Vizaranu slowly took off his helmet. 'I'm sure you are a hobbyist of death.' He said. 'By my money, I'd say you enjoy it, the weaker the target the better.'

  'You've got awful clever lips for someone about to be split by a spike.' Retorted the Guard.

  'He's got a point.' Thought Elara. Vizaranu seemed remarkably calm for what was perhaps the most unpredictable stage of the plan. She watched the Guard attentively, half-expecting him to loose a bolt at any moment. Could he reload fast enough and take them all out before they closed the distance of the hall If it came to it?

  'Before you pull the trigger,' said Vizaranu, moving some of his coppery locks of hair that had fallen forward with the removal of his helmet, 'I might ask you something?'

  'You do look the type who talks too much, but sure, you're the one who ain't got much time.' Said the guard. He appeared to be enjoying the situation, likely from both the expectation of an easy kill and an escape from the mundanity of standing before the same vault door day after day.

  'Do you care much for your wife, Riyka? Or your seven children currently sleeping soundly in your home in the 8th District?'

  The Tall Guard's grin vanished. His counterpart looked at him, anxiously, then snapped his attention back to the intruders.

  'We have a dozen Knights with orders to find them and kill them if we are so harmed by your, what did you call them, spikes? Sure, you could perhaps kill us, and make it home before word reaches them of our demise, but as soon as they see you they will storm the house, kill your families... yes yours too.' Vizaranu turned to the now-pale moustachioed guard on the right. 'Your three children. Sorry to hear your partner passed recently, by the way.'

  The Tall Guard's bravado seemed to be leaking from him, and his crossbow was faltering in his arms. 'I- you don't know about them, you can't...'

  'Your wife's name is Riyka, she works in a haberdashers. Your eldest child, Paz, short for Pasley, shares your black hair, you live a stone's throw from the Triskellion entrance of Attekant, and the sun shines on your house throughout the day. There's little we don't know of you, Marcher First Class Rutlidge, and there's little we won't do to your family. You'd do well to find a place in this world of ours where the strands of our web don't reach, now drop the crossbows and grant us access or surrender the keys.'

  Elara had been told it was a bluff, but it was said with such poise, such controlled confidence, that she wasn't entirely sure. She thought of how she'd seen no proof Vizaranu was, indeed, lying. After some meagre hesitation, Rutlidge lowered his weapon and placed it on the ground. Elara felt some inner pity to see such a big man look so powerless. It was written on his face that, despite his initial impression of malice, in truth, under the gasconade he presents at his work rested a man who loved his family. The five of them advanced forwards.

  'Who are you?' Asked the other guard tentatively.

  'Reckoners.' Said Vizaranu. He looked at Rutlidge. 'You did the right thing, now the key.'

  'I'll give the key,' was the reply, 'but I ain't opening the door for ya, and I swear I'll find youse for puttin' omens of harm on my children.' Rutlidge then pressed against a seemingly random spot on the metal wall of the vault foyer. A well-designed, seamless panel then snapped outwards, behind which lay two large, polished bronze keys with looped pommels.

  'Thank you,' said Vizaranu, 'but I'm afraid you're wrong.' And as swiftly as a blink, he unsheathed his belt dagger and slit Rutlidge's throat. At the same time, Callask stabbed the 2nd guard in the temple, grinding a small groove into the rim of his helmet as he did so.

  Jidae saw Cosmo wince. 'Brutal, but necessary.' She said with assurance. 'They had seen our faces, heard Vizaranu's voice. They would not have ceased their pursuit, just as he'd promised.' She pointed at the now-prone Rutlidge, bleeding slippery viscous blood on the metal floor. Cosmo nodded, as did Elara. She was finding herself becoming firmer, more resolute, with each moment that passed on this mission. She felt oddly proud of herself. The bigger picture was becoming clearer and she felt part of it, part of history.

  The vault door looked smaller than when Elara had last been there fifteen years ago. She'd professed to her Grandfather that she was interested in devoting her life to the science of botany, and in his sheer joy at the prospect, he'd arranged for a viewing of the arcane seed vault just for her - a special arrangement that few in the realm of Haemonine could pull off. It felt strange to be back here, like Elara were in a different body than the one she possessed as the inquisitive ten-year-old walking this hallway way back when.

