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The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 10, 5th continuation)
“Quiar never likes to tell me too much. She believes, and I’m certain she’s right, that knowing too much can change the way you react to things, which is why she didn’t tell me when or what to expect from the assassins. Even though I wish she could have told me, because then I might have been able to stop Bertram’s wing from being so badly damaged, I understand that she didn’t in case that knowledge made things worse. By trying to stop that from happening I might well have done something that led to Bertram’s death.” Lucilled looked around. “That’s why I’m terrified now, because if I make a mistake…” She shook her head. “Who’s to say the choice that I make won’t lead to the death of everyone on the ship.”
Jarek nodded. “I do understand that. It’s a fear I lived with most of my lives, due to the abilities I still have, and it’s why I promised myself that I wouldn’t play with time unless I had no other option. Being here with you is not something I would have done normally, but I knew this was coming, so I wanted to be here in order to help you as much as possible, because one of the things I always was very good at was seeing how one choice might affect what happens next. Due to the vision crystal we can see everything we need to at the same time and as I was here afterwards I know who came out of it dead.” He gestured to her to follow. “They were waiting for us, so they either have someone within the guards or a prophet. I like to think it’s the later, as the guards are all people that I care about and I hate to think of them doing that to us.
“Over here with have the goanna boss and his body guards. We were expecting body gaurds, but I think one of them is a tiger. This was a problem because we weren’t expecting tigers, even though Durai told us your theory that all of the counterfeits are coming out of Theas, so we didn’t know how to counteract some of the magic that he used, although we did our best. One of the things I believe would help is taking him out sooner. We didn’t manage that until it was too late, so by the time we did he’d managed to take out several of our best fighters and kill one of my closest friends.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately these things happen when you are expecting what’s coming and he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him my fears about the bodyguard. Taking a trapped tiger on is never a good idea.
“The goanna was too scared to be any good. Even though he knew this was coming he was terrified of us… or maybe it was that he was terrified of letting his boss down. It doesn’t matter why he was scared – he stood in the corner, acting as though he was directing his people, but they already knew what they were doing. We had different groups of them taking us on, so we had to split, and it wasn’t as easy to split into groups that would be abl to take on their groups, especially as there was one…” He pointed. “They were entirely Hereward’s men, so coming up against the Fasachi’s took them by surprise and they weren’t prepared for Fasachi magic. Four of that group lost their lives, although I think we can save at least two of them, if we manage to move people around.
“I think the best thing we can do is get people to be in the right place at the right time. The groups who take on the Fasachis need to be mixed, so there are some of Durai’s guards within every group, but I don’t know how easy that’s going to be. Durai knows your here, so maybe you can use him to guide people into the right place, and there are a couple of people who are quite weak minded, which means we might be able to use them as well.”
Lucille nodded. “That does sound like the best option.” She looked over at Durai. “How many people listen to him?”
“More now than before, because they realise that he was right about the Fasachis, and I think that means we should have at least two thirds of the guards willing to follow us. I might be wrong about number though. We need at least half and I’m certain we have that, because I remember coming out of the ship, carrying our dead, listening to a number of people grumble that Hereward should have listened to Durai, so I get the feeling, if he had taken control during the fight, that they would have followed. Sadly he isn’t the sort of person to do that. Hereward was in control of this fight and that meant he took a step back, instead of taking the step forward that he should have taken, as he might have been able to save lives then.
“Now it’s up to us to push him into where he needs to be. Without him doing what needed to be done we lost too many of our guards and we are going to change that.” Jarek wandered through the ship. “It’s interesting to see things like this, actually, because I get to see why people lost their lives. Some of them deserved to, for being stupid enough to take on someone with more magic than them, although the strangest thing happened not long before we came to the ship. Kaito chose to come to the guard house with several handfulls of charms, telling us we might need them, but there were so many people here who didn’t use them when they should.” He shook his head, pointing at a couple of the guards. “That one there is someone I’ve never much like and he had one of Kaito’s illusion charms in his pocket but the idiot didn’t use it, so the guard fighting with him lost his life. I was angry with him when we got off the ship and I told him exactly what I thought if him Maybe I shouldn’t have done, but he could have done more.”
For a few seconds Lucille looked at that guard and then she smiled at Jarek. “Who was the guard with him?” He pointed at one of the raccoons she’d come to know well, which made her even more certain what she was going to do. “Okay, I’m going to let this play out once, so I get a better idea of exactly what happens and then I’m going to start given Kai’s charms to people who will actually use them. Can you point out everyone who didn’t use the charm they had?”
As she followed Jarek through the ship, he told her who hadn’t used their charms and who would have done if they had the right one at the right time, so it was easy for her to know who should have had one. He seemed to agree that her plan was a step in the right direction, because it gave those who died or were injured a chance to protect themslves, before they started working out who should be where. Some of the guards she seemed to know better than he did, so it wasn’t long before they knew what they were doing as well as how they believed it was going to work, although they both agreed there were no guarantees.
Moments after they came to that conclusion Jarek started time again, if he’d even stopped it in the first place, and Lucille watched as the battle, because that was really what it was the only way it could be described. Groups of guards fought groups of counterfeiters, the guards often hopelessly outnumbered, but they didn’t give up, even though she might have done if she was in the same position. Magics of all types whizzed past them, including what appeared to be some scroll magic, which had to have come from another world, and she found herself wondering if it was possible that the counterfeits had already gone elsewhere.
Biting hard on her lip Lucille told herself to focus on what she could change, because if there were already counterfeits on other worlds there was nothing she could do about it. Hopefully Kester would be on the look out, just in case, especially as the counterfeits cost much less than a good charm would, so it was easy for the counterfeiters to undercut the competition. Sighing, she brushed a hand through her hair, realising once again that being a Moonjumper really did mean a lot more than picking three or four worlds to look after, because everything was connected. There was even a chance they might have got to one of the lost worlds, although that seemed unlikely.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.