Eliska stood back and watched Yann and Anríq climb the scaffold to join Atian on the wall.

  The local Tenby town defenders had a mixture of reactions to Anríq’s arrival. Some shook his hand and even kissed it. Others reared away from him in horror. Some even pulled their weapons on him until Atian told them not to.

  He took it all in his usual stride and didn’t react to any of it, good or bad. Eventually, he and Yann worked their way up to the top of the wall to join the rest of the Watch.

  Atian kept pointing out different features of the landscape and explaining things to the group. Eliska couldn’t hear them from here and she didn’t want to.

  Now what was she supposed to do? Everyone else had something to do. She couldn’t help defend this town without her magic.

  She didn’t know where Marine was, but Eliska didn’t belong in any dusty library. She didn’t even know how to read. Marine and O’akim would laugh her out of the room.

  She glanced around the local streets and cringed when she saw all the ladies in their finery and frilly dresses. Even the young girls wore them.

  They all gave Eliska strange looks like these women had to think real hard to figure out if Eliska was even human. She couldn’t stay here.

  She took off walking through Tenby and tried not to look at anyone of either sex, but she couldn’t unsee all the machines, screens, vehicles, street paving, and the extravagant construction of all the buildings.

  Tenby didn’t have any vehicles actually flying through the air and it didn’t have any computers. Other than that, Eliska didn’t see much difference between this town and the giant cities she visited with Marine.

  After a while, the hustle and bustle—not to mention the citizens’ constant staring—got the better of Eliska. She turned off into a random alley and cut through to a different street.

  The houses and buildings looked exactly the same here. Everything looked exactly the same here, but everyone seemed to be too busy to notice her. The defenders on the wall going out to bring in the travelers under guard attracted too much attention.

  She couldn’t figure out what anybody in this town was doing with themselves. She didn’t understand all the machines they worked on or contraptions they used for their everyday life.

  If she ever felt marginally tempted to go near one of the buildings, the dozens of screens everywhere changed her mind real quick. She didn’t want to see them or find out what might be on them.

  She dodged from one street to the next just trying to make sure no one noticed her. Her clothes always allowed her to blend in anywhere she went in the Coil. Now they made her stick out for all the world to see. She was the only female in the entire town wearing pants.

  She worked her way to the opposite end of town only to run into the other side of the wall. Men stood their posts here, too.

  She would have liked to climb up there to see what was going on with the landscape, but she couldn’t do that with the men there.

  She turned back. The thought of going back through the entire town to find someone she knew sounded like her idea of Hell.

  She needed to find somewhere dark and quiet where she could just sit by herself and be alone.

  She needed anywhere she could go where these people wouldn’t see her and stare at her. She couldn’t tolerate seeing all the questions racing through their minds.

  She looked around in panic, but right then, a little boy walked up to her. He barely came up to her chest.

  He wore the same pants and shoes as the men but in a smaller size, obviously. He also wore a different style of cap. It hugged the top of his head with a brim that curved down on either side of his eyebrows.

  He cocked his head and frowned up at her. “Who are you?”

  “Eliska,” she replied. “Who are you?”

  “Hani,” the boy replied and frowned a little deeper. “Who are you? You don’t live in Tenby.”

  “No, I’m just visiting.”

  His eyes flew wide open. “Ah—of course! The visitors!”

  “If you know about the visitors, how do you not know about me?” Eliska tried not to look at him too closely. She didn’t want to get on friendly terms with these people, especially not anyone who wanted to talk to her.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “The visitors are all over on the wall by the gate with Atian,” Hani pointed across town. “All except for that lady talking to O’akim in his library.” The boy frowned at her again. “What are you doing over here? Are you standing on the wall?”

  “You can see that I’m not. I don’t stand on the wall.”

  “What do you do?”

  She looked away. “Nothing. I don’t do anything. I was just walking around town looking at everything.”

  “That lady in the library was really nice.”

  Eliska looked up. “You talked to her?”

  Hani nodded. “I run errands for O’akim sometimes. She talked to me about stuff.”

  Eliska made a command decision not to ask what stuff Marine talked to this boy about.

  Eliska also made a command decision not to ask Hani to point her in the direction of somewhere dark and quiet where she could sit by herself and be alone.

  The whole point of being alone was for no one to know where she was. He would know if she asked him.

  He might feel tempted at some point to tell someone where she was. He might even tell Yann—or Yvan. That would be disastrous.

  “Do you know that lady?” Hani asked.

  “Who—Marine? Yes, I know her. She’s my friend.”

  He brightened up again. “I could show you where she is. Were you looking for her? I can go to O’akim’s library whenever I want to. He told me I could. He even told me I could read any of his books if I wanted to.”

