In the end, Tsar had been right about the boat almost being ready to depart. They had made it aboard with less than ten minutes to spare, finding their seats as the stewards prepared to get underway. As before, they were seated next to Velrisa and her mother Delia, the young Aberrant goat babbling excitedly about how the crew had fixed the ferry's worrying list to one side.
When Velrisa saw Eni she gave the hare her full attention, to Delia's obvious relief, as she stumbled over questions about where she had gone and explanations of what had happened on the beach as they waited. She had eventually begged Eni to finish her story of Captain Jeito's ship, her appetite for exciting adventures on the water obviously not diminished at all by the accident the faun had lived through.
As Eni did her best to describe the way that the Mikuzuyka Mairu had plied its way across the waves with its fearless captain at the helm, she noticed that she didn't quite seem to have the faun's full attention. Velrisa's eyes continuously slid from Eni to Tsar, although the wolf wasn't doing anything particularly interesting. In fact, he wasn't really doing anything, sitting silently with his paws neatly folded underneath his ruined cloak.
When Eni finished, Velrisa managed to thank her before blurting out the questions that had apparently been on her mind. “Is it true you have a whip-sword?” Velrisa asked, her eager eyes on Tsar, “Are you the Slayer?”
Velrisa's irises were a metallic silver that called to mind the Woemaker's brilliantly golden ones, but while the leopardess rarely showed anything but self-satisfied superiority, the faun simply looked enthusiastic. Her eyes shimmered and caught the light, sparkling like polished coins as she gaped at the wolf.
Tsar ignored her.
His head remained resolutely turned toward the window, and he gave no reaction as the faun babbled on. “When we were on the beach I heard Mister Temires say that he saw—” she began before Delia could cut her off.
“Velrisa, please!” the older goat said, a note of long-suffering in her voice, “Don't harass him.”
She shot a somewhat fearful look at Tsar, as though expecting him to snap something far harsher at her daughter, but he ignored her too. “But—” Velrisa began, and her mother cut her off much more sharply.
“Velrisa Pratum!” Delia said, so firmly that the faun visibly recoiled, “Apologize to the poor wolf for bothering him.”
“I'm sorry,” the faun said in a small voice, her ears drooping, but Tsar didn't make a sound or move so much as an inch.
There was an awkward silence as Delia glanced at Tsar nervously, and Eni jumped in. “He, ah, he doesn't speak very much Circi,” she said, fumbling for an excuse, and at the words the older goat relaxed.
“See, dear?” Delia said, turning her attention to her daughter, “How could he be the Slayer if he didn't know Circi?”
It was one of the flimsiest arguments Eni had ever heard, but Velrisa bought it without question. “Oh,” she said, sounding rather glum, and the faun fell silent.
She stayed silent for perhaps another hour or so, as Eni carefully tried to capture everything Tsar had taught her in her journal and the wolf himself mended his damaged cloak. He had pulled a needle and thread from a small pouch belted near the thick base of his tail, and his sewing was just as meticulous as his swordplay. Each stitch was exactly the same size, neatly closing the gashes the Lotophagi had made through the ragged fabric one by one.
As more time passed Velrisa became notably fidgety, getting up and walking around the cabin while she wrote and crudely drew in her notebook. Eni supposed that for someone who was obsessed with boats that the repairs the crew had made must have been interesting; even to her own inexpert eye there were plenty of changes. The forward window had been boarded over, the gaps in the plank sealed with oozing tar that kept the worst of the chill of the outside air from seeping in. The window that Eni herself had been pulled through had been replaced with what Eni suspected was glass salvaged from the ferry's crew quarters; it wasn't quite the same size or shape as all the other windows lining the side of the boat. More hasty carpentry had been done to make up for the difference, and Eni could faintly smell the scents of freshly cut wood and pitch.
The ferry was also moving noticeably slower than it had before colliding with the Lotophagi, although there was no doubt in Eni's mind that it was still much faster than walking. She knew she had plenty of time before they reached Terregor, and Eni allowed her focus to drift fully into her journal, blotting out her impression of Tsar at her side and the young faun inspecting the cabin until she was at last caught up.
Eni looked down at her words, wishing she had better been able to describe what she had seen and heard while practicing the Mildeus Technique, and she frowned as she tapped the back of her pen against her mouth.
