Yann stood at a distance from Anríq in the center of another town in the same Island. Yann leaned on his glaive while he waited for Anríq to finish haggling with one of the local market vendors.

The two boys had entered this town and Anríq immediately got mobbed by people asking him to heal them or their relatives or to use his magic to do other odd jobs.

He healed everyone they asked him to heal. He spent the morning working his way through town until he finished taking care of everyone anyone asked him to take care of.

Now he stood in the town’s central market trading magical favors for food and other supplies.

Yann didn’t get involved. He could have traded his fighting skills for food and other supplies, but that would take time. Anríq could accomplish everything so much faster.

Just then, one of the townspeople came over to Yann and pointed at the glaive. “How much for the weapon?”

“It isn’t for sale,” Yann replied. “I need this to defend myself.”

The man rotated around Yann and narrowed his eyes to scrutinize the weapon. “It’s very well made—gypsy make, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re right. It is,” Yann replied. “That doesn’t mean I want to sell it.”

“I’ll give you three hundred for it. You can buy yourself another glaive for half that and use the money for other things.”

“I could buy myself another glaive for half the price and get something half as good,” Yann returned. “Thank you, but no thank you.”

“Be reasonable,” the man insisted. “We don’t see weapons like that very often. It’s worth a lot of money.”

“All the more reason I should keep it for myself.” Yann turned away. “Here comes my friend. Thank you anyway. See you later.”

Yann pushed himself off his glaive and headed into the market to meet up with Anríq. Yann didn’t want anyone tempting him to sell his glaive, not even for food.

The man tagged after him until Yann caught up with Anríq. Then the man turned to Anríq. “Talk some sense into your friend. I can offer top dollar for the weapon. You could invest the money and become a rich man. Think about it. Don’t walk away from the deal of a lifetime.”

“Leave him alone,” Yann fired back. “You can see he’s a Servant. He isn’t interested in your money or in talking about selling you my glaive. Now go bother someone else. We’re leaving.”

The two boys turned away and walked out of the market. No one else accosted them the rest of the way through town. Everyone who wanted Anríq’s services had already asked him and gotten what they wanted.

He rummaged around in a bag and handed Yann a piece of cheese and a net bag containing five plums.

“Thank you,” Yann exclaimed.

Anríq didn’t answer. He’d fallen silent again as soon as he entered the town. He only spoke to anyone when he needed information about what was wrong with them or what they wanted him to do.

Yann found himself falling into the same silence. He felt much closer to Anríq after their previous conversation.

Now Yann didn’t need to talk to Anríq—about anything. They understood each other well enough that they didn’t need to talk.

Anríq ate his own food while they walked the rest of the way out of town and reentered the farmland.

“Will it be like this in all the towns?” Yann finally asked. “Eliska said people go looking for the Servants to ask for help.”

Anríq nodded. “All the towns. The Servants just walk around with no destination. People come and find us and take us where we need to go. Then we wander on until the same thing happens.”

Yann studied him on the side. “Was it worth it? Are you glad you left your home for this life? Do you ever have doubts that you made the right decision?”

“No, never,” Anríq replied. “When I heal someone or help someone, I know I made the right choice.”

Yann looked away. “I wish I could feel that way.”

“What do you mean?” Anríq asked.

“The Watch. I wish I could be as certain that the Watch is where I really belong.”

Anríq frowned at him. “It isn’t where you belong?”

“I don’t know. I guess everything is up in the air since we lost Middleborough. I don’t know if I belong to the Watch anymore. I don’t know if any of us do.”

“How could you not?” Anríq shot his gaze to Yann’s uniform. “You could change your appearance. You could change your clothes. Then no one would think you belonged to the Black Watch.”

“I don’t belong to the Black Watch,” Yann mumbled. “That’s the thing. I haven’t taken my oath yet. I’m not old enough.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“And yet you fight with them and wear their insignia and do everything they do. Where does the doubt come in?”

Now it was Yann’s turn to fall silent. He didn’t want to tell Anríq about Eliska.

Yann had already crossed that line. He’d already made up his mind to let Eliska go if she wanted Anríq instead—or if she wanted any other man instead of Yann.

He didn’t need her. She only muddied up his thoughts and confused him about his decision.

If he’d never met her, he would have sworn his oath to the Watch and never looked back. He would have spent his life in the Watch and been as happy about that as Anríq was about being a Servant.

Yann had to admire the irony that he met her just months before taking his oath. He couldn’t have met her at a more crucial moment.

She stood at the crossroads. He could choose to ignore the temptation and continue to dedicate himself to the Watch. He could treat her as the bait put in his path to lure him away into a trap of pointless carnal satisfaction.

Or he could take her as a warning sign that his heart wasn’t as deeply committed to the Watch as he thought it was.

The choice wasn’t really about her at all. Did he want to commit himself to the Watch or did he want to find a wife and have a family? He didn’t have to do it with her. He could do it with someone else.

Eliska offered him the chance to really decide instead of just doing what his father did.

He shook those thoughts out of his head and noticed Anríq studying him. “What?” Yann asked.