  Vizaranu and Jidae turned their keys in the dual locks, and the door slowly and silently opened. What it lacked in height, it made up for in heft. Elara guessed the steel alloy was maybe a foot thick as she passed it.

  'You're up, Elara.' Said Vizaranu, smiling that warm smile that seemed to span his face. It held a weird contrast with the blood he was hastily wiping from his hands with a black cloth. 'We must be quick, we only have two minutes by my estimate.'

  As they entered, some aspect of their motion ignited six gas lamps that hung at chest height on the left and right walls. It startled all of them but Elara. She guessed that they'd never witnessed such technology before. The lamps themselves seemed to be fuelled from some external source running behind the wall. They were spheres of glass, with a gas flame burning sideways powerfully with cream and tangerine colours. Under the lamps on the two sides of the room lay ornate legless counters of black steel and mahogany, each narrow in width and with a seem two inches below the top edge that ran the length of the counters. At the far end of the room, which was roughly the length of three men lying flat, was a blank wall, painted, like the other walls, with the black and burgundy colours of Haemonine.

  'Look at that,' said Callask, 'they painted their seed room. I'd wager only ten or so people set foot in here, and yet they have to remind those ten what realm they live in. I bet they're real proud of THEIR horde.'

  Elara lifted the right hand counter and a thin white gas whisped upwards. 'It's fine.' She said to the nervous-looking Callask, who had now stopped his monologue. 'It's just nitrogen used to keep the seeds inert. Open the other case, quickly.'

  Cosmo and Jidae followed her instruction. As the gas melted out of sight, within the case before Elara was revealed five porous glass cases, separated from each other in a row. Etched into the glass of each was clear writing, and within them were seeds, bulbs, treecones, mould substrates, some in great number, some containing only two or three, and each with an energy about them beyond that of common understanding. Even the seeds that showed more neutral colours emitted a type of vibration that both drew the eye and instilled a sense of foreboding within Elara. She tried to snap from it, now was the time for concentration.

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  'Cosmo, can you bring me the transport receptacles.' Cosmo hurried over and pulled the waist pack around from under his coat and opened it, revealing some small glass case the size and shape of matchboxes, held closed by silver snap-locks. She opened one of the clasps and a whispery 'phunk' noise was heard. Elara loved that sound, it reminded her of uncorking a bottle of wine. She then scooped some of the nitrogen that was pouring from vents into the receptacles. Jidae and Vizaranu were now heading back into the vault, and Elara heard them collecting the two crossbows in the event of guards gaining entry to the vault foyer.

  During their planning, Elara had had to rely on her memory of the vault from the last time she was there when determining which seeds would be the best to acquire. Of all the known arcane flora recorded in the annals of history, of which there were many, some were far more common than others, some were thought to be made extinct by either natural causes or deliberate culling by man, some affected only certain classes of animal, some were as ancient as records themselves and some had only just been discovered in living memory. They were classed by designations, zero to five, with the system of measurement based on a complicated series of questions and considerations built around one key principle: Potential for destruction.

  'I still don't understand why we don't take them all.' Callask had proclaimed one night around a campfire, when they were camping within a cosy cave high in the peaks on the third night of their journey to Attekant. 'If we pocket the whole lot we rid the Haemonine Government of their ENTIRE supply. We'd basically be CASTRATING them'. Callask often emphasised the last word of each sentence, drawing it out and volumising it.

  'The Haemonines, for all their faults, never really them in warfare. They're regulated to an nth degree, more of a last-ditch effort kind-of-thing.' Elara had argued. 'Anyway, it's hard to tell what, or how many, will be in there. They might have grown their stock twice in size for all I know. And it's not their only depository, just the one with the greatest concentration, which is the most important thing. It gives us the gift of choice. I'm aiming for a mix of stable and powerful. A sort-of meeting point on the graph.' When she noticed Callask's confused look she added 'A best of both worlds'.

  Back in the vault, Elara scanned the collection once more and went to work. She took up some hazel fanflower, sandstem, and fernglass seeds and some miniscule square plates containing bolted truffle spores, and deposited each of them into their own transport receptacles. She then went to the counter on the other side of the room, brushing the transfixed Cosmo out the way. From there she collected salt lily seeds, a dessicated stem sample for a Heiravine, and the cone of a heath tallow tree.

  'We must make haste.' Called Jidae from the foyer.

  'I'm ready.' Said Elara, and she paced nervously into the foyer, followed by Callask and finally Cosmo, closing the vault door behind him.

