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TENET: 74
Get to know your charges. Each one has something to teach you, and something unique they need from you.
- Dr. H.VynFleet, 132 Tenets of Childcare & Maintenance
YASMINE
Yasmine felt her whole body go cool and calm as she watched the moonlight play along the barrel of the blaster the man held.
Her entire life reduced itself down to a very simple equation.
Nothing existed outside of that blaster and its proximity to each child, the Ruler, and herself.
She scanned the room where Jenx had brought them, calculating the distances, and cataloguing the attributes of her field of battle.
The space was relatively empty. There were a few tarps on the floor, and a big ladder behind Jenx and the kids - nothing she could reach easily and use as a weapon.
The only entrances and exits were the door they had entered and one high window, too small to climb through, which still lacked glass.
One of the smaller tarps on the floor looked like it must have once covered the window opening, but it must have blown off at some point and floated to the ground, where it partially covered some discarded wood from the framing.
She added that knowledge to their assets.
“So here we are at last, under my rules instead of yours,” Jenx said to Kreed.
“Please, sir,” Yasmine put in, using her best damsel-in-distress voice. “I understand that you’re very angry with the children’s father.”
His eyes flashed to hers.
“I’m like you,” she said. “Just a regular person, working for a living, trying to do my best. These children shouldn’t be caught up in this situation, please.”
“Yasmine,” Kreed said quietly.
She did her best to project her intentions to the children, hoping she could somehow cut through their fear and their circlets.
“Jax knows,” she went on. “Life is all about timing. It’s important for people like us to fulfill our duty when we’re told. Sometimes we have to push through our feelings. And Pia knows, too. Sometimes we have to hide our fears. We have to do these things in the time they were intended. We have to do them now.”
She prayed with everything she had that the children understood what she was asking, even if it was everything they had been told again and again not to do.
Suddenly Jax shoved the confused looking villain as hard as he could.
A very surprised Jenx fell forward, tripping over the tarp covered wood, and only steadying himself when he was right in front of the window.
As Pia ran, Yasmine hoped she was about to hide more skillfully than she had ever hidden before.
“Go with her,” she shouted to Jax as she stepped forward to join Jenx in front of the window.
If she was right, the security team should be gathering out in the yard by now. Someone would have figured out what was going on when she sent the alert in the great hall before coming after Kreed.
She risked a quick glance out the window, and what she saw was better than she had dared to imagine.
The glint of a camera lens - Brytt Tommen’s drone.
So, everyone wasn’t just watching. They were listening, too.
She remembered what Astyr had told her in the car that day.
If you get into trouble, Thomm can shoot the ears off an arbistle at a hundred meters…