“Mama, can you tell me a story?” Velrisa said, her voice coming to Eni's attention as she started becoming aware of her surroundings again.
Tsar had evidently finished repairing his cloak and was once more sitting motionlessly, quietly watching the river slip past through the window.
“I've got to recheck these figures before we get to Terregor, dear,” Delia said, sounding somewhat distracted.
The older goat had a large ledger spread across her lap, filled with neat columns and rows of numbers in red and black ink. “Why don't you read the book I bought you in Ghabarahata like a big faun?” Velrisa's mother asked, and her daughter's response was almost immediate.
“The river ruined it,” she said, a hint of a whine in her voice, “See, mama? All the ink ran.”
The faun held the book aloft as she flipped through it, and Eni didn't need much more than a glance out of the corner of her eye to see that she was right. The battered volume had clearly taken a swim, the pages wrinkled and crackling where they stuck together, each one a murky gray without so much as a single visible word. Eni silently thanked Tsar for saving her own journal once more; although it might have survived water a bit better than what was obviously a cheaply printed work meant for children, she had no desire to find out how much better.
“Then write in your notebook again,” Velrisa's mother suggested, her voice impressively patient.
“I want to read a story about the Slayer,” Velrisa complained.
“Dear,” Delia said, shooting a glance at Tsar as she apparently worried that her daughter was about to bother him again.
“I can tell you one,” Eni volunteered; with no obvious way of improving what she had written she figured she might as well help the goat.
“As long as your mother's fine with that,” she hastily added, realizing she might have overstepped her bounds.
“That's very kind of you,” Delia said, smiling, and Velrisa eagerly turned toward Eni with hope-filled eyes.
“Just not too scary,” Velrisa's mother mouthed silently behind her daughter's head.
The faun didn't notice, and Eni gave the older goat a slight nod.
“This one is my favorite,” Eni said, setting her journal aside, and then she closed her eyes.
“No one who saw the Wyrmerian Wyvern, the greatest and—” she started to say, but Velrisa interrupted almost immediately.
“You're not reading,” the young goat said, and Eni opened her eyes and looked at her.
“I don't have to,” Eni said, and she tapped one finger against the side of her head, “It's all here.”
Velrisa's eyes widened, and Eni offered her an encouraging smile. The faun didn't interrupt again, and Eni soon lost herself in the story of the Slayer and his greatest nemesis, all but seeing the words float across her eyes as she told it.
The ferry continued its journey toward Terregor as she spoke, and it didn't matter that Eni didn't know what they were walking into. It didn't matter that there might even be a powerful mage in the city, someone who made Astrasa look as weak and helpless with magic as Eni was herself. Whatever else Terregor was, it was the first place in the Cradle that had truly felt like home to Eni, and she was returning with Tsar at her side. And, as Eni spoke of Princess Almara's great beauty and cunning, and the powerful pledge the Slayer had made to the mute she-wolf, she didn't think she needed anything more.
Velrisa clapped eagerly when Eni finished the story, the young Aberrant bouncing in her seat with excitement. With her eyes closed, Eni hadn't been able to see the faun's reaction, but her ears had fed her every detail. Eni had heard her gasp with surprise and horror as the tale twisted its way to its conclusion, and the sound of the goat's heart as the Slayer faced down the Wyvern had been so loud and fast as to nearly blot out everything else.
“But what happened next?” Velrisa asked, “What happened to Princess Almara?”
“A story for another time, dear,” her mother cut in, offering Eni a smile, and Eni realized that she had stopped hearing the scratch of the older goat's pen at some point in her retelling.
The numbers in Delia's ledger looked to have barely changed at all, but the expression on her face was hardly disappointed. “Thank Miss Siverets,” Delia urged, even as her daughter's lips twisted into a sulky pout, “And maybe we can go to the galley again.”
Velrisa's disappointment instantly dissolved at her mother's promise. “That was a great story, Miss Siverets,” she said, “Thank you.”
“You're very welcome,” Eni replied.
Delia quickly swept her belongings together and stood up, and soon the two goats were walking toward the staircase that led below decks, Velrisa excitedly doing her best to recount the story for her mother.
Eni smiled as she watched them leave, and then turned to Tsar. She couldn't tell whether or not he had been paying attention; the wolf was still looking out the window and his heart certainly hadn't started racing at any point. It had remained slow and even like the percussion of a bass drum beneath all the louder instruments in an orchestra.
