I didn’t get a chance to talk to Shelly.
To be fair, we had a good seven hours that I could have talked to him, but I wanted to be able to give him some privacy in case he wanted to say some things that he didn’t want, Trent in particular, not to hear. Though I knew any conversation I had was probably monitored by Trent, it was at least the illusion of privacy, which was the best that I could give him.
We reached the walls of the city without incident. Trent wouldn’t comment on our strategies, so there was no way for us to know if we needed to modify our strategies or if we should make a list of the new items that we needed. Despite the promise that we’d made to Fray, Trent also wasn’t letting us look at the stats of the Unilops. Which translated into watching a lot of trees along the road, which then turned into a lot of mountains.
I was ready to stretch my legs when we stopped outside the walls. I was about to open the door to the RV when we started moving again.
“They’re not going to inspect the inside of the RV?” I looked at the guard station that was passing us.
“They said they have a new system that can scan the whole thing and see who’s inside and they verified that it was only the people I reported.” Trent shrugged as we got inside the city.
Harror had been a city built around Healers, so there had been a lot of clinics there. Tres was all about protection, so I’d seen a lot of private defense companies being advertised there. Even Zeb, the Godless town that it was, was built around meat and dairy production. But here, I didn’t know what to think.
I moved to the front of the RV as we drove through the city. There didn’t seem to be a predominant amount of anything here. I saw a clinic, a shopping center, even an accounting firm. It felt rather homogeneous until I realized what there was more of. Advertisements. There were more billboards and banners for things here than I’d seen in Harror, which was a much bigger city. The largest billboard that I saw was one that read ‘The Six. Your voice in Mive’s ear.’.
“Who are the Six?” I pointed at the billboard.
“A group of the six most powerful and wealthy families in the city.” Trent looked at the six people on the billboard. “Looks like Vanya Wesh, Remy Harlax, Sigun Gara, Chrice Faeru, Joi Inon, and Sandez Jinsu.”
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“Isn’t Harlax the name of one of the people on Celia’s team?” The name sounded familiar.
“Rals Harlax. He’s their tank.” Ether answered before our teacher could.
“Ah. I thought I recognized him.” If Rals would have had red hair, then he would have looked exactly like an older version of his great-grandson. “So I take it these are the families that we need to avoid?”
“Actually both of our choices are from those families. Zel Inon and Astrid Harlax.” Trent took another turn and I realized that we were going into the wealthier part of town, which was usually not where the Temple was located.
“How did children of two of the most powerful families in the city not end up at the Cathedral to start with and where are we going?” I was starting to feel very out of place as I saw a crest on every gate that we passed and some of them looked like they were worth enough to have a steady stream of thieves trying to steal them.
“With Astrid, you’ll notice when you see her. She takes after her mother’s side of the family and Remy is an old school Tank. Having a descendant who got a mantle other than Tank is something he sees as a slight against his family name.” Trent shook his head. “She’s also the younger of the twins, which are usually the ones who get left out of the chain of family power.”
“If he’s so against her joining our team, then why is she a potential?” I did not understand rich people's politics.
“Zel is the front runner, and the only candidate that was submitted when the Nobles were throwing a fit about exclusion.” He shrugged, “But I looked at the Mantle records and saw that Astrid was here too, so I thought we’d give her a chance.”
“So where are we going?” I motioned at the houses. “Because the Temple is not going to be in this type of neighborhood.”
“The Temple’s housing section is being remodeled.” Trent stopped in front of a gate. “The WHOLE wing. So the Six have offered to put us up in one of their spare houses so that we don’t have to stay in public housing.”
“He means the Six paid off the Temple here to deny us lodging so that they could woo us with their pretty things.” Ether sighed as she translated it for Fray.
“It also means that the house is most certainly wired. With lots of security you can see and more that you can’t.” Trent turned so that he could look at us all. “What I say before we go anywhere goes double for here. Watch what you say and do…” He looked right at Rix.
“I know.” She held up her hands. “No going invisible.”
The gate started opening, so Trent turned back to face it. “Let’s go meet our hosts.”