We Fight Dragons (Volume 2, Chapter 6) "The best laid plans of mice and men..."
As the sun set that afternoon, a number of mothers from town got together at the Smith’s house. The Smith’s were Oli’s parents. Each guest brought something to eat or drink.
Anyone who saw them could tell that they having a dinner party.
As they arrived, each guest greeted the hostess, Ilsa Smith, with kisses on the cheek before being welcomed inside the house.
Anyone who saw them would have been completely unaware of the discrete hand signals and touches that the Maidens were using as part of the greeting.
The last to arrive was Olivia Dawson, Tobe’s mother, who brought an already opened bottle of pineapple-wine which she described as ‘something to remind everyone of summer’.
Freya Wood led them in the end-of-the-day before they started, and Olivia admitted that she had already drunk a glass of the wine before she arrived, because she had been so nervous about the meeting.
‘I think we’re all a bit nervous,’ said Freya. ‘We should all be concerned that there are Torquar in town. I didn’t know much about them, but David had to study them when he was young. Apparently, the Torquar believe that somehow we betrayed the god of light long ago, and it is now their job to reach ‘perfection’ by ridding the world of us.
‘What do you mean by ‘getting rid of us’?’ asked Ava Joyce, who was Zach’s mother and the town doctor.
‘David says that, although it can mean some kind of banishment, most of the time… they use the sword.’
Everyone was shocked, especially Olivia who had secretly hoped they could negotiate with the Torquar.
‘How do you think they found us?’ asked Isla, keen to understand what she had to do to keep her family safe.
‘He doesn’t know. They aren’t like us. They don’t have Knights and Maidens, they have… something else, and it is rooted in some kind of twisted logic. David says that what they do have in raw power, they lack in intuition. So it’s very unlikely that they can sense us. We need to be really careful.’ Freya indicated towards Ava, ‘And thankfully we have our own doctor in town, and she has done an excellent job of protecting us all.’
‘Thank you, Freya,’ acknowledged Ava. ‘If anyone wanted to investigate our husband’s medical records they would all show the normal childhood illness, as well as colds, flu, even medical tests that indicate problems. In short,’ she said ruefully, ‘they would look as sick as everyone else.’
‘And the boy’s?’ Freya asked.
‘The records of anyone confirmed as a Knight have been given the same treatment.’
‘That’s a relief,’ stammered Olivia as she took a deep gulp of pineapple-wine.
‘Yes,’ Freya said pointedly towards Olivia, ‘we all need to keep our wits about us.’
Olivia blushed. ‘Sorry. Nerves. You’d think I’d be used to it after all these years of living with a Policeman. But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t ask Nathan to change for all the world.’
Freya reached over and took her hand. ‘We know. And they would never make such a demand of us. We are all who we are. Remember, we need to keep on top of things in town. It was not easy to make this a safe place to raise families. It won’t be any easier to keep it safe. We don’t want to lose the lives we have built here.’
Isla heaved a deep sigh. ‘One thing that gives me assurance is that Geoff always knows when I need help. And now Oli does as well. I feel blessed to have them both.’
The other women all nodded and smiled, because they understood what Isla meant. Olivia looked the least reassured, but sitting there amongst friends, even she had to admit they could depend on each other.
While the dinner party continued long into the winter night, in the empty centre of town a dark car pulled up around the block from the Medical Practice.
Two men in dark coats got out, scanning the street for any sign of threat in a synchronised pattern that maximised their awareness at all times.
When they were sure that they were unobserved, they melded into the shadows and entered the Medical Practice via a window that had fortuitously been left unlocked.
Once inside, one of the men approached the control panel for the building’s alarm. They whispered a mathematical formula to themselves and entered what might as well have been four random numbers into the alarm keypad. The thing was, those numbers just happened to be to deactivation code for the alarm.
Most people would have been staggered by how lucky these two had been so far, but to them this was noting unexpected. Torquar hated surprises, and could literally bend the odds of things in their favour by force of will.
They found the key to the filing cabinet that contained the paper medical records. Many town businesses maintained duplicate paper records as a matter of resilience and self-reliance.
They wanted the first records that they pulled to be the one’s they were after, but because they weren’t entirely sure what they were after, they weren’t able to manifest this. To their chagrin it took them several hours to photograph the medical records of every inhabitant of the town.
One of them complained, ‘This is taking so long. Why don’t we just rip a copy off the hard drive on the Practice server?’
‘Think about it. If you are going to cook a copy of the books, are you going to do it where it’s easy to index and where it keeps an audit trail? Or are you going to do it on paper where no one can hack it? Anyway, the Marshal wants this, so we do it.’
Later, back at their base of operations in Urbridge city, the Torquar sifted through the photographic images of the paper records, until one of them exclaimed, ‘Marshal! We have P.I.D.’
‘Show me,’ the Marshal demanded.
‘This record, sir. Tobias Dawson. His health record is flawless.’
‘Nothing? Not even childhood illness?’
‘Nothing. Looks like someone got sloppy?’
‘Yes, the odds favour that he’s a Knight.’ The Marshal glanced towards his next-in-command. ‘Captain, we need to make another trip into town, undercover again.’
Later that day, after the Urbridge West Real Estate car pulled into town it circled the blocks on the northern side, and as luck would have it, it drove past a local green where Tobes was outside practicing his Shirate.
The occupants watched as Tobes finished his warm up and lakars, and then drew a wooden sword from his sports bag, and began practicing with it. Although he never displayed any powers, it was clear that he swung the sword like someone who had been practicing for a while.
‘I think he have a valid target,’ said the Captain to the Marshall, smiling at the prospect of going into action.
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