As she looked at the back of his head, Tsar seemed to notice her attention and turned to look at her, his pale eyes mild. “Why?” he asked, speaking the word in his strangely accented Jarku.
Eni blinked; she had a moment of puzzlement before she realized he was playing along with her earlier lie that he didn't understand Circi. “Why what?” she replied, speaking Jarku herself.
“Why is that your favorite story?” Tsar asked.
Eni glanced around; although there were still a number of other passengers in the cabin, there were only three or four predators. All of them were dressed in clothes that were unmistakably the fashion of the Circle, and none of them seemed to be paying any attention to either Eni or Tsar.
“It's…” Eni began slowly, gathering her thoughts together as she spoke, “Well, it started when I was a kit.”
Tsar's eyes didn't leave hers, and Eni took in a deep breath. It wasn't exactly an embarrassing story, by any means, and it wasn't as though anyone present looked to be paying attention to them, let alone actually capable of understanding her. “Siverets is a fishing village,” she said, savoring the image that came to mind, “Fishing and pearl diving. Some farms, too, but most of what we ate came from the sea.”
Tsar's head cocked to the side and Eni repressed a smile, sure she understood his unspoken objection. “Kombu and wakame and arame,” she said, and when the angle of his head increased, she added, ”They're different kinds of kelp.”
She had needed to revert to her own native tongue for the names of the plants; Jarku tended to be lacking in that regard. Tsar seemed to understand her explanation, nodding to himself as he doubtlessly imagined rabbits and hares eating seaweed. “Everything comes from the water,” Eni continued, “So there's… The context is different. Any mammal in Siverets would understand what you meant if you said someone was trapped on an island, but no one would know what it meant to be stuck in a desert. The idea of endless sand and no waves… It'd sound made up to them. Just something for a story. Do you see?”
“No.”
Eni grimaced, trying to articulate the thought she had only ever described for the Archivist. “In Siverets, there are storytellers. There are plays and puppet shows the way there are in the Cradle. But they changed the stories. To keep the…” she began, pausing as she tried to recall how her mentor had described it.
“To keep the truth of the story, they needed to lie about the details,” she said as the memory fell into place.
She could almost see the wry smile touching the markhor's lips when he had said it, and Eni pressed on. “So the Wyvern… The first time I heard the story, the monster was a Bakunawa. A sea serpent, gliding through the water instead of the air. That was what frightened the villagers, you see? Something lurking beneath the water they depended on,” she said, and there seemed to be a dawning realization coming into Tsar's eyes.
“Then you read the story in a book,” the wolf said quietly, ”And it was different.”
“It was,” Eni said, “The basics were all the same, but it hardly made sense to me. I had never seen an ocean of grass before, but the author's words meant I could imagine it. I devoured that first book and all the other stories in it, and I needed more. I needed to know which version was true.”
“It made you a historian?” Tsar asked.
Eni nodded. Tsar didn't say anything in response, and for a moment the only sounds Eni could hear were the idle conversations of other passengers and the creaking of the ferry as it gently rocked back and forth. “You want to know,” he said at last, “What really happened.”
It wasn't a question, but it didn't have to be one. Eni was sure Tsar knew her well enough, after all the time they had spent together, and she didn't deny it. “I would,” she said, “If you don't mind.”
“Might ruin it,” he said, “What's your favorite part of the story?”
“When you… When the Slayer…” Eni said, feeling a blush creeping into her ears.
Tsar was simply looking back at her, his expression unreadable, and Eni plunged on. “When he tells Princess Almara he fell for her without ever having to say so. He was trying to spare her feelings, knowing they could never meet again, but… she knew,” she said at last, and as the wolf stared Eni kept talking to fill the silence, “I didn't quite understand when I was young, but it always seemed so… so… I don't know. Beautiful, I suppose. But sad, too.”
Eni could have said more, but she no longer trusted herself. Tsar didn't look judgmental or amused or otherwise condescending, but his obvious lack of understanding just made it worse. He couldn't comprehend what made that one scene so important to her, or see how so many later stories of the Slayer copied it. Even the play they had watched in Tormurghast had echoed the moment, but in Eni's opinion no one had ever gotten the words better than Rengard Mithrideirn when he had written The Seven Labors.
