"You're a Tinker," Sharshua Dragonsong said, standing up and making a ceremonious bow of greeting. "You fix things."

"That's right girl," the intruder replied, glancing briefly at his prize. So close, so very close. He just needed to fix it so the girl didn't prevent him from claiming that prize. "The Triple Shield, there. Looks perfectly fine doesn't it? It's a powerful device, but there's a defect, see. Needs fixing."

He eyed the stun wand in the girl's hand nervously.

"May I ask why, if this is the case indeed, you have not followed the timeless ritual of Tinker law and logged a repair request?" came a reasonable question. The girl was insufferably calm in the apparent presence of an unknown intruder. Was that one of the teachings of this accursed school?

"The thing is, miss," Trogon began in a superior voice, "mechanisms like this have their own way of calling for help." He looked again at the stun wand as its wielder changed hands, goading him into making her put it to use. "This one cried out with an emergency. It said it was in pain, and needed to be put right. Pitiable little voice it was."

"Was it a girl's voice?" Sharshua said, stepping forward, eyes wide with emotion. The matter seemed important to her for some reason. Trogon paused for thought.

"Not really," he eventually said. "More like a kind of squawk. Could have been a chicken if I hadn't known any better."

This appeased the girl somewhat, but she looked so solemn as she took in his explanation even the ambitious and determined Trogon Yield felt a little perplexed at the reaction.

"Anyway," he eventually said, "it cried out that it was broken and had been for some time. Just couldn't bear it any longer, poor thing."

"This I think may not be so," Sharshua disagreed bravely for her, shaking off her sad mood. "It is no longer broken."

"How would you know?"

"Because I fixed it."

The man considered his surroundings a moment, and this quiet diminutive girl with her long black straight hair. He was in Miss Plazenby's school, a place where extraordinary talent was said to reside among its pupils. Like the boys' school across the way. Talent nurtured from an early age, gathered in one place, brought to maturity and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Here perhaps was one of those prodigies. She might be speaking the absolute truth.

"You do not object," he said carefully, not contradicting her extravagant claim, "if I check the device myself?" He lunged forward clumsily with his stick, knocking the trophy to the floor. It rolled and skittered around like a demonic turtle, eluding his desperate grasp, until it halted at the girl's feet. In surprise she reached down for it just as he seized upon one rim. There was a soundless flash of light and they were gone.

That flash of light attracted the attention of old Merjinks, the boundary guard for the evening as he was upon his rounds. He considered investigating but then remembered that really wasn't his business. Flashes of light were hardly the domain of those who guarded the pathways. What could he do? Leave his post unguarded to check on something that flashed and was already gone? Not as if the thing tried to get past him or anything. Besides, there was no boom following on, nor shrieks of agony or cries for help. It was just a flash. Thus he continued on his rounds, trying to avoid empty snail shells left in his path by demons unknown. Crunch! Not always successfully.

"Least they ain't live ones," he sighed.

There was a slightly different response from another witness hovering near.

Floy Merritt paused in scuffing her heels lazily along the dark and dusty path near the school and pondered its meaning only briefly, as a flash of anticipation at something possibly happening, quickly dying down in the ensuing silence. Thus she resumed her idleness. She did not mind being idle. Having worked hard and busily for so much of her young life, it was nice to have a bit of down time. Yet this waiting for something to happen was a different order of idleness. It prickled her skin like icecubes on a hot day, tugged upon hair snags with an inexorable comb and itched the centre of her back where she just could not quite reach.

When was the old fool going to return? She knew he only had to filch the trophy from its unguarded cabinet, sneak out the unguarded entrance and pass the unguarded gate at the top of the lane.

She knew all she had to do was catch him in the act and split the proceeds. That was always the way with things like this. He was a Tinker. Who knew what strange mission he might be on, for whom and for why. Endless resources, untold wealth, fabulous life style. Beats being a sandwich maker and table wiper. Integrity counted for much among those old crazies as they wandered from land to land tinkering with this and that. One rogue member would shame the order most surely as a lemon on a lime tree.

Floy sat upon the log. It wobbled a bit but she did not care. Another facet of enforced idleness was the demon of second thoughts. Should she do this? Look at what a day it had been. Four priceless coins nestled in her treasure bag, enough wealth to ensure comfort for longer than she could ever remember feeling anything before. Should she be grateful before it was too late? Might her luck have run its course and disaster await her round the next corner? She kicked the log with her heel, conscience stricken. It moved again, more noticeably this time and still she did not heed the warning. Her luck had indeed run out.

Before she had time to leap clear the log tumbled her over like an unwanted passenger, pushing her through the flimsy wooden fencing that guarded the four hundred foot drop, and she disappeared over the edge.

Fate had not completely abandoned her though. A flash of light enveloped her flailing figure as she fell and the only thing which struck the ground below was a pretty straw bonnet which had seen better days. It was less fortunate as a pair of half wild dogs tore it to pieces as soon as it touched the ground and all evidence Floy Merritt ever existed was erased that strange evening upon the slopes of Mount Syzywyg.

Her replacement at the Platterfull Palace, busy waiting tables, thought herself the luckiest girl in the world right about then, having by chance spotted the vacancy notice in the window earlier that day and now she looked forward to the best pay day for quite a while. All wealth is relative, so they say.