"What's that?"

Enim peeked over his friend's shoulder into the wooden case she was holding, into a labyrinth of glassy threads and enchanted crystals. Balancing between workbenches, Enim bathed in the industrious atmosphere of the Artificer's Den, the cornerstone of golden memories from his student days.

"It's a receptacle, like they use in the Choosing." She sat it down carefully. "But these things are unbelievably slow. And people say it's impossible to make them handle an unlimited number of entries."

"Impossible, impossible," another one of Enim's acquaintances muttered, also a regular at the Artificer's Den. "We're almost there. We just need to find something to balance the Grunidews. Those are irritable spells, and something isn't quite right about their crystalline environment just yet."

Enim smoothed out a large scroll on the table with both hands, his eyes roaming over the patterns of intricate lines, the pentagrams and tiny scribblings, trying to catch up with what everybody here was actually trying to do.

"Could you prepare some more Waruneems?" Enim's friend did not even glance over her shoulder as she spoke to him, her eyes fixed on the glassy thread she was spinning with her wand.

Enim nodded invisibly behind her back, pulling up a box of crystals. He did not know whether his fellow artificers were aware that he had been gone for moons. That he had been to another world, almost. The artificers lived in a world of their own, after all, and Enim's tale apparently had not made it in. But even if they had not noted his absence, they did realize his presence, here, now, and were as good as ever at instant inclusion. And that was great.

Since Enim did not know how long he would be in Varoonya—and was hoping it wouldn't be very long at all—he was unwilling to commit to a regular position in a trabarn.

But the Artificer's Den was perfect. Always buzzing with people and knowledge and new inventions. With trial and error and enthusiasm, and with opportunities to make yourself useful. Whenever there were no palace meetings he could go to, or whenever he needed to recover and just be an artificer again, Enim would come here.

* * *

The presentations in the scribes' chamber had gone on for longer than usual. Longer than scheduled too. A number of people were rushing off hurriedly, filling the palace halls with the sound of receding footsteps.

Enim looked around, trying to spot anyone who might be willing to talk to him, hear some more, take his report on the Mountains.

However, when a thin, black-clad figure swooped down on him in a cloud of billowing robes, he almost fled. The wall behind him kept him in check. Enim forced himself to relax. He took a deep breath.

The old woman before him arched an eyebrow, so high it almost disappeared beneath her white hair. Her eyes were hard as steel.

Imperiously, she stretched out a hand toward Enim's report.

"Give it here!"

Enim hesitated. He had come just for that. Nothing he wanted more. And yet... It felt as if in this case, his report was not going to make a step ahead, toward the fulfillment of its destiny. Rather, as if Enim would be sending it to its doom. Straight into the hands of the henchman.

The energy that woman radiated was unsettling.

Enim swallowed.

She snatched the paper from him without another word. Head held high, an aura of cold power around her, she strode out of the room like a black-sailed frigate on the sea of the hurrying crowd.