Eliska stepped through her magical window onto the riverbank. She scanned the countryside up and down the valley.

These hills cut off visibility. She wouldn’t be able to see anyone coming closer. That would be a problem.

It would also prevent anyone else from seeing the group here. So that was one advantage.

She waited until Wesh and the Watchmen followed her before she closed the window behind them.

She flicked her fingers and opened a smaller magical vortex on her palm to search the area. No one was around for miles in any direction.

“We can rest here.” She walked away to a clump of trees on one of the hillsides. “You might as well all sit down until everyone feels better.”

She sank onto the grass and leaned against the nearest tree.

Wesh followed her, buckled onto the sod next to her, and toppled sideways onto his shoulder. He groaned again, shut his eyes, and threw his arm over his face. He didn’t move again.

She extended her hand and laid it on his chest to check if she’d healed all his injuries.

She didn’t detect any sign of internal damage—or any physical damage at all. The Barbarian magic-users’ assault affected him at a deeper level—a magical level.

“Thank you so much, my dear,” he husked under his breath. “I’m forever in your debt.”

She pulled her hand back and faced front. She didn’t want any of these people thanking her. She never should have left them alone.

None of this would have happened if she’d stayed with them. She would have seen the Barbarians coming. They never would have gotten anywhere close to the Watch as long as she defended them.

The Watchmen took a long time before they let their guard down. They stood over there in a loose group. Each man kept a firm grip on his weapons while they all searched the area for any sign of danger.

When they didn’t see anything, Rien paced up the riverbank to look around up there. Vidal and Niyazi walked down the valley heading in the other direction before they came back to rejoin the other men.

Eliska stopped herself from looking at them and she didn’t want them looking at her, either. She really hoped they didn’t ask why she came back.

Wesh stayed where he was with his arm over his face. His breathing lengthened as he fell asleep. Good. He would need plenty of rest after that fight.

Yvan crossed the grass first and sat down a few feet away from Eliska. “Thank you,” he told her. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to repay you for this—for everything you’ve done.”

“I don’t want repayment.” She heard herself snapping at him. She shouldn’t. She should have been softer to him—and to all of them.

Her conversation with Barsali brought her closer to him. She understood him now, but they all must have stories like his.

Yvan implied that even Rien had a story—a story that explained why he hated her so much for being a Coil rat.

“I wasn’t trying to suggest that you were doing it for payment,” Yvan murmured. “I was only trying to tell you how grateful we are.”

“Well, we can’t stay here, either. We have to keep moving. Fortunately, the Ancestral Empire is big enough. We’ll be able to travel here for a long time without going near any of the unstable edges.”

Omer came over and sat down next to Yvan. “We can’t move around forever.”

“Why not?” she asked. “I do it.”

He shook his head. “We aren’t like you. We have to establish ourselves somewhere.”

“The only alternative I can see is figuring out which of you has what the Voyant wants—if it is the Voyant sending everyone after you to get it,” she replied. “Then you can either give it to him or destroy the thing to make him stop hunting you.”

“How can we find out what it is if even Wesh’s magic can’t locate it?” Yvan asked. “Could you find it?”

“I’ve already tried. I already used my magic to see if one of you was carrying anything—and we all know there’s nothing special about any of you.”

“But we all know there’s something special about you,” Rien interrupted from a few feet away. “What would a powerful wizard like the Voyant want with a bunch of imps? He wouldn’t. He would want the one wizard in the whole Coil who might be able to stop him or kill him or whatever it is he wants from you.”

“We already established that Eliska can’t be the thing he wants,” Yvan countered. “Whatever it is, it’s either one of us or something we possess.”

“It would have to be something one of us was carrying when we left Middleborough,” Yann interjected. He crossed the bank and sat down with Eliska and the others.

Yann sat on her side of the tree. She tried not to read too much meaning into him sitting down near her.

“I had this when I left Middleborough.” Omer pulled a dagger out of his boot. “I’m guessing this isn’t what he’s looking for.”

“Maybe he is,” Yvan suggested. “Does it have any meaning for you?”

“No, I got it from the Watch armory a week before we left Middleborough. I had never seen or used it before.”

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Yvan turned away with a sigh. “I wonder if we’ll ever find out what it is.”

“We’ll find out when the Voyant comes to take it—or someone else does,” Eliska told him. “If he is the one looking for us, he’ll keep coming until he gets it.”

Both Yann and Yvan looked up. She realized a second too late that she said the Voyant was looking for “us”.

It just slipped out and she stopped herself from making it worse by trying to correct herself after the fact.

Fortunately, the other Watchmen came back just then. Vidal, Neils, and Barsali sat down in a messy circle.

Niyazi squatted. “I’m going hunting. I’m hungry and I saw some animal tracks over there. This place looks like it has more life in it than we’ve seen before. I’ll find something and bring it back.”

“You don’t have to.” Eliska raised her staff and spiked it into the soil near her own foot.

She didn’t think about it before she did it. Old instinct made her react automatically.

She impaled her staff a foot into the sod and struck a burrowing creature crawling through its tunnel down there.

Her staff ejected a fork of magic into the creature and then magnetized it to the end of her staff.

The Watchmen scrambled out of the way while she pulled the thing out of the ground. It kicked and struggled, but it couldn’t break the magic binding it to the end of her staff.

The creature’s claws tore up the sod and kicked up a mound of dirt around the hole when she dragged the creature squeaking and screeching into the open.

“What the hell is that?!” Rien roared.

Eliska held the creature up twisting and turning it in all directions. Dirt and clumps of grass fell from its thick black fur while it contorted around in circles trying to free itself.

The noise woke up Wesh. He took his arm down, propped himself up on his elbow, and frowned at the proceedings.

