ARLO AND ALICE spent a long afternoon waiting for Piwi to return.

‘I knew we shouldn’t have sent the pukeko,’ Alice said. ‘Seymour would have been a far better choice.’

Arlo had to concede it would have made more sense, but Piwi had a way of making you give him what he wanted.

It was almost dark when the odd creature finally appeared, crashing clumsily through the bush like a mini storm.

‘Took your time,’ Alice snapped, a mistake that cost them another half hour and four separate apologies before Piwi came back out of his hole beneath the tree roots. Then he insisted they sit in silence and listen to him explain just how much courage and ingenuity it had taken for him to survive his mission. Only then did he retreat into the bush to return with the small roll of paper that Stefan had tied to his leg for the return journey.

The message, written in tiny cramped letters, consisted of a bulleted summary of Madame Latitude’s explanation and, on the reverse, her plan for the rescue, complete with a roughly drawn diagram of the tent and the guard positions. Finally, on the bottom were the words: When you have read this note, destroy it.

Alice and Arlo sat before their fire’s subdued flames, talking the situation out from every angle. Alice remained as suspicious as ever. ‘But what if it’s all a trap?’ she asked at least a dozen times, and Arlo’s only answer was that Stefan trusted Madame Latitude, and that was good enough for him.

‘But what about Joan? She said somebody wasn’t what they appeared to be. What if she meant Madame Latitude?’ she challenged, and Arlo had to admit the question made him uneasy.

Despite Alice’s misgivings Arlo could tell that she was secretly pleased that Madame Latitude’s plan was so close to her own. She scribbled down a few suggestions and sent a protesting Piwi back to the Academy with the modifications tied to his leg. Then she insisted they spend the rest of the night going through their roles in the rescue so many times that they could have performed them in their sleep. ‘The only thing that stops you panicking when the pressure’s on,’ she told Arlo, ‘is being able to act without thinking about it.’

When the sun finally rose they retreated to their beds. Although he was exhausted, Arlo could not keep his mind from spinning and whirling.

‘What is it?’ Alice grumpily asked, tired of his sighing and turning over.

‘There are only four of us,’ Arlo said. ‘Up against the entire Royal Guard. They are trained, and have powerful magic. We’ll never be able to defeat them.’

Alice gave a dismissive grunt. ‘You say that,’ she said. ‘But you’ve never seen me angry.’

Arlo took comfort from her gruff certainty. ‘Sleep well,’ he said to her, and then, silently, to his brother, who today faced the final Academy challenge, good luck.

Stefan stood with the other competitors and looked at the five Royal Guards before them. The guards stood proud and alert, the golden buttons of their red jackets shining like mirrors. This was it. By the day’s end five more would be fitted for their very first uniforms. Malcolm would be there, of course. And Harriet, it was impossible to imagine her not surviving a combat challenge. And me, Stefan added, not through pride or confidence, but desperation. He didn’t want the success, or crave the uniform. He desired only to be standing on the other side of the tunnel, solid again in a familiar world, brother at his side, Alice and Jackie too, reunited, alive.

‘All right then, it has come to this, your final challenge,’ the Major said. ‘You can see we have put you in two teams.’

Stefan stood at the front of his line, Harriet the back. At the back of the second line stood Malcolm, his usual sneering self. But not. Stefan tried not to pay him any attention, in case he looked at him differently, and somebody noticed. Haven’s people are everywhere. The thought had kept him awake through the night and the truth was he felt heavy now, sluggish. He would be wakeful soon enough; the first strike of the nettle stick would see to that.

‘Each team,’ the Major continued, ‘will send forward a contestant to battle with their guard. When you cede, and you will, for they have a full year of training and their skills vastly exceed yours, you will move to the back of your line. Then your second team member fights, and so it goes, until the guard, eventually worn down by a lack of rest, is defeated. Defeat a guard and you are through. A new guard then steps forward and the game continues until we have found our five heroes.’

Stefan looked back at Harriet, but she did not meet his eye. Her head was down and she was bouncing on her toes: nervous, restless, ready.

‘Last year the tournament took four hours,’ the Major added. Pace yourselves.’

Stefan noticed that, unusually, Madame Latitude was not present at the challenge. Perhaps she is too nervous, he thought. Perhaps she does not expect me to succeed. But there was no time for such speculation.

The Major raised his hand, ready to signal the start, and Stefan was first up. He took up his nettle stick and rolled it lightly through his fingers.

‘Begin!’