And Tsar was about to tell her it had never happened.
Eni was sure of it, but the wolf surprised her. “I didn't use words,” he said, so quietly that it was barely more than a whisper, “But she…”
Tsar's ears flickered ever so slightly back and he licked his lips. “She didn't either,” he said at last.
“Princess Almara really was mute, then?” Eni asked, utterly fascinated, even as a warm sensation seemed to flow through her body.
“She spoke. Once,” Tsar said, “But I… may have imagined it.”
His pale eyes seemed suddenly fathomless, like twin sinkholes filled with water, as he reached for the memory. “'I understand,'” he said, “That was all.”
Even as the feeling of vindication kept flowing through her veins, Eni wished she could know more of what had passed between the two wolves. Princess Almara had forged her own legacy independent of the Slayer as the Duchess of Volk, uniting the once disparate wolfen city-states into the nation of Wovengar. The princess had reigned for decades before at last dying peacefully in her sleep, leaving behind a country in mourning. But that had been all she had left; Almara had never married.
Eni had always wondered how important that detail was, but Tsar's expression had become guarded, his face smoothing over once more. She thought she understood the same thing that the she-wolf had, though. Even setting aside what Rongen had said of Tsar's fears when it came to family, the wolf was simply too long-lived. As he sat next to her, more than a century after slaying the Wyvern, Tsar barely looked any older than Eni herself did. She suddenly wondered if there was a reason Tsar didn't visit Rongen much anymore; what did he think of watching his friend always looking older and feebler while he himself remained untouched by the ravages of time?
“Miss Siverets, Miss Siverets!” Velrisa's voice suddenly came, breaking Eni's focus, “Mama says they have free drinks in the galley!”
Eni almost jumped as she turned to look at the faun; her mother was right behind her, carrying a mug of what was unquestionably beer based on the sharp and yeasty smell. “As an apology for the 'inconvenience' of the ferry crashing,” Delia said, taking a long swig from her drink, “I'd go soon if you want one.”
The older goat shot her a wink, which Eni returned with a weak smile. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said, reverting back to Circi, “Maybe I will grab something.”
Tsar went with her, as silent as a shadow, but even when the friendly steward repeatedly reminded him that he could choose any of the ferry's alcoholic beverages all the wolf wanted was water. Eni felt as though the eyes of all the mammals in the galley were upon them, but she did her best to push the idea out of her head as she ordered a drink for herself, picking what had always been her favorite in Ctesiphon. Their orders came up quite quickly, but Eni barely tasted her cider as she sipped at it, and when they returned to their seats it was something of a relief from her thoughts when Velrisa asked for another story.
Eni happily indulged the faun, and the rest of the journey to Terregor passed by pleasantly enough, and had she not been desperately eager to continue her work with Tsar she might have enjoyed it more.
Thankfully, the Mister Temires who Velrisa had overheard talking about Tsar's whip-sword turned out to be a middle-aged boar with incredibly thick spectacles. As he had been the only one to see so much as a flash of the weapon, no one else aboard put much stock in the boar's claims, although he still squinted suspiciously at Tsar whenever they passed.
With the benefit of the distance that time provided from the attack itself, the other passengers seemed more amused than anything else, and Eni overheard several conversations laughing dismissively at seeing the threadbare wolf as any sort of warrior, let alone the Slayer. A hulking bison had even jokingly challenged Tsar to an arm-wrestling contest, to the uproarious approval of his companions, but Tsar had brushed past without a word.
He seemed to Eni even quieter than usual, although she supposed that at least part of it was that they were effectively trapped aboard the ferry with nowhere to go. It was utterly impossible to be entirely alone anywhere other than in a lavatory stall, and Eni certainly had no intention of cramming into one with him. Not that it seemed to make any difference for some of the passengers; while waiting in line for lunch in the galley she had overheard the same buck and ram who had argued on the shoreline speculating about what she had done with Tsar when they had gone off alone.
Her ears had burned at the utter crassness of their conversation; although the two had whispered they obviously didn't know how good Eni's ears were. The deer and his companion eventually moved on to what seemed to be their favorite topic, happily gossiping about what had happened in Ghabarahata as they tried pumping other passengers for information.
