Eliska went downstairs and ate breakfast with the others. Anríq left the house first. Then Marine went off to O’akim’s library.

  Eliska took her staff with her to the wall when the Watchmen reported for duty. God only knew why she kept carrying this staff around with her.

  She remembered when she saw the situation beyond the wall.

  The instability kept wavering back and forth across the countryside out there. “It goes back and forth getting closer and then migrating farther away,” Atian reported.

  Yvan pointed up at the sky. “The Layers are getting more chaotic. More of them are visible and they’re collapsing and reforming faster than they were even yesterday.” He turned to Eliska. “Can you tell anything from here?”

  She stared up at multiple Layers towering into the atmosphere as far as the eye could see. “I’ve seen this part of the Coil before. I know where we are, but it doesn’t help us. I can’t predict what will happen, what will come after us, or where we’ll wind up when it does. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more than that.”

  “I’ve seen this before, too,” Yann chimed in.

  Yvan spun around. “You have? Where?”

  “Anríq and I saw it when we got separated from you. The Layers became visible, but they were spiraling around in a vortex—like a funnel.”

  Yvan sliced his finger at the other Watchmen. “You men come with me and I’ll show you where you’re posted. We’ll need to keep an eye on things as the situation escalates. It’s bound to overtake the town sooner or later.”

  He set off down the wall with Atian and the other Watchmen. Neither of them remembered to give Eliska an assignment. They left her standing there with nothing to do again.

  The Tenby defenders standing nearest gave her strange looks, especially her clothes and staff.

  She couldn’t exactly blame them. She looked nothing like any other woman in town. Even Marine looked so much more feminine than Eliska did.

  She pretended she really did have somewhere to go and something to do. She planned to go back to one of the other gardens she’d seen in that alley—not the same one. She didn’t want Yvan coming to find her again.

  Yvan wouldn’t come to find her because she already told him everything she didn’t know about the Layers moving in. He didn’t need her anymore.

  She didn’t plan to lock herself away in that house around the clock. She would rather sit in a garden by herself.

  She passed down a few different streets not looking at anything in particular. She let her thoughts drift.

  She still didn’t see these invisible Darklings. From what she could gather from the Watchmen, the Darklings weren’t as invisible as they seemed.

  Were the Watchmen in distress because they thought they were seeing something that wasn’t there—or did the Dark make them crazy?

  She turned off toward the alley leading toward the gardens, but she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw a structure she didn’t notice yesterday.

  A large pavilion stood on the other side of the street. Four pillars held up a broad roof. The pavilion had no walls, but it did have tables, benches, and what looked like another outdoor kitchen counter underneath it.

  All the same machines occupied all the same positions they occupied in the Black Watch’s house, but that wasn’t the most amazing part of the scene.

  Anríq stood under the roof working over the fire. Fifteen children crowded around him all talking at once, including Hani.

  Anríq pulled out pots and pans, heated them on the stove, and cut up meat, vegetables, and other stuff before adding everything to his many pans.

  The noise of children’s voices floated out of the pavilion. Then Eliska heard Anríq’s deeper voice talking back to them and even laughing.

  She took a few steps closer to watch. The children tried to help him and wound up getting in his way.

  One little boy actually crawled into a cupboard by Anríq’s knees and pulled out a pot too big for the boy to carry. He tried to lift it and dropped it on the floor with a bang.

  Anríq picked up the pan, set it on the counter, and then picked up the boy with both hands. “Sit up here where you can watch. You’ll need to learn for when you become a famous chef.”

  The boy laughed. “I don’t want to be a chef. I want to be a doctor.”

  “Then you’ll need to learn your knife skills for cutting people open.”

  A bunch of the kids laughed. Another little boy crossed the kitchen just then and stopped next to Anríq’s cutting board where the boy could watch. Anríq placed his beefy hand behind the boy’s back to steer him toward one of the tables before Anríq went back to work.

  “Are you going to make rice, Anríq?” an older girl asked.

  “Where is it?” he asked over his shoulder. “Get it out for me and measure it so I can put it in the pot.”

