Vyers and I went to talk to Roland.
Of course, Vyers was one of the most suspicious people himself — he’d been weirdly quiet at the beginning, allowing Kyra to take charge, and now he was being much more assertive.
Maybe the explosions had just encouraged him to step up his leadership, but it was plausible there was something more than that going on.
“Roland, step away with us for a moment?” I asked.
“Sure.” Roland nodded, and we found a corner to talk in private. “You found something?”
“Yes. Can I say your attunement in front of other people?”
Roland frowned. “Sure, if you actually know it. But that was awfully quick. You sure you—”
“You’re a Diviner. Right leg.”
“That was…awfully quick. Can I ask?”
“I’ll explain later. For the moment, I’m in need of your expertise.”
“Sure. I can help you now that you’ve identified my attunement.”
Vyers frowned. “Is that part of the test somehow?”
“Not exactly,” Roland explained. “More of a broader school restriction.”
Vyers gave Roland a skeptical look.
I needed to act quickly, in case Vyers was about to stab us in the back. “As a Diviner, you can make memory crystals, correct?”
“Certainly.”
“Can you make them from other people, or just from your own memories?”
“Just my own, unfortunately. Making them from other people is a much more advanced skill.”
“That’s unfortunate. I was hoping you could make memory crystals of everyone reading their assignments.”
Vyers looked at me with an expression of surprise. “That’s…actually a pretty good idea.”
I nodded. “Ideally, that’d let us circumvent the ‘no looking at other people’s paperwork’ rule. For the moment, though, it seems we can only use it to verify Roland’s assignment.”
“I can do that. Hold on a minute.” Roland closed his eyes and opened his palm. It took him a minute or two to form a crystal, which he then handed to me. “It’s not one of the self-triggering ones. I’ll need to cast a spell on you to enable you to view it, and you’ll be incapacitated while you watch.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Let me do it in the middle of the group. Then we can pass it around.”
“Let me watch it first.” Vyers gestured to the crystal. “But still within the group. And you can watch it second. I need to make sure you don’t tamper with it somehow.”
I didn’t have any way of doing that, but that was fine. I appreciated a degree of paranoia. Respected it, even. I handed Vyers the crystal.
“Let’s go.”
We met up with everyone, forming a circle, and explained the situation.
Vyers sat and held the crystal.
Roland pressed two fingers against Vyers’ forehead. “View memory.”
The crystal shimmered.
Then we waited.
Kyra and Rupert returned while Vyers was still watching the crystal vision. “What’s this about?” Kyra asked.
We explained.
“Is this really necessary?” Rupert asked. “It’s obviously gotta be an Enchanter and an Elementalist working together. And it wasn’t me.”
“There could be any number of our members involved,” Sera replied, “Or none at all. Being able to validate that a Diviner is not a member of the opposition is extremely useful. Even if he can’t make crystals from the rest of us, Roland may have other spells he can use to gather information.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with.”
“Did you find three students?” Sera asked.
Kyra replied. “Two. But they explained they had a third with them that just got away.”
Marissa frowned and glanced at me. “Guess you didn’t hit them all quite hard enough.”
I felt just a little guilty, but if I had the chance to help that student — Ryan — escape from a situation anything like my own…
“I’ll be more careful next time.” It was the best I could manage to say.
Vyers reopened his eyes. “Think he’s clear. You all can watch, too.”
He passed the crystal to me, and Roland repeated the spell.
This wasn’t my first time viewing a memory crystal, but it was still disorienting seeing through someone else’s eyes.
At least in this case, I didn’t need to see much. The memory was from him reading the paperwork, so I just had to read what he had been reading.
There was nothing in the memories aside from the paper — I couldn’t even hear anyone talking in the background. He must have gone somewhere quiet to read.
Royce, Roland
Platoon Designation: Phoenix Omega
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: Assist the Enchanter with two attunements if you can discover their mission. Your usual requirements are applicable.
The handwriting was different from my own paperwork. He must have been given his assignment by someone different. I wasn’t sure if that mattered.
My eyes reopened a minute later.
“I don’t see anything overtly suspicious.” I handed it to the next person.
Something seemed just a little bit off, though.
Was I just being too suspicious of everything?
“Okay, while everyone else is watching that, we still need to work. We’ve lost two horses, and some of our supplies are damaged.” Sera waved at the nearest wagon. “Fortunately, the horses for the other wagon didn’t bolt, so we still have one functional one.”
“Can one horse pull a wagon?” Patrick asked.
“Not one that heavy,” Roland replied. “But we might be able to consolidate the undamaged boxes into one carriage and leave the other behind.”
“We can carry a few boxes if the horses can’t handle it all,” Marissa offered.
I turned to Patrick. “Could you levitate a wagon?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Way too heavy. One box, maybe, and even then I couldn’t do it for very long.”
“Guess we’re consolidating boxes, then, and we’ll see if they can handle the load,” Kyra offered. “Let’s have a few of us stay here and watch the people using the crystal. The rest can check the damage and pack up.
We got to work.
Vyers pulled me to the side. “I may have misjudged you. That was a wise idea. I still don’t trust you, but there’s a better chance you’re not involved. But why did his orders say to find you?”
I wasn’t sure if I should say, but at this point it was mostly out in the open. “I had orders to find the traitor — or traitors — in the group from the beginning.”
“And you didn’t think to tell the rest of us about something that important?”
“I didn’t want anyone to be aware that someone knew there were traitors. If I told everyone I knew about the infiltrators, everyone would be on their guard around me.”
“Still a bad strategy. Ten set of eyes — or even five, if we have five traitors — would have been better than yours.”
I titled my head back and forth noncommittally. “Maybe. I didn’t expect them to move this quickly.”
“Well, they did. And now we’ve gotta clean up the mess. Anything else I should know?”
My lips tightened as I considered. “Nothing I’m comfortable saying to one person at a time.”
“That, at least, I can agree with. Fine. But if you do know anything, you need to find a time to share. And soon.”