  Eliska looked away again. “That was nice of him.”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you where it is. Then you could read the books, too.”

  She didn’t dare to tell him that he knew how to read better than she did. She also didn’t dare to tell him why she didn’t want to see Marine and O’akim.

  Anything was better than wandering around town with nothing to do and nowhere to go, so she followed the boy.

  He led the way back through town, up and down a few different streets, and entered some random building.

  The ground floor looked exactly like the ground floor of every other building in this town that wasn’t someone’s house.

  Hani climbed the stairs to the second floor and passed through a different area that had to be some kind of hospital.

  Patients lay on beds with women in white uniforms working over them. Men in white coats went back and forth from bed to bed. Eliska couldn’t figure out what they were doing.

  She’d never seen people treating the sick without magic—or maybe these people were injured. She would never know.

  Hani went to another stairwell that rose to the building’s fifth floor, passed down an enormous corridor lined with rooms all teeming with people, and entered an extremely luxurious office lined on opposite walls with towering bookshelves.

  Marine sat at a high table in the center of the room flipping the pages of a massive book almost as big as the tabletop itself.

  She’d cleaned herself up in the short time since she left the Watch by the gate. She’d changed into a fresh, clean dress and she even looked like she’d taken a bath.

  Eliska didn’t see how Marine could have done any of that without magic, but Marine was back to looking like a princess.

  She bent over the pages and didn’t look up when Hani and Eliska walked in. “This says the Crippling Voruta is poisonous to the sementilated Xuinerth.”

  “Yes, of course it is,” O’akim replied without turning around.

  He worked across the room over one of the town’s many machines. Eliska didn’t try to figure out what it was.

  “How can it be when the Xuinerth lives in the Jeweled Enclave?” Marine asked. “The crippling voruta is one of the few available food sources the Xuinerth uses to stay alive. The Xuinerth would have gone extinct without the voruta for food.”

  Eliska went over to Marine’s desk. “Are you finding out anything about the Voyant?”

  “These people don’t have any information about the Voyant, but this is just as interesting.” Marine turned another page. “I’ve been trying to find out about these plants for years.”

  Their conversation drew O’akim’s attention. “Oh, good. Hani’s back. I need you to take a message to Atian, Hani.” O’akim handed the boy a folded piece of paper. “Run along, now.”

  The boy left. Marine went back to poring over her book.

  “This says the crippling voruta has a scaly purple seed pod. That’s wrong,” she announced. “It has a scaly purple seed pod in its first year, but after that, the pod turns grey.”

  O’akim looked up and smiled at her. “Of course you’re right, my dear. You should go through all my books and correct any other errors you find.”

  She shot him a smirk and went back to reading. “That’s just your way of trying to get me to stay.”

  “Can you blame me? No one else in this town wants to talk about the crippling voruta or the sementilated Xuinerth.”

  Marine stood up, closed the book, climbed a ladder, and slid the book back into place. She took down a different book, took it back to her desk, and started reading it.

  “This one actually lists histories of civilizations in different Layers of the Coil,” she remarked. “I thought you said you didn’t have any information about anything that happened outside of Tenby.”

  O’akim looked up. “It does? It’s news to me if it does.”

  Eliska drifted a little closer to the door. She didn’t know or want to know half of what these two were talking about.

  Hani wasn’t here. Marine and O’akim wouldn’t notice if Eliska disappeared, too.

  Just as she got to the threshold, Marine called out, “Listen to this! This book tells the story of the knights who founded the Guardian Templars! I didn’t think anyone outside the Temple knew about this.”

  “A different Templar came through here when I was just a boy,” O’akim replied over his shoulder. “He was an old man and he suffered a stroke while he was here. He died and left that book behind. That’s the only reason it’s here. I haven’t met anyone from the order since then.”

  Eliska slipped out of the room and took off walking fast down the corridor in the direction Hani led her to come here.

  Eliska beat it back out to the street. Now she was alone again. She needed to get out of sight before someone else came to find her.

  She wandered around for a little longer, but she didn’t see anything promising until she passed down another alley.

  It cut between two enormous houses. They would have been castles if they existed anywhere else in the Coil.

  The alley walls overlooked giant gardens, each bigger than the whole town of Middleborough.

  Eliska hopped over the wall into one of the gardens. Stands of trees separated the garden’s outer areas from the massive house just a dozen yards away. No one could see her here.

  She wandered through the trees and came out on a flagstone walkway leading between some tall hedges. This was perfect.

  A long glass solarium jutted out from one end of the house. The solarium had a solid back wall to trap heat on that side.

  She sat down behind that wall. She was completely invisible to the rest of the world. Now she could finally relax. No one would ever find her.

  End of Chapter 29.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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