Oliver proceeded Arlo into the courtyard. They reached a door which opened outward and upon stepping outside, Oliver noted that it was already dark out.

"Dark already?" he asked, turning back to glance at Arlo.

"She'll explain," he said, gesturing towards the courtyard.

Oliver stepped out into the courtyard, where once again the fire was crackling merrily away in the round stone firepit in the center. Around it stood several figures, throwing long dramatic shadows up against the stone-covered walls of the courtyard.

As he entered the courtyard one of them turned towards him. It was Sindra, gray hair pinned back tightly against her scalp and bags under her eyes.

"Ah, Oliver. Come, make yourself comfortable."

He did so, finding that beside her at the fire stood a handful of familiar faces; Tiro and Galen were there as well.

He glanced up at the sky questioningly. Seeming to notice his confusion, Sindra continued. "It's been what, four or so hours for you, right?"

"Maybe," he said cautiously.

"Well, it's been just about four days for us. The chamber you were in is unmoored from this reality in both spatial and temporal dimensions."

Oliver nodded, taking this in. Time travel was definitely possible then, at least, travel into the future. That didn't necessarily imply anything about travel into the past nor the violation of causality.

"What happened while I was in there?" he asked.

"The local barracks has been in quite a tiffy," she said. "The curfew has been tightened even further, and there are patrols on the streets stopping people at random. They're looking for you, it seems."

"An awful lot of trouble to go to for one person," he commented.

"We agree," Sindra said, and Galen across the fire grunted in agreement. His broad, scarred face held no sign of anger as he looked at Oliver. "All the more reason we need to get you to the other cell safely."

"The other cell?" asked Oliver.

"We've finally heard back. We got a message from our sister cell," she was saying as his brain tuned back in. "The one we've been waiting for. They want you to come in."

"Come in? Pardon?"

"They want you to travel to meet with them."

"Where? Who's they?" asked Oliver, suspicious immediately. He trusted this insurrection little, the Empire even less, but these people had been treating him well enough, and he'd begun to think he'd had a handle on the situation here. Finding out there were even more people involved, more motivations and actors that he wasn't able to puzzle out, filled him with a deep-seated concern.

"Another cell. They're in Velia, closer to the capital. We don't know who they are. It's a part of the design. But we do know they have authority that supersedes ours."

"Meaning?"

"They'll know what to do with you better than we do," she said. "It's possible you'll even be meeting with our leaders."

Nope. Nope nope nope. Meeting with rebel leadership, getting himself even further in, was inadvisable for so many reasons he didn't even feel the need to enumerate them to himself.

"I'm not sure I'm open to that," he said after a moment, searching for a politic way to express his suspicions. "I think I'd prefer to remain with you."

"Unfortunately, that's not an option. It's too hot here. Keeping you puts all of us, and my sister and niece, at risk. But he anticipated you might react this way."

"He?"

"The leader of the other cell. He shared a cryptic message with us. He thought it might help you reach a decision. It's a… piece of poetry?"

She took Oliver's continued silence as a cue to continue, and cleared her throat. Then said, with a little discomfort, as of one unaccustomed to reciting poems:

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light" — Oliver's heart began to pound — "what so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming?"

"Whose broad stripes and bright stars," she continued, and he began to mouth the words as she spoke, all but hearing the American anthem's tune beneath her dry cadence, "through the perilous fight, over the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?"

—

The moonlight gleamed off the cobblestone streets as they stole through the streets, he and Tiro and Arlo and broad-shouldered Galen, the four of them slinking along in the shadows like ghosts, the mana channels in their bodies barely visible. Even the wand in Galen's jacket was suppressed until it was little more than a faint ember at his chest. They appeared to mana sight, he was told, as little more than normal, slightly underfed workers, rather than the experienced, trained fighters that Galen and Arlo were.

Tiro led the way as they passed through the quiet streets of Celeia, heading towards the river. Galen followed behind him, then Oliver and finally Arlo. Galen and Arlo were there to make sure in a worst-case scenario they'd still get to the river in one piece. The plan was for Tiro and Oliver to take a boat down to Velia, where they could hand Oliver off securely.

After ten or fifteen minutes of walking, they'd nearly reached their destination. So far, they'd seen and heard nothing, although Oliver, as the only one with mana sight, was constantly scanning around them for mana disruptions. They weren't entirely surprised when he called out in a harsh whisper,

"Movement about a hundred paces ahead, a street over. Four people."