Stefan moved quickly, as he had planned, pushing forward with his stick while at the same time stepping to his left, hoping to evade the counter-blow. He felt his stick being brushed aside and at the same moment there was an intense burning in his cheek as the guard’s stick made contact. Rather than drop, though, he mustered all his energy to do the exact opposite, straightening his body and leaping into the air, brushing his stick in a broad arc below him as he performed a slow flying summersault. Surprise was his only weapon. But his stick brushed thin air and he landed with no sense of where his enemy was. The next blow was a heavy boot in the small of his back, propelling him forward. He hit the ground face first and felt the wind knocked from his lungs with the impact. The force of the blow had dislodged the stick from his hand and even as he rolled away he could sense his opponent looming over him. Immediately he raised his hand in a closed fist, the signal to surrender. He and Harriet had discussed the tactic carefully. Work the guard quickly and then get out before being harmed. It was the only hope of wearing them down. The problem was, Stefan was sure, his guard had hardly worked at all. At this rate it was he who would face exhaustion first. He walked head-down to the back of the line and stood behind Harriet.

‘They’re too strong,’ he said. ‘She was barely troubled by me.’

‘Just keeping track of you is drawing on her energy,’ Harriet said. ‘And don’t worry. Remember the plan.’

Madame Latitude had already explained Malcolm’s tactic to them. Malcolm would defeat a guard early on and so would be able to retire from the competition. The other four members of his team, without Malcolm to help them, would struggle to beat a guard by themselves. That meant the chances of people going through from Harriet and Stefan’s team going through were much higher.

‘But, won’t it look strange, like we planned it?’ Stefan whispered.

‘No, it’s exactly what you would expect of Malcolm,’ Harriet replied. ‘To think only of himself and leave the others stranded. And everybody knows I owe you my place in the final.’

‘Only one problem then,’ Stefan said.

‘What’s that?’

Stefan nodded to the combat zone, where the two guards were toying with their opponents. Their speed, agility and anticipation were more than just magic. What they had was training.

Harriet’s face set grimly and her eyes narrowed. She was next up. ‘I’m not saying it’ll be easy,’ she said. ‘Look up there, though. Seems we’re generating quite a bit of interest.’

Stefan followed Harriet’s gaze to the Academy wall, where the strangest collection of birds had landed, each watching the events below with keen interest. Seagulls beside finches, sparrows alongside tui, nocturnal ruru perched in broad daylight, even a pukeko silently witnessing every blow. The animal kingdom, which had long ago decided not to interfere in human matters, had come to watch their shared fate unfold.

Malcolm and Harriet reached the front of the line at the same time, and immediately the mood of the game changed. The waiting guards were moving, crouching, heads to the side, listening, sensing, ready. Perhaps they’d been informed that these were the two champions, perhaps it was the confidence with which Harriet and Malcolm stepped forward that worried them.

Stefan struggled to watch the two battles at once: they were both so compelling. This was a form of combat he could never have imagined. It was unrestrained and brutal and at the same time balletic. The fighters leapt, flew, turned, dropped, swept, struck, parried and kicked, and they did it all with speed and grace. Despite their great skill, for a long time none of the combatants landed a telling blow. Every time a stick looked like connecting a hand would be there to sweep it away.

It was Malcolm who scored the first strike, upending his opponent with a footsweep and somehow anticipating which way he would roll away. He flicked his nettle stick to the guard’s neck and there was a yelp of pain. Malcolm danced back, taunting, and then as soon as the guard had regained his feet, Malcolm raised his fist surrender. While the guard fought on, Malcolm would recover and come back stronger. If not next time, then the time after, or the time after that, the guard’s fatigue would break him and Malcolm would strike the final blow. It was a clever strategy, and one that would raise less suspicion, for Stefan suspected that, had he wanted to, Malcolm could have won there and then.

Harriet pushed harder, risking a few blows herself in order to tire the guard. At one point their sticks clashed with such force that they fell from their hands and the two, rather than reach for their weapons, grappled with one another, wrestling to the ground where it seemed certain one would choke the life out of the other before either yielded. But again, strategy trumped adrenaline and just as Harriet appeared to be gaining the upper hand she raised her fist and surrendered, winning herself precious recovery time while the others got their chance to battle a weakened guard.

Each time a blow landed there was a flurry of wings up on the wall, as the ever-increasing number of birds reacted to the contest. Stefan even spied two large rats slinking out the back door of the kitchens to watch. He definitely felt the guard weakening on each new round. Her reactions were slower, her deflections less controlled, her attacks less committed, as if she understood now that her defeat was inevitable and the most honourable path for her was to fight on as long as possible.

