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The main reason she felt reading to be the most valuable use of her time was simply because of the Shard of the Dry God in her possession--her one link to the outside world. As far as she had been able to tell, conventional communications technologies didn’t even work here--which wasn’t so surprising, she supposed. The eternal storm that enveloped Exoltha no doubt rendered such things impossible.

But that only made the Shard seem that much more incredible and precious.

For a while, she’d been intensely paranoid that someone in the Library might recognize the Shard and try to take it from her, but at the same time, trying too hard to conceal it also seemed like a bad idea. If someone noticed her hiding it or acting strangely with it, then that might tip them off to its importance. But if she acted like it wasn’t anything special, then maybe no one would be the wiser.

That was what Chergoa had advised her to do, at least. Emiliana had also consulted Hector for Garovel’s opinion on the matter and been told basically the same thing. Apparently, the Shards were not all that widely known about, and even the few who did couldn’t possibly know about their “heretofore unheard of” capabilities as some type of psychic telephone.

She still couldn’t help worrying about it in the back of her mind, though. Most of all, she was worried that Gohvis might take it from her, that he might somehow just... know. A part of her honestly questioned whether it was even truly possible to hide something from him. He had tracked her down from half a world away based on nothing more than some sort of shared “link,” after all.

But surely, if he knew about the Shard, about the full extent of its capabilities, then he would’ve confiscated it by now.

...Right?