  'It should be just a few seconds now-' Said Jidae, but, as the last word left her lips, a deafening second explosion erupted from inside the vault. The vault door itself seemed to bend for a split second and aftershock vibrations triggered an echoing hum of struck metal within the vault foyer. Several of the raiders had dropped to the floor in sheer surprise, despite their knowledge of what had been coming. Elara had stayed on her feet but was still reeling a little from the shock.

  'Quick.' Ordered Jidae, as she shook Elara's shoulders. At least that's what Elara thought she'd heard. It sounded like the word was being yelled from the other side of a thin wall. Jidae then opened the door and a plume of dust flew from the vault into the metal hallway, coating Elara's silvery-blonde hair and tickling her short button nose. At the far end of the vault, a hole about the height and length of a large dog had been blown at the base of the blank wall, and through it daylight seeped through and illuminated the beige dust in the air.

  They rushed in as Jidae removed a long coiled rope from her pack and tied it to the metal handle of the vault door, which Cosmo had shut behind them. She then threw the rope through the hole, and the coils unfurled until it stopped taut. 'Elara climbs first.' She said, and ushered the young knight through the hole. The wall's edges were painfully hot from the blast, and she tried as best as she could to protect the seed cases as she clambered through feet first, using her body as the cushion against the jagged stone.

  Eventually her legs dangled over an edge and, taking hold of the knotted rope, climbed out and down against the exterior wall of the Brigg, feeling the instant pull of gravity as she did so. Callask was already at the edge himself and so she hurried her pace. The drop was two stories onto a wide street, where rubble lay and onlookers were already gathering. She reached the end of the rope and dropped the few remaining feet. Fortunately, there were no guards to be seen yet, but her focus was drawn to a collapsed ladder, and beside it, the lifeless, battered corpse of one of the other New Becoming Knights from the Attekant branch, one of those who'd left them at the door of the Western wing. The other two who had joined him were nowhere to be seen.

  Most of the others had reached the ground now, and Elara noticed Vizaranu running over to join her. Without a word, he knelt and removed the small circular coin-shaped curio that she'd seen him pack earlier that morning. She could identify now, up close, that the tiny needles protruding from the flat side of the disk held an intricate shape. Vizaranu leaned closer to the mangled Knight and delicately pressed the needles into his neck, and pulled them out again after a few seconds. Elara peered closer and saw a tattoo now emblazoned there, one of a forgewheel with stars in the spokes, the same as Jidae's - the mark of the Collosean. They then took off, and disappeared amongst the growing crowds.

  'So remind me why we didn't we just blow up the seed vault door to begin with, and enter that way?' Asked Cosmo in hushed tones as they crossed the threshold into district five. They had changed their clothing in a side street in district 4, and now donned cotton shirts and leather trousers of varying colours. Elara was wearing a soft felt hat, and a big brown coat that hid the sample containers.

  'He asks a lot of questions.' Said Vizaranu.

  'So, I'm inquisitive is all.' Retorted Cosmo.

  'To a fault.' Murmured Jidae. She was monitoring the streets with watchful glances as they walked, like a mother sparrow.

  Vizaranu patted the shoulder of the bashful Cosmo, 'If we would have entered from the side street on the east side,' he said, leaning in close, 'we would have alerted every guard at that table and in the vault hallway, and your arse would be full of crossbow bolts by now. We needed the distraction of the first bomb.'

  'Can I ask a question?' Said Elara to Vizaranu.

  'Yeah, but keep your voice low. We're not entirely clear yet, despite making good pace.'

  'How did you know all those things? About the guards?'

  'Do you really want to know?'

  'Yes.'

  'We blackmailed a clerk who works in the Brigg's records department.'

  'Do you not worry he'll talk? After what happened...'

  'After what we learned about him and his personal hobbies from our contacts in the Brigg? It's highly unlikely. Anyway we told him what we told those two Brutes on the vault door, that we have the resources to cull not just him but his bloodline.'

  They treaded the pavements of Attekant until the the streets grew narrower. Now and then, they'd spot guards in groups of three or four running in the opposite direction towards district 3, entirely unaware they were passing the culprits. Eventually, they took a left and saw safety in the form of 'D6 Bespoke Money Lenders & Depository' at the end of the alley, and Elara clutched even harder at the coat-wrapped cases in her arms.