Jenn’s toes slowly uncurled, her entire being shuddering with release. “Good morning, indeed.”
“For us, too,” Yukiko giggled, kissing Jenn’s thigh.
“Thank you…” Mindie nuzzled Jenn’s neck. “I’m still recovering from your attention.”
Gregory just smiled and cuddled Jenn from the other side. “We really do appreciate it.”
“A pleasant belated birthday, to be sure,” Jenn murmured. “We’ll all miss birthdays next year, though.”
“Next year will be harder,” Yukiko sighed.
“Yes, but after that, it’ll be better again,” Mindie smiled softly.
“It should be time soon,” Gregory said before he rolled out of bed. “We have today to come up with our plan for securing the city.”
“Two weeks,” Yukiko said. She kissed Jenn’s thigh one more time before leaving the bed. “That’s a lot of time for things to go wrong.”
“As understaffed as we’ll be, it’ll be shocking if things only go slightly wrong,” Jenn sighed as she got up.
“We have to send them mostly out alone,” Gregory said. “It’ll be the only way not to leave a massive gap.”
“No doubt the criminals of the city will be looking forward to getting away with things,” Yukiko sighed, getting dressed.
“Greg, can you look ahead each day?” Jenn asked as she went over to the basin, in need of a quick rinse.
“It won’t be perfect, but it might at least give us some warning,” Gregory murmured. “Using resonance will help with that. I’ll only know what gets reported, but it’ll be better than nothing.”
“Before breakfast, so we can make our plans based on what you know?” Yukiko asked.
“That’d be for the best,” Gregory agreed.
“If any of your men get injured, I’ll be ready to help,” Mindie said as she took the washcloth from Jenn.
“Which will help a lot. We can’t have any of them off rotation,” Jenn said.
“It’ll be a challenge,” Yukiko agreed. “After breakfast, I’d like to call a meeting with our lieutenants and advisors. We’ll need a map of the city, as well.”
“There’s one in the war room,” Mindie said. “Egil was looking at it the other day.”
“Probably making sure we even had a chance to pull this off,” Jenn said.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t give us an impossible task, just a difficult one,” Gregory nodded.
“Egil has proven that he’ll push us, but he’s never gone too far,” Yukiko agreed. “Being pushed is fine; we grow better for it.”
Once he was dressed, Gregory took a seat in one of the chairs in the bedroom. Taking a few slow breaths, he reached out for his resonance, then opened foresight. He wanted to know what was reported by his lieutenant at the end of the day tomorrow. The future sped by until he reached the reports for the day after dinner.
After a couple of minutes, Gregory nodded slowly. Letting go of his aether, he exhaled, feeling the drain from what he’d done. “Two major events. There’s one we stopped and one we missed.”
“Do we bring it up during the meeting or not?” Jenn asked.
“Yes. We want them to know that we’re utilizing everything we have. It would look odd if we just happened to stop everything otherwise,” Yukiko said.
“Greg, are you okay?”
“I’ll be better after breakfast,” Gregory said. “It’s taxing, even with resonance.”
“Not as bad, though,” Yukiko smiled softly. “Remember last year?”
“When we were going to train in Waterrock?”
“Dia’s incident at the stables before we left,” Yukiko clarified.
“Oh, right. He was wiped out for the rest of the day,” Jenn nodded.
“I have more aether now, and resonance helps cut down how much I use,” Gregory added. “I could still fight with foresight up, just nowhere near as long.”
“Long enough, I’d bet,” Mindie said. The fifth bell sounded, and Mindie began to rush to get dressed. “I’ll hurry.”
~*~*~
The war room had a rough map of the city spread out on the table. Parts of it were clearly marked out, showing the various patrol areas. Gregory took one side of the table with Davis beside him. Jenn and Yukiko took two other sides with their lieutenants, leaving the fourth for the advisors.
“Lots of ground to cover…” Davis muttered.
“We’ll have to put entire squads on the gates as it is,” Yukiko’s lieutenant, Max Pellant said. “Gate guard duty for a city is a minimum of five, meaning that, at most, we could pull one out of a squad for that.”
“Not the sergeants. We need one on each gate,” Jayson Taylor, Jenn’s lieutenant, added.
“We’ll have to work with the minimums,” Yukiko said. “We’ll put the last of each squad close to the gate that the rest of their squad is on.”
“Glasson for us,” Davis said. “Put them on the gate we’ve used.”
“We should rotate them, but we can do that today,” Jenn said. “We want every squad to get time on the gates and patrols.”