“You tell me,” Anríq repeated. “Where does the doubt come in?”

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t have any.”

“Liar,” Anríq countered and turned away.

He went back to eating and Yann didn’t draw him back into conversation. Yann didn’t want to talk about that, either. He wanted to talk about that even less than he wanted to talk about Anríq’s past.

“What do you want to do about meeting up with the others?” Yann finally asked.

“We can’t meet up with the others if we can’t find them,” Anríq replied.

“There must be a way to find them,” Yann insisted.

“I’m sure your father is trying just as hard to find you.”

Yann looked away and didn’t say anything about that. He really wished he could somehow pressure Anríq to do more to find the Watch.

Obviously Anríq couldn’t find the Watch if he couldn’t find the Watch. Constantly nagging him about it didn’t change the fact.

The dread and anxiety of not knowing where they were or having any way to get back to them—it sapped Yann’s nerves.

He kept searching the surroundings for any sign….but of course he never found any.

Anríq didn’t assure him that they would find the Watch eventually. No one could promise that.

Anríq’s silence somehow made it so much worse. Anríq must understand Yann’s agitation. Anríq just couldn’t do anything about it. No one could.

They wandered out of town and through the countryside in silence. Yann should have felt grateful that he even had Anríq.

Anríq knew how to navigate in the Coil. He knew how to deal with people and how to find food, shelter, and resources. He had magic to deal with instability and the ever-changing landscape.

Things could have been worse. Yann could have wound up alone out here. He probably wouldn’t have lasted a day.

Of course Anríq didn’t remind Yann of that, either. Anríq never told Yann to be grateful for what he had. Yann didn’t have to confide his fears to Anríq because Anríq already knew.

Yann marveled for the thousandth time that Anríq actually chose this life of his own free will. No one made him go off into the Coil alone to wander for the rest of his days.

Yann never would have done that, not even if he had Anríq’s size, strength, and magic. Nothing would have been worth that. Yann might even have been willing to die to avoid it.

They camped that night by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Yann built a fire and the two boys shared the rest of the food Anríq had traded his skills for in town. The two of them had been doing the same thing for three days.

Yann found himself studying Anríq across the fire.

“Ask your questions,” Anríq prompted.

Yann tried to look away and failed. “I don’t have any questions. You’ve already answered them all.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just thinking.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“About you—about what it’s like for you to go from town to town with no destination.”

“The Servant’s life is my destination. I don’t care where I do it.”

“That’s what I mean. If you can’t meet back up with the Watch, you’ll just go back to wandering the way you were before.”

“Of course I will,” Anríq replied. “What else is there to do? You have nothing else to do, either. Why not do that?”

“That’s what I was just thinking about,” Yann told him. “You’ll keep doing this, and as long as I stay with you, I’ll keep doing the same thing.”

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Anríq pointed out. “You could stay in any of these towns. You could get a job or sell your skills or hire yourself out as a guard. I’m sure any number of people would be happy to take you.”

Yann stared down into the flames. “I know all that.”

“Then why do you stay with me?”

“That’s what I was just trying to figure out.”

“So what’s the answer?” Anríq asked.

Yann looked up. “Why are you talking to me so much? Aren’t you supposed to stay silent?”

“I told you. You require healing.”

“I do?” Yann asked. “I feel okay?”

“No, you don’t feel okay. You feel pain—here.” Anríq touched his fingertips to the center of his sternum. “It eats away at you and never goes away. That’s why you need to talk to me, even if I’m the one asking the questions.”

Yann couldn’t look at him again. The gnawing doubt really had been eating away at him.

He should hate Anríq for calling it what it was and blurting out so explicitly how much it bothered Yann.

Yann couldn’t hate Anríq for that—or for anything else.

Anríq settled back against the bank by the side of the road and folded one arm under his head. “You’ll tell me eventually and then you’ll feel better.”

“Is that why you’re doing this—to make me feel better?”

“Of course,” Anríq replied. “I’m a healer. Do you think I can sit by and watch someone suffer without doing something to heal them? Do you think you’re any different from all these other people?”

“No, of course not.”

“You called me your friend in town,” Anríq went on. “Who would need that healing more than a friend?”

Yann didn’t answer. He thought at the time that Anríq was too far away to overhear Yann telling that man that Anríq was his friend.

Anríq’s power must have allowed him to hear Yann over all the other noise flooding the market.

Yann only said it in passing. Now that word stabbed him in the chest even more brutally than the pain already tormenting him there.

My friend. Yann had never had a friend before—not ever.

Yann couldn’t even remember having a conversation with someone he considered a friend. He spent all his time with his father and the other Watchmen.

They had never been his friends and never treated him as one. They were all his superiors and they treated him that way.

They treated him like their son, their little brother, or just some kid they had to train so he could stand his post on the wall without getting killed.

Yann couldn’t call Eliska a friend, either. He didn’t know what she was, but she was definitely not his friend. He didn’t want her as a friend.

He wanted her as more than that even if they never wound up together. She would always be more than that.

End of Chapter 36.