Chapter 108: The Wrong Route

Chapter 108: The Wrong Route

The final briefing was in the long lecture room of the field-instruction wing, and the roster was already pinned to the board when Silas came in.

He found his name halfway down. Team Nine: Rooke (retrieval), Cross (Star), Korr (Star). Beside the roster hung the final map, the same plan he’d stared at two weeks ago, with every team’s route now drawn on in colored ink.

He traced Team Nine’s line with his finger and stopped.

It didn’t go east.

It went north, through the propagation range and up into the old glass galleries along the conservatory’s outer wall. On the first map, those had been hatched. Now part of them was white, with a red line drawn through it and a note in Ferrow’s handwriting: Loose glass. Overgrown beds. Shield cover required.

The east side of the map, with the service court, belonged to Team Four: a pale, simple loop along the service paths, the kind of route you gave to people still learning to walk on bad ground.

He knew that loop.

He’d walked it, on a screen, years ago. Alden Cross had walked it, with a Bronze team, on a basic route that passed the service court on the afternoon of the first day and ended in a collection window right beside the old channel. That visit had put the channel on the game’s map for him, before the later task to clear it and the merchant’s new stock.

Alden wasn’t in Bronze anymore.

Silas stood very still in front of the board. He’d changed this. He’d taken Alden to Carrow Hall, and Alden had walked out with an S-Rank Talent and a seat in Star Class. Now the instructors had looked at a team with two Star students in it and done the sensible thing: given it the route that needed stronger protection. He couldn’t fault the instructors for assigning stronger students to a more demanding route. He simply hadn’t considered what that would mean for his own plans.

Fine, he thought. That’s fair. It’s also inconvenient as hell.

***

Ferrow ran the briefing quickly, because Ferrow ran everything quickly.

Two days. Supervised throughout, with instructors posted at fixed points. Each team had an assigned task, and that came first. Teams reported anything dangerous, protected, or restricted and did not touch it. Nobody went into a hatched area, even if an open doorway appeared to offer a shortcut. Any problem with the approved route went to the instructor at their post.

"Galleries," Ferrow said, tapping the north side of the map. "Team Nine and Team Three. Three surveys the far end. Nine clears and carries from the near end. You’ll be within shouting distance of each other most of the first day. Use that."

Team Three was Leander Solvain’s.

Leander found Silas afterward by the board, his attention moving between the roster and the route map.

"Rooke," he said. "Retrieval?"

"Retrieval," Silas said.

"Good. The galleries have beds full of old equipment nobody’s moved in years. If anything worth keeping comes out of the far end, we’ll need someone to carry it who won’t drop it." He studied the map a moment longer. "Korr can’t cover the glass and a carrier at the same time, not if both are moving. Plan for that before you’re under the panes, not after."

It was good advice. Silas noticed that Leander had worked it out from a single look at the roster.

"We’ve been practicing that," he said.

"I thought you might have." Leander glanced at the east side of the map, then back at Silas. "You were looking at the service loop as if someone had taken it away from you."

Silas kept his face still. "It looked easier."

"It is easier. That’s why it isn’t ours." Leander smiled slightly, not unkindly. "We intend to finish the galleries well, Rooke. If there’s a collection window at the end, we’ll be using it. I imagine you will too."

He went back to his own team. Silas watched him go and thought: a competent, observant prince, a hundred paces away all day, who notices which way people look. That made anything quiet harder. It didn’t make it impossible.

He went to find Ferrow before he lost his nerve.

"The collection period," he said. "Is it still on for teams outside the service loop?"

Ferrow didn’t look up from his slate. "If you finish your assigned work and get local clearance from the instructor at your post, yes. Low-risk material from marked areas only. Logged before you leave the site."

"And if the marked area’s on the other side of the conservatory?" Silas asked.

Now Ferrow looked up. "Then you’d better finish early, hadn’t you?"

***

He told Alden and Dagna in the corridor outside, plainly.

"The east side isn’t on our route," he said. "The service court’s on Team Four’s loop. If we finish the galleries and get clearance, we can ask to go across during the collection window. It’s a long walk from the north end. I don’t know yet whether the court’s even reachable from the open paths."

Alden frowned at the map in his hand. "We’re in the galleries because of me, aren’t we? Because I’m Star now."

"Because you’re both Star," Silas said. "It’s the right call. It’s just not the one I wanted."

"Then we do the galleries properly," Dagna said. "Fast and clean. And if there’s time, we walk."

"Properly first," Alden said.

"Properly first," Silas agreed. Nobody promised anything else, and he didn’t ask them to.

***

Packing took half an hour. Grip boots, a weatherproof outer layer, the first-aid pouch, two water flasks, the dart in its case. A shallow lidded box from Pell’s shop, lined with damp cloth the way the field handbook described, for anything living he might be allowed to carry home.

Nim watched all of it from the pillow.

"I’m coming," he said, before Silas could raise the subject.

"In the pocket. Like the tournament. Like the gate," Silas said.

"In the pocket," Nim agreed. "Unless I decide not to. Then I’ll tell you first." He paused. "Can I bring the bell?"

"It’s yours," Silas said.

Nim looked satisfied and went to tuck it into his little space, along with the bead, the two feathers, and the bent spoon, which apparently also needed to see Harrowglass.

Silas wet a fresh cloth and folded it loosely beside the moss on the slate, close enough to keep the air damp, not touching. Three strands now, and the beginnings of a fourth. They’d have to manage two days on their own.

Then he sat on the bed and thought about the empty slot.

Battle Evolution was still the next thing he wanted. Alden would cross this threshold sooner or later, and the recording would be there for the taking. But a copy lasted seven days and only worked inside these walls. Starting now would waste the days he spent at Harrowglass. Better to invite Alden over after they returned and begin with a full week in which he could actually practice.

After, he decided. Do one thing at a time.

His communicator buzzed. Mara.

Coach booked. I arrive two days after you’re back, and Dr Kerr has me the morning after that. I’ve been practicing with a borrowed flow plate from the town clinic, which I will explain later. Come home in one piece.

He read the line about the flow plate twice and laughed out loud in his empty room. She’d found one. Of course she had.

Two days after he got back, his mother would be here. And a day or two after that, if the timing worked, she’d sit across a table from Elyra, who had promised to eat the middle of the bread.

He wanted to be there for both. That was reason enough to come home in one piece.

Before bed, he spread the conservatory map out on the desk one last time.

The service court was still there, half white and half hatched. He traced the open paths from the north gallery toward it, checking where they joined. The map was too small to tell him whether one narrow service gate stood open or had been sealed.

He marked one thing on the map in pencil: the narrow service-path gate on the east wall, where the white half of the court met the open loop.

When they arrived tomorrow, before anything else, he’d ask Ferrow to show him that gate. Whether it was open. Whether it connected to the court’s white side at all. He’d find that out first, honestly and in daylight, before he spent a single step of a collection window walking toward a memory.

He folded the map, turned off the lamp, and lay listening to Nim settle on the pillow, the thin silver strands on the windowsill catching what little light came through the glass.