Rezkin started down the corridor and came to a sudden halt. He looked behind him and suddenly realized he had made a mistake. Another Rule broken. Rule 10, again. Do not leave evidence. The floor of the corridor was covered in dust, and he was leaving footprints. Considering his options, he decided he had only three. First, he could try to find a way to cover the tracks, which would be difficult and time consuming. Second, he could clean the entire corridor, which would erase his tracks but could potentially alert people that someone had been here recently. That method was also time consuming, not to mention he did not have a broom. It would also be noisy. The young man decided the third option would have to do. He would continue on and hope that the disuse of the corridor would suffice for the purpose of the test. It was unlikely anyone would come through here and find his tracks.

The servants’ corridor turned several times and branched off twice before Rezkin stepped through another door into a privy. One inhale set him to gagging, and he realized that this particular privy needed some attention. Rezkin absolutely did not want to be the one to do it. He cracked the door of the privy open and peered down the corridor. The target room was only ten paces to his left on the opposite wall. The masters had not set a guard directly outside the room because that would have made the test impossible. Instead, a roaming guard would pass by the room every two minutes.

Rezkin pushed the door closed as a guard came into view around the corner. It would be so much easier if he could just kill the guards, but that was not the assignment. He waited several tense moments for the guard to pass and then counted to fifteen before checking that the guard had turned down the other corridor. Closing the door behind him, Rezkin silently rushed to the target room. He pressed the latch, and of course, it was locked. This was not a problem for a lockmaster, and he had the door open quickly, but almost not quickly enough to avoid the next guard.

Once he slipped into the room, he sighed. No one would enter this room for another twelve minutes. He would have liked to have made it inside the room immediately after the last check so that he could have the full twenty minutes to exit the fortress and return to the master, but they would be looking for him to be near this room right before or after a check. Thusly, he decided to enter the room late and give up a bit of his escape time.