, in fact.”

It didn’t tell me if Roland was a Spider, but if I could trust Jin’s word on the subject — which I probably could — it meant that I had a pretty good idea of what Roland was capable of.

And it wasn’t a foreign attunement. I’d probably just been overanalyzing that one.

Still, it was refreshing to know he was most likely going to be a similar level of power to ours. That meant it’d be easier to counter him if he did turn out to be an adversary.

I cleared my head and focused on the next task. “Okay, next thing. Are we being observed right now?”

Jin scanned from left to right. “Not as far as I can tell.”

“Good. Are you a Spider?”

Jin blinked.

Then he smiled broadly, showing teeth. “Why, of course not.”

“You have to realize that is the world’s most suspicious response.”

Jin laughed. “I’m just startled it took you this long to corner me and ask. But also pleased that you did.”

“Okay, good. Because there’s at least one in the group, and they’re going to sabotage us.”

Jin’s expression shifted immediately to neutral. “What?”

“You heard me. We’ve got an infiltrator in the group. Possibly more than one. And I’d like your help to find them.”

Jin scanned the area again. “I’m revising my earlier assessment. If this is the kind of conversation we’re going to be having, we need to do it further away.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t see anyone watching us when you asked, but if you’re correct, we’re in a considerably greater amount of trouble. Anyone in Spider Division is likely to have alternate means of surveillance that would be harder to detect.”

I frowned. “Such as?”

Jin paused. “You were talking to Roland earlier. Did he touch you?”

“What?”

An image flashed in my mind of him grabbing me by the arm, then apologizing for bumping me.

Jin continued speaking, but my mind put it together at the same time. “Leg-Marked attuned use their spells by touch.”

“…And he’s a Diviner. He could be watching us right now.”

I scanned my body with my attunement active, but I couldn’t see any foreign magical auras.

That meant very little, though. I’d only studied a little bit about divination. Enough to know about tracking spells…but not enough to know about whether or not the target of an active divination spell would have a visible aura on them.

And, like Roland, I had so many magical items at this point that discerning any individual magical effect was tricky at best.

“What do we do about it if he is?”

Jin drew in a sharp breath. “If he is, he’s already outmaneuvered us significantly. He knows we’re aware of Spiders in the group, and he also knows about my attunement now. And as a Diviner, he’s one of few types of attuned that can counter me directly.”

That made sense. “Do you know how to break a divination spell that’s already in effect?”

Jin shrugged. “Distance, maybe, but we’re not going to get out of range. Time, of course.” He snapped his fingers. “Shadow magic. Shadow can nullify most magic in general, especially detection.”

“Kyra, then?”

“She’d be a possible solution,” Jin agreed. “But we don’t even know if we’re being watched. Asking her for help would mean letting her in on this, at least to some degree.”

“Fair. Perhaps for the moment, we should just proceed as if we’re being observed. Kyra is another suspect herself, and I’d rather not let her in on anything just because Roland might be watching. Besides, even if he is observing us, that doesn’t automatically mean he’s a Spider. Gathering information is a normal Diviner task.”

“I concur. But it also means we should draw this conversation to a close. I will investigate things further.”

I nodded. “So will I.”

We had an awkward pause for a moment after that.

Jin lifted up a remaining bit of sandwich. “I’m going to continue eating now.”

“Right. Bye.”

I turned and fled.

Well, I considered, that could have gone worse.

That was when the wagon closest to me exploded.