“Yes, that would be best,” Gregory nodded. “Let’s plot out how to separate out the men we have.”
~*~*~
“Why have you and the lieutenants not been assigned?” Ben asked— they’d spent a couple of hours going back and forth over how to redivide the city with fewer people.
“We just hadn’t gotten there yet,” Gregory said. “Lieutenants will be roving between the gate on the section that most of our men are in. If whistles blow, they need to be there, which means on horse.”
“Fast response,” Jayson nodded. “The others will have to respond, as well, but having us on horseback gives us options.”
“And the magi?” Ella asked.
“We’ll be doing something different,” Gregory said. “I’ve looked at what’s most likely to happen tomorrow. There are two major incidents. For one of them, the men handle it with a few injuries, but nothing serious. The second, we won’t hear about until after the fact. The three of us will be handling that.”
“What’s going to happen?” Willof asked.
“Bright Gold, a jewelry shop near the garden park, gets robbed. It happens shortly after the whistles for the first major incident. So either it’s a planned distraction or a target of opportunity when the guards leave the area.”
“If it’s planned, no one will go near the place with three magi around,” Ben snorted.
“We’ll be going in without our kimonos,” Jenn smiled. “Civilian clothing. We’ll also be leaving after stopping in one at a time. We’ll be going in to inform the owner and for Yuki to have a nice dark spot she can leap to.”
“It’ll take everything I have, but I can bring one of them with me,” Yukiko said. “Gregory has a trick to manage his own entrance.”
“We’ll be inside the backroom, waiting,” Gregory grinned.
“Foresight doesn’t mean guaranteed, from what I’ve been told,” Ben said.
“It doesn’t,” Gregory agreed. “This is the most likely future. If we don’t tell the men or spread it outside this room, it should happen. It’ll only change that we’re there to stop the robbery.”
“If it’s a planned event and not an opportunity, that’ll set the planners well back,” Willof mused. “They’d be scrambling to figure out how we knew.”
“Gregory using his foresight gives them an edge to deter the worst,” Ella murmured. “No wonder Egil didn’t appear worried about them handling the city while shorthanded.”
“We’ll use everything we have to complete our tasks,” Yukiko said. “We’ll do just like we have before, except now, we have more to work with because we’re together.”
“Damned city has no idea how safe it is,” Max snorted. “Okay, I’ll let the men know. We’ll need a copy of the map so we can show them their routes.”
“The barracks has one,” Willof said.
“We’ll go explain the routes to them now, then,” Jayson said.
“Bet a few take a stroll to get a feel for it,” Davis said.
“No bet,” Max chuckled.
The lieutenants left the room, chatting with each other.
“Do you plan to use your foresight every day for the next two weeks, Gregory?” Ben asked.
“I can manage it, so yes.”
“You three do realize how far ahead of most magi you are, right?” Ella asked. She tapped her chest where their medallions were resting under their clothing.
“Anywhere from a half-tier to a full tier,” Yukiko said. “Yes, but we use the Peaceful Fist, which trains two paths, so it isn’t that shocking.”
“A valid point, especially with the additives they take,” Willof said.
“Agreed, but someone will take notice at the tournament,” Ben said. “I’d bet they’re still the fastest-ranking magi in decades, or even centuries.”
“We can ask Rafiq,” Willof suggested. “He might have a book on it. I swear he brought half the archive with him.”
“No one has a ring…” Ella trailed off, then looked at the three magi in the room with her. “Never mind. He might, after all.”
Gregory chuckled. “He doesn’t have that many books, but he does have a surprising number of them. We’ve even traded a few to change up what we have to read.”
“Oh, we need to do that,” Yukiko said.
“Please,” Jenn agreed.
“Might as well. Tomorrow comes quickly enough,” Gregory said.
The three advisors stayed in the room, letting the door shut before they started chuckling.
“Oh, the tournament is going to get a rude shock,” Ben snickered.
“The judges are in for a surprise,” Ella agreed.
“Did you two get to the advanced marches for honor assignments?” Willof asked.
“Yes. They were still working on weapon exchange.”
“Same,” Ben nodded. “Yukiko has aced every metric we score them on.”
“Gregory’s done the same,” Willof nodded.
“Make that all three,” Ella said. “Jenn took a little longer to get there, but she really had things locked down after we visited the city the first time.”
“When they had a chance to talk,” Ben smiled. “If only we had a few dozen of them. How secure would the empire be, then?”
Willof and Ella had to agree; if other initiates trained like these three did, the empire would be in a much better place.