At the same time Stefan found himself feeling more relaxed during the combat, and the more this happened, the more room there was for his magic to speak to him. But this new confidence led to his first mistake. He felt the guard weakening for a moment and he lurched forward, too eager to land the final blow. The guard stepped deftly aside and, using Stefan’s own momentum, flung him to the ground. She had her knee on his back before he could stir. Stefan wanted to surrender but he couldn’t get his hand free to signal. The guard flicked the end of her nettle stick against Stefan’s neck and held it there until Stefan was sure he would pass out from the pain.

He closed his eyes and summoned the only image he knew could strengthen him, the memory of Jackie, cowering in her cage: lonely and abandoned. The more sharply the picture came into focus, the stronger the magic in Stefan grew. He did not try to throw the guard off him, or roll out from under her. Instead he simply thought himself into the air, rising like a magic carpet with the guard helpless to do anything but let herself be carried up with him. Stefan shot his hand out, fist clenched in surrender, and the guard relented.

Stefan staggered to the back of the line, his eyes blurred with pain. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Harriet, before she could admonish him. ‘My mistake.’

‘Just breathe deep and recover,’ Harriet answered. ‘Next time you meet her she’ll be broken.’

At that moment there was a loud cheer from the other group. Malcolm had dropped his opponent with a foot trip, kicked the nettle stick out of the guard’s hands, caught it, broke it over his knee and then, with a final flourish, threw his own stick high into the air and subdued the distracted guard with a simple neck and wrist restraint. Malcolm leaned forward and whispered something into the guard’s ear and the message was enough to convince him the time had come to raise his fist and walk away.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, our first Royal Guard!’ the Major called.

On the wall a solitary blue heron flapped its way elegantly into the air, completing a lazy arc and heading back to the swamplands. It had seen enough.

From there the rest of the plan fell into place. With Malcolm out of the mix the next guard had little trouble keeping the four remaining contestants in the other team at bay. Meanwhile, Harriet and Stefan moved closer to the front of the line. All Stefan had to do was let Harriet take the guard close to the limit of her endurance one more time and then, when she stepped aside, he would step in and strike the final blow.

And so it went. Harriet stalked her prey with patient focus, confident she was too quick for her fading opponent. And yet, every time it seemed the guard was about to give up, Harriet would pull back, letting her recover just enough to receive further punishment. Stefan couldn’t understand why the guard would go along with such a ploy. Why not just yield and be done? Pride, was the only answer he could think of.

When Harriet finally decided her opponent was sufficiently depleted, she casually flicked her own fist into the air and withdrew, leaving Stefan to finish the task.

This time Stefan was more cautious, striking then pulling back each time, never getting close enough to discover whether the guard was foxing. With each blow of the nettle stick he could feel her resistance diminishing, but still he didn’t close in. The pain would subside quickly enough and the guard would recover. The same could not be said for Jackie.

The ending then came as something of an anticlimax. The guard, having slowly clawed her way back up to standing, stood swaying before her opponent and then, without warning, collapsed again to the ground, beaten not by Stefan, but by exhaustion. Stefan didn’t mind. He had won.

‘We have our second Royal Guard,’ announced the Major.

Stefan fell to his knees. He had kept his word to Alice. He was through.

‘Nicely done.’ Malcolm stood beside him smiling, and offered him his hand.

For a moment Stefan panicked. Won’t it be obvious? Aren’t we meant to be enemies?

Malcolm deftly reassured him. ‘We’re on the same side now, brother. We are Royal Guards together, loyal to the end.’

Malcolm held out his arms and Stefan let himself be embraced. If he had to risk his life at the mine in two nights’ time, he was glad this particular guard would not be standing in his way.

‘Now let’s see who is to join us?’ Malcolm grinned. ‘I have my money on your fiery friend.’

Harriet was now up against a completely fresh guard, but she was able to match him blow for blow. Although it took three full rotations before she stood victorious over the guard, the result always felt inevitable.

Malcolm once again played the role of welcomer, hugging her tightly and congratulating her on having made the team. Then Harriet and Stefan fell into each other’s arms, clutching one another like family members reunited after a time of war. Stefan felt the strength of her arms around him, and the knocking of her heart against his own. For a short, happy moment, he felt safe.

‘We did it,’ Harriet whispered fiercely into his ear. Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders rose and fell with sobs of relief. ‘We’re going to do this Stefan. We’re going to do it.’