  “Can I help, too, Anríq?” the first boy asked from his seat on the counter.

  “Here. You can peel the potatoes.”

  Anríq handed the boy the peeler and moved a basket of potatoes next to him on the counter.

  Just then, a tiny little girl toddled over to Anríq. She couldn’t have been more than two.

  She tugged the leg of his pants and raised both arms to him. She opened her closed her fingers in a grasping motion. “Ta-ta!” she called.

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  He stopped what he was doing, picked her up, and sat her on his hip where he supported her behind her back with one muscular arm.

  “Hello, precious little princess,” he told her. “Yes, you can come and watch, too.”

  She started playing with the shells and beads tied in his hair. He lifted one of the strings and bounced it up and down in front of her eyes. It made a jingling noise and she laughed.

  He grinned back at her and placed it in her hands so she could play with it while he worked.

  The older girl came over with a container of rice just then. She set the rice next to Anríq’s elbow.

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” he told her. “Would you please cut up that fruit and cheese and serve it to these little ones? You can use this knife here.”

  He set her up with a cutting board and a knife of her own. He had to do everything one-handed while he held the little girl in his other arm.

  “What are you doing?” Eliska blurted out.

  Anríq didn’t look up from stirring his pots. “I’m cooking as you can see.”

  “Who are you?” the first little boy asked.

  “This is Eliska,” Anríq replied. “She’s a friend of ours who came in with us yesterday. She’s here to help defend the town.”

  “Why don’t you wear dresses?” another younger girl asked.

  “I’ve never worn a dress in my life,” Eliska countered. She tried not to sound too hostile about it, but it came out that way anyway. She turned back to Anríq. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be standing on the wall with the Watchmen?”

  “I serve all humanity. These children’s parents are all stricken with the same disease. All the healthy adults are helping the patients, so I’m taking care of the children.”

  “Shouldn’t you be working to heal their parents, then?”

  “Tenby has its own healers and non-magical ways of healing. My service is needed here.”

  “Could I become a Servant, too, Anríq?” the first boy asked.

  “You couldn’t be a Servant,” the older girl told him. “Servants are magic-users.”

  “You can become a Servant if you want to,” Anríq told the boy. “Wait until you get older to make sure it’s what you really want to do. If you become a doctor, you might not have to become a Servant. You can stay here with your family and do the same job.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do,” the boy announced. “I don’t want to leave Tenby.”

  The little girl squirmed out of Anríq’s arms and he lowered her to the ground before she toddled off somewhere else.

  “The potatoes are ready, Anríq,” the first boy told him.

  “Thank you, young one.” He took the cutting board and scraped the potatoes into a different pot. Then he went back to cutting up hunks of meat.

  Hani noticed Eliska standing there. “What are you doing today?”

  “I’m not doing anything,” she told him. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “If you want something to do, you can help me,” Anríq told her.

  She hesitated. She’d never been comfortable around children.

  Just then, another tiny boy charged through Anríq’s work area. Eliska didn’t see what this kid was doing or where he was going.

  He missed his direction, collided with Anríq’s leg, bounced off, and sprawled flat on his back. He burst into loud sobs.

  Anríq stopped everything, picked up the little one, dusted him off, and then held him in the crook of his arm while Anríq pretended to check all the kid’s non-existent injuries.

  “Is it here? Is this the broken bone?” Anríq squeezed up the boy’s arm even though there was nothing wrong with it. “What about here?”

  He wriggled his fingers into the boy’s neck and tickled him. The boy’s sobs faded, but only slightly. He looked around in confusion trying to figure out where he actually was hurt.

  “Did you get internal organ damage—here?” Anríq poked the kid in the stomach and the boy burst out in one guffaw of laughter before he remembered to start crying again.

  “I have an idea,” Anríq announced. “You must have a curse inside you. I’ll turn you over and shake you so it falls out through your mouth. Then you’ll be all back to normal. Okay?”

  The boy blinked at nothing trying to decide if this was a good idea.

  Anríq didn’t wait for him to come to a decision. He turned the boy over, took hold of the kid’s ankles in both powerful hands, and swung the kid back and forth and up and down in big, gentle swoops.

