16
They were led back into the coliseum. Instead of heading toward the village, they turned and walked along one of the inner hallways. Eira recognized the clinic as they passed. Fortunately, Fritz wasn’t within. She went to breathe a sigh of relief only to exhale a groan.
“What is it?” Noelle asked.
“What’s wrong?” Cullen gave her a worried look.
Eira sighed. They were going to find out soon enough. “My uncle is here and I think, as a noble, he’s probably going to be at this meet and greet.”
“Your uncle ishere?” Alyss blinked.
“The leader of the Tower of Sorcerers?” Noelle needlessly clarified.
“Yes and yes.” Every hangnail suddenly demanded Eira’s utmost attention.
“Minister Fritznangle?”
“I don’t have another uncle that’s the leader of the Tower of Sorcerers, Cullen.”
“How do you know he’s here?” Alyss asked.
“I saw him yesterday. He’s here helping the tournament as a cleric.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” Noelle took a quick step forward, walking backward to give Eira a stern look.
“There was alotgoing on.”
“A cleric?” Alyss repeated. “But he’s—”
“A Waterrunner, I know. Yes, I told him you could heal twice as well as him and it made little sense to me.” Eira gave her friend a smile. Alyss preened slightly.
“How do you feel about him being here?” Out of everyone, Cullen was the one to understand complex familial situations. Cullen had been there after Marcus’s death; he’d seen the awkwardness and tension of her family and could relate more intimately than Noelle or Alyss with their more warm, conventional familial bonds.
“I don’t know, honestly.”
“I think that’s all right,” he said thoughtfully. “Families can be difficult. You don’t always have to have the right answers. You can figure it out as you go.”
Eira didn’t miss the subtext to his words. He was no doubt using this to make a point—to extend a grace to her that she hadn’t been willing to extend to him. Yet, despite those suspicions, he looked sincere. Genuine in his kindness. She wanted to tell him this hardly counted as the same as what he was going through with his father. But now wasn’t the time. Nor was it appropriate to do so when he was being so thoughtful.
“Hopefully I do figure it out. Ideally sooner rather than later since I’ll see him shortly.”
They fell into a silence. Eira kept watch on the various doors that lined the halls. Most of them were locked. If she wanted to get into them, she’d have to find the keeper of the keys.Or make one, perhaps?Could she do that? She’d never tried…but there were two days before the next tournament so she had some time to search Adela’s notebooks and experiment with her magic.
As they walked, they passed some workers still fortifying the halls. They patched cracks in pillars with a lumpy mess of mortar. As the mortar was setting, they etched a symbol into it—a circle with a dot in the center.
“That’s worrying,” Noelle muttered.
“I promise I wasn’t the one to weaken it with my stone shell yesterday,” Alyss said hastily.
“It wasn’t your fault in the slightest. And there’s nothing to worry over.” A nearby attendant who was escorting them smiled. “The coliseum was built quickly, but sturdily. Just some finishing touches are being put on. There’s been some settling that needs patching, nothing more.”
“The runes they’re adding will give extra support,” Lavette said from behind them. Eira had missed when in the shuffle Qwint’s competitors had made it so close to them. She met the woman’s eyes briefly, but then promptly looked back to the patchwork. “It’s a rune for strength and will imbue the construction with that power, making it exponentially stronger than without.”
“Would it be able to be destroyed with magic?” Alyss asked. Eira could feel the shifts in the magic around them as Alyss probed the stone with her power.
“Yes, but it would take somethingverypowerful,” the red-haired man walking at Lavette’s right said, an ominous note to his words.
“It does feel different,” Alyss said under her breath to Eira.