“The local people call them frilled biturongs,” Eliska explained. “I don’t know what they’re really called.”

She waited until the creature twisted in her direction. Then passed her forefinger across the creature’s throat to kill it the rest of the way.

It drooped from the end of her staff and hung limp with all its limbs pointing down to the ground.

The Watchmen took another long time before they calmed down again. She didn’t notice before how jumpy and nervous they all acted.

Yann did it, too.

She never noticed this about herself. She’d become so accustomed to the Coil and its many dangers. Going through all of this just seemed normal.

Some part of her she didn’t understand wanted to make it easier for these men, but she nothing would make it easier. She already knew that.

They would probably never find a safe haven. That was the worst part of it. They would have to keep wandering to stay away from the Voyant.

If he was the one who sent Barbarians after them, what would he send next? He already sent Darklings. What could be worse than that?”

She got to work cleaning and gutting the biturong. She released it from the end of her staff, held it up by its foot with one hand, and used her staff to skin it.

She walked away from the group to gut the creature at a distance. She didn’t want to leave a pile of steaming entrails lying right there where the men had to sit.

She returned to find Rien standing up compressing all the dirt back into the hole with his foot.

Niyazi scooped up a bunch of twigs from between the trees. He squatted in the center of the group arranging the twigs into a cone shape.

She sat down with her fresh carcass, used her magic to ignite the twigs, and used some other dead sticks to build a spit.

The others sat in silence while Niyazi combed the area for all the dry wood he could find.

The sudden lack of any danger seemed to deflate the Watchmen. They all went slack. Their faces lost all expression. They stared into the flames in a stunned trance.

Only Niyazi stayed active. He fed his sticks into the fire and walked around the area gathering more while Eliska spitted her biturong to cook it.

Then there was nothing to do but sit around and wait. The oppressive silence became unbearable.

Wesh finally gave everyone something to talk about by sitting up.

“How’s your head, old man?” Yvan asked.

Wesh snorted. “It’s been better. Thank you for asking.”

“What did they do to you?” Yann asked.

“They sent a feedback loop through my system to stop me from using my magic against them. It turned my magic back on me to neutralize me so they could finish me off.”

Yann looked down at the ground and shook his head. “I’m really starting to be extremely grateful that I don’t have magic.”

“You should be grateful,” Wesh muttered. “Life as a wizard is too complicated. The life of an imp is much better.”

Vidal laughed at him. “How do you know that if you’ve been a wizard all your life?”

“I can see perfectly well how it is,” Wesh replied. “I would gladly have lived my life as an imp.”

“And get wiped out by Darklings like everyone else in Middleborough?” Neils interjected. “That doesn’t sound like much of a life.”

“Imps get to raise families and spend their lives working toward building a decent society,” Wesh pointed out. “I wouldn’t have gotten locked in the Guardian Temple if I’d been an imp.”

“No one locked in you the Temple,” Eliska interrupted. “The Guardian Templars are a voluntary order just like the Black Watch. They wouldn’t take you if you didn’t join willingly.” She made a face at Niyazi and the others. “Don’t listen to a word he says. He’s sulking because the other wizards defeated him.”

Wesh looked away. “Now I really wish I was an imp. You’re too smart for your own good, my dear.”

A few of the Watchmen laughed.

“How did you join the Guardian Templars, Wesh?” Yann asked. “Did you grow up with other magic-users?”

“No, I was the only one in my family. My parents saw that I had magic and they sent me to the local wizard to learn. I apprenticed with him using magic in the town to heal, fix things, and solve problems. When I got to the age of maturity, he recommended that I go into the Temple to improve my skill and continue my education.”

“Now tell them the rest of it,” Eliska interrupted.

He looked up and frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“A man who joins the Black Watch joins for life. Once they join, they can’t leave—not without betraying their oath. That isn’t the case with the Guardian Templars, is it? You could leave whenever you want. You stay because you enjoy it and because Temple life suits you. You don’t really wish you were an imp householder, do you? Tell the truth.”

He winced and looked away. “Of course you’re right, my dear. I would have left a long time ago if I didn’t take to it.”

She found herself smiling at him and feeling something like affection. She’d never spent this much time around another magic-user before, especially not one so much older and more experienced than herself.

Niyazi distracted her by turning the biturong on the spit. It dripped juice into the flames. They sizzled and sent mouth-watering vapors drifting through the air.

Rien groaned at the smell, climbed onto his knees on his side of the fire, and pulled out his knife. “I can’t wait any longer. I’m eating it. I don’t care if it’s raw.”

“You better share it with the rest of us,” Omer told him. “You talk a lot of crap about Eliska. At least she divided the food evenly.”

“I will,” Rien replied.

“Only because the rest of us will thump you if you don’t,” Neils countered. “Just remember you have all eight of us watching you, so don’t try to cheat.”

A few more people laughed, including Yann. He happened to glance up at Eliska right then.

His eyes twinkled when he looked at her. His cheeks flushed with pleasure and his features lit up, but he wasn’t looking at her like that.

The next second, he went back to watching Rien.

Rien carved off a slice of meat, stuffed it into his mouth, and then got to work cutting off equally sized pieces to pass around the circle.

He started by handing the second piece to Niyazi, who happened to be the man on Rien’s left. Then Rien worked his way around the circle going in the same direction.

He handed a piece to Eliska after he already served Niyazi, Vidal, Neils, Omer, and Yvan.

She didn’t mention that she was the one who caught this biturong so they could all put some food in their stomachs. She waited her turn like the others.

She might have magic, but she didn’t want anyone considering her anything exceptional. She was just another person in this group trying to survive until tomorrow.

End of Chapter 17.