They gave up on Tsar rather quickly when he simply stared at them without saying a word, and for the rest of the trip Eni did her best to continue Tsar's lessons in reading Circi. She wished she could have kept practicing controlling her power, but she didn't need Tsar to tell her that a ferry full of mammals was perhaps the worst possible place to do so. Teaching at least kept her mind off her burning desire to try the Mildeus Technique again, and Tsar remained a remarkably quick study.
Even as he feigned poor comprehension of spoken Circi, he dutifully did every exercise Eni set before him, his brow occasionally wrinkling and his muzzle turning down in a frown as she guided him through the idiosyncrasies and irregularities of the language.
Eni sometimes caught Velrisa's eyes on her, her lips moving wordlessly as she followed along and wrote in her own little notebook. The faun seemed to find it all just as interesting as stories of the sea or the Slayer, and she barely interrupted at all over the course of the two days it took for Terregor to finally come into view.
With the windows at the front of the cabin still boarded over, Eni's first glimpse of their destination wasn't what it usually was. Instead, the first sign was when the Selwyn Sentinel passed serenely by the side of the boat, the massive stone monolith poking above the waves.
“Mama, look!” Velrisa cried, pointing toward it, “We're almost there!”
The other passengers began shifting around the cabin, gathering together their personal belongings and preparing to disembark as soon as the Magnificent Grace reached the dock. Eni kept watching the view from their side of the ferry, and a smile fixed itself across her face as the familiar sounds of Terregor started reaching her ears.
Like Siverets, there was nowhere in Terregor that she could go and escape the lapping of the waves, and the difference was obvious to Eni. Lake Linra was slower and somehow more soothing, as gentle as a lullaby. Eni could feel the ferry changing direction, first going one way and then the other, as it navigated the small rocky islands that poked out of the lake. Lighthouses stood atop the larger ones, seeming to grow almost organically out of the stone without any kind of beach, and Eni could hear warning bells and the creaking of rigging as they got closer to the docks and the other ships through a thin haze of fog.
A massive cargo ship, squat and wide, passed the other direction as Eni watched, its sails catching the wind and rippling sharply. For a moment she could see nothing else, but then it lumbered out of sight and Terregor itself came into view.
It took Eni's breath away just as it had the first time she had seen it. The entire city was situated on the same sort of islands that surrounded it; the largest one in all of Lake Linra was barely a quarter mile on each side. It meant that Terregor was a city dominated by canals rather than streets, from the meandering natural pathways to the graceful curves and straight lines of the ones that had been carefully engineered. More bridges than in all of the other cities in the Circle combined arched across the canals, a dizzying array of architectural styles on display.
With so little land to build on, Terregor had reached up, clawing for space in the sky even as artificial islands and pylons driven deep into the lake helped it expand outwards. The end result was a skyline that could never be mistaken for any other city, and looming above everything else was the University of Terregor's main building, the Terraces of Gorin.
Only the Barbican in Lagadha was taller, but the university tower still soared high enough that Eni couldn't see it all from where she sat. A few Avian messengers were just barely visible circling one of the upper balconies, so utterly dwarfed by the building that they looked like flies on a cake.
“Is that the university?” Tsar asked in Jarku, his head craned back to take it in.
“You've never been to Terregor?” Eni replied, unable to keep the incredulous tone out of her voice.
“Never,” he said, nodding, “That's full of books?”
Eni smiled. “The library takes up a lot of it, but the university has other buildings, too,” she said, “There's just not enough room in the Terraces.”
“Not enough room,” Tsar repeated, and it was his turn to sound incredulous, “How many books are there?”
“That depends on what you count,” Eni said, “There are at least three hundred million books in the university's collection, but if you count all the scrolls and pamphlets and other items… Maybe five or six hundred million items?”
Tsar stared at her. “I didn't know there were so many books in all of Aerodan,” he said, and Eni laughed.
“There are more being written every day,” she said, “Including mine. My thesis is… There.”
She pointed out one of the smaller towers that flanked the Terraces. “Floor three, section seven, shelf twelve,” Eni said proudly, “Unless they've reorganized since it was filed.”
Tsar shook his head. “It'd take centuries to find something hidden there,” he said, and Eni couldn't disagree with him.
“That's why we're going to talk to the Archivist,” she replied, remembering his curious letter; he had clearly known something, but she didn't want to go digging through the archives before she had a chance to speak with him directly.