  The boy exploded in shrieks of laughter. He waved his arms around trying to figure out what was happening.

  “Is it out yet?” Anríq yelled over the noise. “Do you feel better yet?”

  The boy was laughing too hard to hear him. The other kids sitting around laughed, too.

  The boy’s shirt fell down to his neck and left his midsection exposed. Anríq hefted the boy higher and blew a loud raspberry into the kid’s stomach.

  The boy screeched with laughter. Anríq turned the boy over, sat him on his elbow again, and straightened his clothes while the boy caught his breath.

  “I think you’re okay now,” Anríq decided. “I’ll do another examination later to make sure the curse doesn’t come back. Okay?”

  He kissed the boy on the side of the neck, set him down, and steered him back to the tables where the older girl was just setting out a bunch of food for the children to snack on.

  Another younger girl rushed over to Anríq right away and raised her arms. “Swing me around like that, Anríq!”

  “Just a minute,” he told her. He went from pot to pot checking, stirring, and covering a few things.

  When he finished, he picked up the girl, but he didn’t do the same upside-down, shaking-out-the-curse routine.

  He took her out of the pavilion—right out into the street.

  He swiveled her around, grabbed hold of one arm and one leg, and spun around faster and faster flying her through the air at high speed.

  She squealed with excitement and all the children flooded out of the pavilion for their turns. Only the older girl stayed behind.

  She beamed at all the children crowding around Anríq. Some of them climbed up his clothes and perched on his back and shoulders while he gave others rides.

  Eliska watched for a minute before she realized. None of them was around anymore. He wasn’t preparing the food—and she wasn’t helping him. She wasn’t helping anyone.

  She would never have been able to play with children so uninhibitedly. Anríq never acted like this around the Watchmen—or anyone else. She never imagined he could be so affectionate and outgoing with anyone.

  She tore herself away with an effort, checked a few of his pots, and took out a stack of plates to set the table.

  He kept playing with the children. He didn’t notice when she took his food off the fire, turned off the machine, and served the food onto all the plates for the children to eat.

  The girl kept working, too. “Sit down and eat something,” Eliska told her. “I’ll take care of this.”

  The girl obeyed her. Eliska found herself falling into a comfortable rhythm of setting the table, serving the food for any children who came over to eat it, and then washing the dishes afterward.

  She didn’t think she would find any job to do in this town. Everyone else had something to do.

  Doing something useful that actually helped people felt good. It eased the feeling that she didn’t belong here at all.

  Anríq finally must have gotten tired of playing—or maybe the children got tired first.

  He came back to the pavilion with them hanging off every limb. Two sat on his feet and held onto his legs while he walked. One little boy sat on his shoulders while another rode piggyback.

  He held two tiny ones in his arms and lowered them onto the benches in front of the food Eliska had served.

  “Sit down and eat your food,” he told them. “Once you finish, I’ll take you back to the creche. You can play there.”

  He went around the table making sure everyone sat in the right places. He had to pay extra attention to some of the children and straighten them out.

  He made it all the way around the other side of the table before the little toddler girl from earlier came back.

  She raised her arms to him and said, “Ta-ta!” again. He picked her up, sat down on the nearest bench, set her on his lap, and pulled a plate forward so she could eat out of it.

  She ate with her hands. He used a towel to clean up the drips. He didn’t try to make her eat more neatly. He kept glancing down at her to make sure she got more of the food into her mouth than on her clothes.

  Eliska found herself smiling over her shoulder at him and the children while she finished the dishes. Helping him felt good. Helping anyone felt good—better than she’d felt in a long time.

  She was just drying some of the empty pots and putting them away when Yann showed up.

  “Father asked me to come and get you,” he told Eliska.

  “Is the instability moving in?”

  “We don’t know. I think that’s what he wants to ask you. He can’t tell.”

  Eliska glanced over at Anríq. He watched and listened to their conversation, but he didn’t get up or put the little girl down.

  He stayed where he was when Eliska got her staff and followed Yann back to the wall.

  End of Chapter 34.

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