Did Tikal know where the piece of Code was on her Wonder? Not quite, but the candidates were few and far between. An hour into her search, she had already crossed seven of them off of her list. She did not spend much time on her Wonder, but she spent time enough. It was a large place, dotted here and there with temples she had only just started exploring.

It was the temples that she feared contained the piece she was looking for. From a lookout atop the lavish gates to her Wonder, she counted four of them. That didn't sound like a lot, but each of the temples were large, themselves. Fortunately, one of them was larger than the other three and adorned the most with symbols of Ganymede. So that was where she was going to start if she was going to be playing at being Indiana Jones.

To be fair, the only thing that told her they were temples was a feeling she got when she looked at them. As she entered the largest one, she didn't see any devotionals to a deity or anything. Just more Ganymede symbols, and some Jupiter here and there, largely around the windows. The purpose of that was lost on her, but she didn't stop to ponder it. She had a mission to accomplish, and she had errands to run afterward. She'd brought paper and a pen with her in case she needed to make a map, but the building itself seemed pretty straightforward when she stepped inside. It was a temple, maybe, but less a labyrinth and more a meeting place.

Meeting places where the attendees frequently got lost were probably not very popular.

So, instead, she used the chalk she'd brought with her to mark the doors she opened and explored. The area was hardly a labyrinth, but it was still unfamiliar. And even then, she was starting to think this wasn't a temple at all. At least, no temples she knew of had bath houses in the middle of them. She paused, staring at the marble steps leading down to the pit in the center, with a drain clearly visible in the middle. The water was long gone, but the marks of it remained on the marble. So there was little else this could be but an extravagant bath house, by her estimation.

Well, the piece of Code wasn't terribly likely to be where people were bathing. Time to move on. Still, she had a feeling, a certainty, that what she was looking for was in this building, whatever it was. So she went back to exploring rooms one by one, methodically, patiently. She would find it. She just had to be careful not to miss anything. And so she kept going, even as the hours ticked by.

It was after hour eleven, her skin streaked with dust and her stomach rumbling, that Tikal was rewarded. It was, ironically, behind what she figured was a maintenance hatch that led behind a wall near the bath house. Well, not entirely behind the wall. What was actually behind the wall was a passageway that didn't open until she had, quite by accident, found a key and a switch behind the eyes of a mural on one of the walls. It had struck her as odd until then that someone had bothered paint a wall no one was ever likely to see.

Then, at the end of the passageway, she stood in front of a door with a keyhole, and, lo and behold, she held a key!

And, thank god, the key fit.

Thank god even more, because the key fit and the door opened. She pushed the door the rest of the way open into an opulent room lined with silken brocade, golden tassels, and lush cushions. It startled Tikal enough for her to pause to take it all in. But in the center of the back wall, in an ornate display case, was what she had come for. She recognized it as soon as she saw it, even as wrapped in ornamental wire as it was. Its light shone through and among the metallic loops.

The case was also locked, but the same key that had opened the door opened the case, and soon Tikal held the piece of Code in her hands. It was... light. It seemed to weigh hardly anything. All of this trouble, and all she had to do was meditate on something not even heavy enough to be a paperweight? She tucked it close to her body as she sat to recline amongst all the cushions. ...Alright then. She had never been one for meditation.

Here went nothing.

----------------------------
"Ilora, are you sure about this?"

Lidded eyes turned toward the one asking the question, obscured as they were by the smoke of incense burners and candles. "Darling, of course I am." Her voice was a purr. "When have I been wrong?" She popped a grape into her mouth and offered one to her companion. "My show is sold out for the next three nights. I can't spend time worrying about what a petty noble thinks about my deal with another petty noble."

"People are going to think your talent for misdirection extends beyond the stage, you know."

"Oh, nonsense. Besides." Another grape. "I do it all for the crown. They'll protect me." She had spent her career currying favour with the monarchy, doing her job as a knight very diligently indeed. No one would have any cause to complain about her in that realm, she saw to it. And magicians were not exactly a dangerous lot, so her hobby was not likely to bring her any harm.

"They can't protect you forever, you know." The tone should have warned her. Instead, she chuckled.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Ilora..."

"Yes, darling?"

"I'm sorry."

Alarm began to rise, but it was too late. The flash of steel was faster than she was.

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"Jesus," Tikal muttered, opening her eyes. Of all the things meditation gave her, it had to be a vision of someone getting murdered? Who was that, even? Was it her? No. Something told her that was wrong. But that had been the guardian of Tikal. ...She had heard some knights had ancestors who had once, themselves, been the guardians of the wonders. Is that who she had seen there?

...No matter. She would think about that later. She had plenty of time to think on murder when reading through funding applications--