Anarchy
“You almost told him,” KiNa chided quietly after the door shut.
Master SoYa just sighed and sat down with a glum look.
“What would have happened? He would have ratted us out.” The boy waved one hand around to accent the words.
They broke across the night, scattering through the city like shadows sprung to life. The moon had not yet risen, providing them extra cover, along with their dark night-cloaks. In a sack at their side, they carried a stack of papers that would appear, as if by magic, on doorsteps, corner walls and even on the Manor door by that morning.
KiNa rushed across the stone pathways, dipping behind the vacant carts, dodging from building to building, his mind always searching for guards or anyone else that was out at that edge of night. He rarely encountered anyone on his runs, but that didn’t keep him from being careful.
KiNa’s first hunch was right – this ShiKon girl was trouble.
Even with the blindfold securely fastened over her eyes, she sauntered into the base as if she owned the place. She walked with a purposeful hip-swish that distracted the other pre-teen boys and left them staring dumbfounded, struggling with a new sort of feeling unknown to them before. She distracted the girls, too, who stopped working to whisper behind their hands at this strange girl that could turn the boys’ heads without so much as a word.
ShiKon took the blindfold off the moment the self-important spotty-faced nerd walked out the door.
Who does he think he is, ordering me around like that? As if I’m going to sit here in some strange place, wearing a blindfold until his people are ready to deal with me?
Even the light crystal began to waver with weariness as the night stretched long. Still, SoYa hunched over his desk, poring over the open tome while jotting translation notes on an ink-spotted parchment. With so much happening between the Manor and the resistance, he often found little time to work on his research during the day. So, once he was certain that AsaHi was deep in slumber, he would creep back into his study to glean what information he could from the crumpled pages.
As the weeks slipped by, KiNa found his stance on ShiKon largely unwavering – he still didn’t like her. If anything, he began to like her less and less. At first, there was the hope that she was unimpressed with the Anarchy setup, which would nudge her to go back to life on the streets (after a good old-fashioned mind wipe, of course). But that didn’t happen.
“This is stupid,” ShiKon muttered under her breath in a voice meant for KiNa to hear.
Over the past week and a half, they, along with a group of other Anarchy kids, kept close watch on the comings and goings of anything that looked remotely like trade or movement in and out of the Manor gates. Between KiNa and ShiKon, they carefully scanned imports for any sign of life. If the Manor thought to smuggle kids into the city by covering it up with other goods, two mind mages would be able to ferret it out.
KiNa had no trouble smuggling ShiKon into the Manor. Kids from the school passed through the gates every day, and the guards didn’t look twice after they identified the boy on first glance.
He quickly pointed out the door to Zemus’ office, then let ShiKon go off to do her thing. In the meantime, he hid out in Master SoYa’s office, which was thankfully vacant for the evening. The girl finally returned, just as the last light of the sun began to fade.