Tsar made a wordless sound of acknowledgement and didn't speak again until the ferry docked and the stewards guided the passengers off the ship. As they disembarked, however, Eni saw something that had never been there in any of the previous times she had returned to Terregor.
At the end of the dock opposite where the Magnificent Grace was berthed was the customs building that controlled access to the city itself. The steady stream of captains declaring their manifests before leaving or awaiting inspection before offloading looked the same as it ever did, but there were a dozen guards strung across the path into Terregor.
Eni had never seen so many guards all in the same place except when she had passed training exercises, but the soldiers she saw clearly weren't doing drills. They wore their full armor and were inspecting papers before allowing anyone into Terregor, their voices polite but far from friendly. The mammals queued in front of Eni and Tsar were muttering to themselves, clearly anxious about the increased security. Delia was keeping Velrisa close even as the Aberrant faun tried squirming away to see what was going on, and as the guards split the line into multiple streams there was barely time to say goodbye. Velrisa gave Eni a brief hug before her mother pulled her away, worry etching lines around Delia's eyes, and the goats were lost in the shuffle before Eni could even wave.
The queue Eni and Tsar had ended up in moved quickly until they were at last at the head of it, facing a trio of soldiers. Although she didn't recognize the guards flanking him, she knew the guard who she gave the punch cards identifying herself and Tsar; Lieutenant Normion was an alpaca with a perpetually mournful expression and a voice to match. ”Welcome back, Professor,” he said after scrutinizing her information far more closely than he ever had in the past.
”Is there something going on, Lieutenant?” she asked; no one ahead of her in the line had dared to ask much of the guards.
Lieutenant Normion shrugged. “You wouldn't have heard, I suppose,” he said, “Twelve murders in the past three days alone. Ghastly stuff.”
The alpaca shuddered. “They found half a stag in the Riverwalk just last night,” he said, shaking his head, “The new Chief Bureaucrat has us doing double shifts, at least 'til we find the killer.”
“Not that I mind,” he added, as he squinted at Tsar's forged card and then looked at the wolf himself, “My wife's been pregnant so long it might be an Aberrant.”
Normion sighed gloomily. “No offense,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “She's just ready for the baby to be born. I am, too.”
”None taken,” Eni said; she had a feeling that the alpaca was exaggerating, and he nodded gratefully.
“We can use the extra money, is all,” he said, and he gave Eni both sets of paperwork back, “But you be careful, Professor. Some of the pink papers are saying it's a ripper, and—”
Normion seemed to notice the eyes of the other guards on him; they looked noticeably displeased. “But there's no reason to listen to rumors, that's what I always say. Welcome home,” he added quickly and with unconvincing cheer.
Eni and Tsar were immediately ushered out and onto the nearest street, where the effects of the pall over the city were obvious. No one she saw, whether they were walking across one of the many bridges or riding in one of the countless small boats navigating the canals, was doing so alone. Everyone was moving in groups of at least two or three, and there was an uneasy wariness to their movement that Eni didn't care for. It reminded her unpleasantly of Ctesiphon when the Blight had taken hold, and she doubted that it was coincidental.
Perhaps it hadn't been Lieren Astrasa herself intervening directly in Terregor, but at the very least it seemed likely that the Archons were somehow responsible. Eni frowned in thought, and then she realized that she wasn't walking. She turned to Tsar and looked at him; he was standing motionless, apparently patiently waiting for her. “Where are we going?” he asked, and Eni blinked.
“We—” she began, “We—”
Eni paused, running through the possibilities in her head. Tsar clearly didn’t know where anything was in Terregor, which meant that she would be the one determining where they went and what they did. “We're going to a beer hall,” she said slowly.
“Need a drink?” Tsar asked, and it was impossible to tell if he was joking or not.
“Not really,” Eni replied, “Terregor beer halls aren't just taverns, you know. It'll be the best place to read the latest peril papers and hear what mammals are talking about.”
She glanced up and down the street, looking at fearful expressions as pedestrians hurried past. “Then we'll figure out what to do next,” Eni continued, and Tsar nodded.
“Lead on,” he said, and Eni tightened her paws around the straps of her satchel.
“Right,” she said, and Tsar followed as she started off toward the center of the city, “This way.”
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