With a final gulp of the dregs of my ale, I pushed the wooden tankard away and slid off the bench. I scooped Bartholomew up, tucking him under one arm like a fluffy, indignant football. He let out a squawk of protest.

  “The indignity! Unhand me, you ruffian. I am not some common sack of potatoes to be toted about!”

  “Hush, you. You’ll mess up my whole ‘unassuming woman and her cat’ disguise,” I whispered, nudging the tavern door open with my hip.

  The midday sun of Aethelgard was harsh and hot as it beat down on the cobbled streets. The city was a sensory overload compared to the dim, beer-soaked quiet of The Weary Gryphon. A riot of color and noise and smell assaulted me. Banners of crimson and gold snapped from high gables. The air, thick with the scent of roasting meat, fresh-baked bread, and something vaguely like a backed-up sewer, swirled around us. The cobblestones were slick with recent rain and crowded with a tide of humanity: merchants hawking shimmering silks, guards in polished steel glaring from every corner, children chasing stray dogs through legs and carts. Kaelen was right. This city had a beautiful face. But as I clutched the heavy purse at my hip, I felt the speculative gazes of a half-dozen cutpurses, and saw the cold, empty eyes of the beggars in the alleys. Its heart was definitely full of shadows.

  “Right,” I muttered to the cat tucked under my arm. “Merchant’s Quarter first. Let’s do this thing.”

  “I suggest you release me, lest your oafish handling draw the very attention we seek to avoid,” Bartholomew grumbled, his claws pricking my leather jerkin as a warning.

  I set him down on the street, and he immediately began a meticulous grooming routine, as if trying to wash away the memory of being held. We began our slow trek through the quarter, a chaotic labyrinth of stalls and shops. My initial plan, which in my head seemed like a solid use of my communications degree, was to employ a bit of strategic inquiry. It turned out to be a spectacular failure.

  At the first stall, a purveyor of exotic spices whose nose was as sharp as his prices, I tried a subtle approach.

  “Good day, sir. I’m looking for an acquaintance of mine. A traveler, new to the city. He keeps the company of a rather distinguished feline.”The merchant squinted at Bartholomew, who was currently staring daggers at a cart of fish, then back at me.

  “Distinguished? Manky-looking thing, if you ask me. Now, are you buying any saffron or just wasting my air?”

  Strike one.

  At the next, a weaver’s shop where a gaggle of women were gossiping over a loom, I tried to be more personable.

  “Pardon me, ladies. Had you seen a man, perhaps a bit lost-looking, traveling with an animal of unusual intelligence?”One of the women giggled, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “Unusual intelligence? Did you teach your cat to do sums, dearie?” The others erupted in laughter. I felt my cheeks burn.

  Strike two.

  After an hour of this, my patience was wearing thinner than a cheap tunic. I’d been laughed at, ignored, and offered unsolicited advice on how to properly groom a cat for a rat-catching competition. One city guardsman had even taken my inquiry as some kind of coded insult, spending five minutes lecturing me on the penalties for public mischief before I could slink away.

  “This is hopeless,” I grumbled, slumping onto the edge of a public fountain in a small, slightly less-crowded square. Bartholomew leaped gracefully onto the stone beside me, dipping a paw into the cool water.

  “The common rabble lack the perception to notice anything beyond the glint of a coin or the promise of a meal,” he sniffed disdainfully. “We require a more refined audience.”

  “We require a miracle,” I countered, rubbing my temples. “A guy with a fancy cat is not exactly a distinguishing feature in a world where magic is real. For all I know, there are dozens of them. Maybe it’s a club. The Distinguished Feline Aficionado Society. They probably have meetings on Tuesdays.”Bartholomew shot me a withering glare.

  “Your flippancy is unbecoming of one charged with a quest of this magnitude.”

  “Quest of this magnitude?” I threw my hands up in exasperation. “This is a badly designed fetch quest from a low-budget RPG! There are no quest markers, the NPCs are all useless, and the main clue is so vague it’s laughable. We’re looking for a guy who dropped a drawing. That’s it! We don’t even know what he looks like!”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I trailed off, the frustration finally boiling over. I was so tired of this. Tired of the smells, the danger, the constant feeling of being a million miles and a thousand years from a hot shower and a pizza. I just wanted my pajamas back.