The newcomers' mana fields blazed brightly with hues of mana that spoke to an intensity distinguishing them from the townsfolk quietly living and sleeping in the houses around them, whose bodies were only barely traced by mana flows. Walls were no obstacle to mana radiation, it seemed.

These people were glowing like lamps, mana rolling off of them in waves, two dark blue, a red, and a bone white.

"They're moving towards us," he said. "I think they see us somehow."

Their own mana would be visible, of course, if it weren't for the highly illegal and hard to obtain dampeners they were carrying.

"Keep quiet," said Tiro. "Don't act suspicious. If they approach us, let me do the talking."

Oliver forced himself to relax back into the unnatural slouch Tiro had schooled him in as he walked, making an effort to look casual.

The group rounded the corner and he heard Arlo behind him mutter a curse. It was two imperials in their matte gray plate armor, helmets down, patrolling in a business like manner, a man in long robes behind them, and a fourth who was hunched over oddly in the moonlight and whose features were concealed. This fourth was the one exuding the bone-white mana.

The two anonymous, plate-clad soldiers glowed brightly as well, a deep, rich blue, and Oliver realized he was looking at mana structures embedded into the plate armor they wore. Fine lines made up a precise and geometrical network running all through the plate in straight lines and consistent angles. The mana lines formed a mesh dense enough that he couldn't see past the armor to the natural mana channels most Pathed seemed to contain.

Their little group kept walking quietly, Galen and Tiro striking up a casual and overly loud, mildly drunken conversation in the night air, something to do with how Tiro's brother would be stopping by the following week and would Galen like to visit?

They drew abreast of the Imperial party, Oliver keeping silent.

"You there! Halt." said the man in robes in a nasally voice. "Out for an evening stroll, are we? Breaking curfew?"

"Begging your pardon, milord," said Tiro in an obsequious tone, "we lost track of time at the Pig's Brew and we're heading home now."

"Lost track of time?" asked the officer suspiciously. "Where do you live?"

"Oh, eight or ten minutes' walk from here," volunteered Galen, slurring his words slightly.

"And you're all heading there together, are you?" asked the officer, eyes narrowing. The person behind the two plated soldiers shuffled, and Oliver's stomach lurched as he realized that the other person was a thin, bent woman clinging onto the officer's elbow. She was looking past them at the way they'd come.

"We figured we'd break out a bottle of Rink's and finish our game at my house," Tiro said, shifting on his feet.

The officer sighed, squinting as he looked over the rest of the group. He adjusted his robes, shifted his stance slightly and looked down at the woman clinging to him. "Rella, take their mana signatures down."

The woman looked at each one of them. Oliver was unable to repress a shiver as her gaze passed over them.

"Done," she said. Her voice came out as a raspy whisper, barely noticeable as female.

"You four will report to the Small Court in the morning. If you don't, you know what'll happen to you."

"Of course, milord," Tiro whined.

"I don't recognize you," the officer said. "I'd keep it that way, if I were you."

"Yes, milord."

With that injunction delivered, the man turned to walk off, woman hanging from his elbow trailing behind as he moved along.

The two soldiers turned as one and continued their patrol, metal boots clanking on the stone streets and echoing up and down the street.

As the two parties began to separate again, Oliver allowed himself a small sigh of relief, his shoulders aching from the tension, and then kept moving. Sweat dripped down his sides beneath the loose-fitting robe that marked him a common clerk or scribe.

Tiro turned, the tension writ on his face as he looked away from the soldiers and to the group. "Come on," he hissed.

They started walking again, all of them trying not to walk too quickly. They'd only gone a few paces when Oliver felt the strange sensation of being watched again. It harkened back to his time in the woods before finding civilization, an eerie feeling that at the time he'd brushed off as fear and a natural vulnerability.

But this time, he chanced a glance back at the patrol. The woman radiating bone-white aura was looking back at their party. Their gazes met and he realized with a shudder that she had no eyes.

They were perhaps fifteen or twenty paces distant, the gap widening, so he wasn't quite able to make out the words of her raspy whisper to the officer. The effect, however, was immediate.

The robed officer whirled back around towards them. "Halt!" he cried.