Maybe she’d come up with this plan before I had…and maybe..
“Vanniv, I command you to ignore any previous orders that I may have given you related to those papers. I command you to read them aloud again, without any alterations.”
He read the papers aloud again. There were no changes.
“Satisfied?” Sera asked.
“…Probably.” Kyra replied.
Kyra and Vyers were almost as paranoid as I was. I decided I liked them.
“Okay, if that’s resolved, can we have him read the rest of the papers?” I asked.
“One problem,” Rupert replied. “I lit mine on fire.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
“Actually,” Kathy added, “I did, too.”
Convenient.
But it wasn’t a bad strategy, even for someone who wasn’t a traitor, if they had any information in their documents they didn’t want getting out. It was possible I should have destroyed my own paperwork to prevent any Spiders from reading it.
“Great. Well, the rest of you, then?”
“I destroyed mine as well,” Roland added belatedly. “But you all saw me reading them.”
Most people seemed satisfied with that, but I wasn’t certain.
Vanniv read the paperwork that was handed to him after that. I felt intensely relieved that Patrick and Marissa didn’t have anything suspicious in their assignments.
I was less relieved and more surprised when Kyra didn’t have any suspicious orders. Her personal assignment was to discover the location of a hidden item in the encampment we were heading to and to retrieve it. Nothing involving Spiders.
Vanniv returned everyone’s papers to their original owners, and we packed them away.
“So, now what?” Vyers asked. “We’re no closer to a solution.”
“We are,” Sera replied. “We have at least partial verification that several people are innocent. Rupert and Kathy are now our most serious subjects.”
“Don’t blame me just because I was smart enough to take precautions against theft.” Rupert folded his arms. “And you think a second-year is a suspect? Please.”
“Actually,” I put a hand on the hilt of my sword, “I had a little conversation with one of the members of the other team after we beat them down.”
“Oh?”
I drew my weapon and pointed it at Kathy. “He said you were their contact.”
Kathy put a hand over her heart. “Me? That’s insane. I’m one of your supervisors.”
“And I have a practiced distrust for authority figures.” I took a step forward. “What’s your attunement, Kathy? You never told us.”
“Mine?” She tilted her head to the side. “It’s the one that lets me do—”
Marissa grabbed her from behind, pinning Kathy’s arms. “Nope. That’s an ‘I’m about to surprise attack you’ phrase if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Could have just said an attunement name if you wanted to tell us,” Vyers replied.
Kathy growled. “You’re making a big mistake.”
“Why? You still haven’t told us your attunement. Are you still claiming you’re innocent?” I asked.
“No, not because of that. Because while you’ve been watching me, my partner has been finishing our assignment.”
“Assignment?” Vyers asked.
The sound of a gunshot rang out through the air.
Chapter XVII – Shots Fired
The next sound was a body falling to the ground near the wagon.
Jin stood over the fallen body of Loria Marshal.
I felt my heart freeze in my chest. I turned and raised my sword, preparing to charge.
Kathy shook and managed to wrench herself free from Marissa’s grip, then spun and kicked Marissa backward with surprising force.
With a laugh, Kathy reached into a pouch at her side and pulled out a bell.
Without hesitation, Jin raised his pistol and fired twice more.
Both bullets hit Kathy straight in the chest. Her Sunstone-level shroud absorbed some of the impact, but not enough.
Her shield sigil cracked.
I charged at Jin. Sera stepped in my way. “Corin, stop.”
“Jin is—”
“Disposing of both traitors,” Jin replied. Then he knelt down and helped Loria to her feet.
Loria shook her head. “Resh it. How’d you know I was there?”
I looked at Loria again with my attunement active. Her aura was still Quartz, hard to discern.
But she was carrying fewer items on her belt than I’d seen before. Two, rather than three.
She has an item with the same function as Jin’s attunement, I realized. That’s why I wasn’t even thinking about her. And it was why he was able to pick up on it.
“My secret,” Jin replied. “Sorry I hit you that close.”
She shook her head. “No problem. Didn’t hurt. Rubber bullets?”
Jin nodded. “Indeed.”
Kathy grumbled and set her bell down. “Bah. We were so close.”
I turned to Kathy. “So, you were another Enchanter, and you worked with Loria — an Elementalist — to make the explosive devices?”
“Got it in one.” Kathy sighed. “Were we that obvious?”
“Not at all.” I shook my head. “You two did great. Can you confirm if there are any other traitors in the group?”
Kathy shook her head. “It was just the two of us. Good job figuring us out.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I couldn’t trust her completely, but since she was eliminated from the test, I figured she didn’t have much motivation to continue deceiving us.
Marissa gave Kathy a concerned look. “You two aren’t going to be failed out, are you?”
Kathy shook her head. “Probably not. We managed to blow up one of the wagons, after all. And we were pretty badly outnumbered.”
“What do we do now?” Patrick asked.
“Probably wait here for the Soaring Wings to pick these two up, then keep going. We’ve already found two traitors. And if Kathy is lying and there any more are in the group, they’re badly outnumbered at this point.” I offered.
“We wanna do anything else to check people while we’re stuck ‘ere?” Marissa asked.
“Don’t know if we can. Unless Roland has any spells that might be of use?” I turned toward Roland.
“Nothing relevant, I’m afraid. If I knew any truth detection spells, I would have been using them a long time ago. And it’s not like there’s a ‘detect spider division’ spell.”
“Okay, let’s take this time to rest, then,” Sera suggested. “Maybe get another meal. It’s late.”
We took Sera up on that suggestion. Everyone ate together, even the two students we’d already eliminated. There were no hard feelings — they were just doing their assignment. In fact, things seemed less tense now that the conflict had been resolved.
After the meal break, we pressed on for the remainder of the day. We didn’t quite make it to the settlement by nightfall, though. While Marissa wanted to press on through the rest of the evening, most of us were too exhausted, including the horses.
We made camp just a little way off the trail.
It had been ages since I’d gone camping with a large group. My last “camping” experience was when I’d been teleported out of the spire directly to Keras. I’d spent the night in the middle of the woods with him and my injured allies.
In retrospect, it’s fascinating that Katashi was able to teleport me directly to Keras’ location. Did he know exactly where Keras was, or did he have some kind of anchor directly connected to Keras?