  As I sulked, my brain caught on the words I’d just spouted. RPG. Fetch quest. NPCs. My mind flashed back, not to a game, but to my first few hours in Eldoria. Stumbling out of the woods, confused and terrified, finding that first village. There was a merchant there, an old man with a cart full of junk he was trying to pass off as treasure. I’d asked him if he’d seen anyone else who seemed… out of place.

  His words, which had meant nothing to me then, suddenly echoed in my memory with perfect clarity. “‘There was a chap a few weeks back. Said he was a gamer. Kept asking about loot drops and respawn points.’”

  I shot upright so fast that Bartholomew flinched.

  “Loot drops,” I whispered, a slow grin spreading across my face. “He said loot drops.”

  “What is this nonsense you are babbling about now?” the cat demanded.

  “That barkeeper! My first day here! He told me about a guy using gamer talk!” I grabbed Bartholomew, this time ignoring his protests and planting a loud, smacking kiss on the top of his fluffy head. “You brilliant, pompous furball! You said we needed a more refined audience! You were right!”

  “Unhand me at once! Your affections are as unwelcome as your insults!” he sputtered, wriggling free.

  “We’ve been asking the wrong people in the wrong place,” I said, my mind racing. “A guy like that, someone from my world or a world like it, he wouldn’t be hanging out with spice merchants. He’d be somewhere he could get information. Somewhere, he could try to figure out the ‘rules’ of this place. He’d go to the Scholar’s Ward.”

  A new energy surged through me. We had a real lead. It wasn’t just a fancy cat anymore; it was a fancy cat with a human who spoke my language. Literally.

  The Scholar’s Ward was a world away from the boisterous chaos of the market. Here, the streets were quieter, the buildings taller and made of pale, clean stone. The air smelled of old parchment and held a faint magical tang that tickled the back of my throat. People moved with a quiet purpose, their noses buried in scrolls or their gazes distant and thoughtful. There were no catcalls or suspicious glares here; just mildly curious, analytical glances.

  A few stops for directions, and we found our way to the Great Library of Aethelgard, a truly colossal structure that looked like it had been carved from a single mountain of marble. I hesitated at the entrance, intimidated by the sheer scale of it.

  “Alright, new plan,” I whispered to Bartholomew. “We don’t ask about a cat. We ask about a crazy person.”

  I approached a young acolyte at a massive oak desk, a girl whose spectacles were thicker than my thumb.

  “Excuse me,” I said, trying to sound respectable and not at all like a crazy cat lady. “I’m a… traveling historian. I’m studying peculiar dialects and regional madness. I was told there might be a man in the city, an outsider perhaps, known for his very strange speech. He speaks of… we’ll call them conceptual inconsistencies. Clicks? Glitches? Respawns? Things of that nature?”

  The acolyte looked up, her huge eyes magnified by the lenses. For a moment, she just blinked at me. I was sure she was about to call the guards. Then, a slow smile touched her lips.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice a soft, reedy whisper. “You must mean Nolan the Odd. He speaks of ‘glitching through the world’s code.’ Says he’s trying to find a patch. He spends most of his days up in the Astrolabe chamber, arguing with the star-charts. Says they’re ‘rendering incorrectly’.” She pointed a long, ink-stained finger toward a spiral staircase in the far corner of the massive hall. “He’s strange, but harmless. Though I wouldn’t mention the word ‘quest’ to him. It sends him into a right tizzy about his ‘log’ being full.”

  My heart hammered against my ribs. Nolan the Odd. Glitching through the code. Quest log.

  It had to be him.

  I gave the acolyte my most charming, I’m a totally normal historian smile.

  “Thank you. You’ve been an immense help. I have one last question, though: does Nolan happen to travel with a cat?”The acolyte looked confused.

  “No, not that I’ve seen.”

  “Alright. Thank you for your help.”

  As Bartholomew and I turned toward the staircase, I leaned down to him.

  “Well, Bartholomew,” I murmured, a thrill of genuine excitement cutting through my fear. “Shall we go find your furry friend and his wonderfully nerdy human?”