"...maybe I'll put it inside a crate or something." Crate. Cam puts a few candles on top of it as extra obfuscation.

"Anyway, we can go back but we could go to the port, I've got a red pass - I don't know how much freedom of movement you're used to but here you can't leave your neighborhood without clearance."

"How dystopian! Do they check the passes against any kind of central authority that has a record of to whom they are issued?"

"They explain when you get them that they're doing that. I know for a fact they have the capacity to do it. But in practice not really."

"So I could have one too, presumably - where would you like to go?"

"...To the green zone to watch the races, if that's an option - can I just get a copy of all of - if 'all the kinds' won't do it then all of Commander Erol's, if I promise they're not for bedrooms anything like that?"

"I, uh, don't think smuggling you into entertainment venues is a priority for me, since there's a war on."

"It's more war-related than it sounds but not in a way where me being there in person matters, especially not today. But the stadium section is also the section with the good library, which maybe doesn't matter anymore, and - almost everything that's set up to encourage people to think, or do anything for fun that doesn't involve drinking. And all the people who have access to that kind of thing. It's, I dunno. Fifty percent frivolous."

"Library does not matter unless it comes with particularly helpful librarians," Cam confirms.

"I mean, some of it is seeing which books they're putting on the shelves this month and which have disappeared, or who's reading what, but if you're about to make it safe to run then everyone can quit the cloak and dagger shit. And maybe you can conjure the other stuff anyway... Is there anything you need to do in person at all or is the smartest thing just to hide out reading stuff for a week?"

"I will probably want to hang out reading stuff for a week."

"...If, while you're doing that, you make a lot of boring food that people could plausibly have gotten around here, I bet they'll want to take time off from fighting to distribute it - you can't leave it in public for the taking and expect the guard not to confiscate it but we can probably get it where it needs to go."

"I would be happy to also make some boring food if you can tell me what food bores people."

"Personally when this is over I am never eating another limon again. Oh, or brown rice, or cornberry and cheese stew. I guess don't make the stew, just make the grains. You could leave some here first, I think, and then we can go back?"

"Yeah, sure, what's a normal looking package situation for 'em?"

"...Mm, the fastest to describe and hardest to get wrong would be burlap bags."

"Cool." Burlap bags with "brown rice" and "cornberries" stitched into them appear.

And then she can show him the way back if he needs a guide.

He does not have such a perfect sense of direction as to turn her down. "Did you have a name, by the by? I'm Cam."

"These days I go by Rit. Cam is such a normal name. Don't know what I expected, just."

They pass a couple of armed people in red armor, and the propaganda station again ("welcome not the unknown face," it intones).

"Unknown faces a big deal around here?"

"Well, they can't be immigrants, so they're either regular criminals in disguise or metal heads in disguise - second one's not likely, they'd have to be stupid powerful to even get inside the shield wall, but it's technically possible."

"Shield wall is - eco thing, something else?"

"Eco-powered thing. Also a physical wall but that doesn't help much when some of them fly."

"I see. And 'powerful' here cashes out to...?"