The next day, Emily and Astrid went back to the public bathhouse while Nina and Tien went to meet the orphans.
“We can get the hot spring flowing again without any hassle for anyone if you’re right...”
“I’m counting on you to pull it off!”
Astrid sighed. “I’m a magical inventor, not a civil engineer...”
The old woman at the bathhouse was surprised to see the two of them again, but only too happy to oblige their request to see the magical pump one more time. Without any customers, she was probably just happy to have visitors.
“I’ll make some tea,” she said, bustling off.
Astrid took advantage of her absence to take a closer look not at the magical pump, but the source of the spring. A pipe led away to exposed rock, stained white by the minerals from the hot spring and rent with a crack from which wafted a foul smell.
“If the hot spring does come back, this definitely needs cleaning,” Emily said, wrinkling her nose. Astrid, meanwhile, wrapped a scarf over her nose and mouth. It was horribly uncomfortable in the scorching heat, but the smell was worse.
There was a rusted iron pipe embedded in the crack. It was a simple system—the pipe sucked up the hot water.
“Hmm... Looks like this extends about ten meters down,” Astrid said.
“Can you make it work better? Once we extend it deeper, it’ll need to pump harder, right?”
“It’s possible, of course. But it won’t be cheap. We don’t even know if we can find a blacksmith to do the job in the first place. This is a beach resort, after all.”
Emily made a smug noise. “I’m waaay ahead of you. I knew it was the right move to ask around yesterday. I talked to a local blacksmith who said if it got this hot spring flowing again, he’d do it for free! All we have to pay for are materials!”
Astrid blinked in surprise. “When did you get so organized? I don’t know... Maybe this is just me, but I’m doubtful that extending the pipe will get the water flowing again.”
“It will. Or rather, it’ll reach the water again,” Emily said, then qualified, “Well, probably.”
“Hmm... You’re confident in your theory that the hotel covered in those tacky gold leaves drained the hot spring dry?”
“Yeah, I am.”
The previous night, the four of them had dined out at a small tavern. They’d ordered a dish of fish caught in the ocean, deep fried in coconut oil, and served on a spectacular platter smothered in a fruity sauce. That alone had filled them up. Not only the juice, but even the iced tea had a fruity note to it—a fresh reminder that they really were at a beach resort far, far away from the capital.
After they’d eaten, Emily told them what she’d found out. The glittering, luxury hotel had gone up two years and two months ago. One of its selling points was its hot spring bath, the water of which was the same as the public bathhouse. And its bath was still fully operational.
“Given that the public bath dried up at the same time the hotel was built, it seems reasonable to assume that the hotel is stealing their water. I mean, that’s the only explanation.”
There was no other logical reason that only the public bath should have lost its water supply. The hotel had to be drawing so much that the water level at the source had dropped below what the public bathhouse’s pipe could reach.
Asking around, Emily discovered that she wasn’t the only one to reach this conclusion. The locals who’d used the bathhouse had tried to make inquiries, but the hotel had responded with violence and demands that they stop making false accusations. Word had it that the hotel had ties to some count over in the capital, so the locals had had no choice but to give up on the public bathhouse.
After they examined the pipe, Emily told Astrid, “Once we try pumping up water from deeper down, we’ll know whether I’m right or not. C’mon, let’s go.”
And with that, they left the bathhouse.
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, Nina and Tien arrived at the spot where they’d met the boy and girl the day before.
“My goodness... I wonder if I made enough bread.”
“Chi has lots of copper coins.”
About twenty children were waiting for them.
The boy, his wariness from the previous day gone, came right up to them.
“Hi, miss, we brought our mates,” he said. The other children were all around his age or a little younger. It seemed he was a sort of leader for them.
He introduced himself as Panther. “I ain’t got no mom or dad, so I named myself.”
It turned out that all of them had either chosen their own names or named each other. Their choices were straightforward, like a pair of twins who went by Leaf and Coconut. They had a spot a little way inside the forest where they’d built a shack out of scraps of wood to sleep in. In the past, the locals had helped them out, giving them hand-me-downs and other bits and pieces.
“But those folks are all gone now. We never even see ’em no more.”
“Where did they go?”
“Dunno.”
The children were too busy staying alive to wonder about the people in town.
Something fundamental needed to change here, Nina thought to herself.
“Hey, do I get bread for telling you all that?” Panther said.
“I can tell you stuff too!” said another child.
“Me too!”
“And me!”
They crowded excitedly around Nina, who nearly fell over as they tugged at her basket. “Agh! H-Hold on a moment...”
Tien stepped in swiftly to steady her and took charge of the basket.
“No bread for naughty children,” she said.
“Sh-She’s the girl that tossed that gent down the street yesterday!” said one of the children. At this, they scattered again.
“Oh dear...” Nina sighed.
“Chi is sorry.”
“N-No, don’t be! It isn’t your fault. I just underestimated how forceful they would be.”
Panther, the girl from the previous day, and one more of the children had stayed when the others fled.
“Don’t worry, they’ll be back soon enough,” Panther said. “They’re hungry after all. Anyway, what d’ya want us to do?”
Nina considered this question. The easy thing would be to give them the bread. But what about after she and her friends were gone? The roots of their troubles went deeper than she’d imagined. Could she really do anything for them...?
Just then, her eyes met Tien’s, and she started as realization hit her.
Of course! I don’t have to take it all on my own.
She had Tien, and Emily and Astrid too. The four of them could work together. And she knew just where to begin.
“First things first, I’d like to see where you live,” she said. “Once I’ve cleaned it up, all of you—and your clothes—will get a wash too!”
There wasn’t a trace of doubt left in her eyes. Nina was a maid, so that was how she was going to help them.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What’s that? A long iron pipe? Just how long are we talking here?”
“Ten meters. At a minimum. And it needs to be durable enough to be exposed to water for years on end without getting holes in it.”
“That’s a tall order...” The blacksmith folded his arms and frowned.
As a resort town, Côte Sud didn’t have many local residents, but they did exist. There was, however, but one blacksmith in the town. If the large hotels needed materials, they had them shipped over from the capital instead.
The blacksmith was built like a beer barrel and sported a bushy beard and a mane of hair that the bandana wrapped around his head couldn’t fully subdue. Emily had seen his kind several times before, but this was her first time speaking to a dwarf.
“Hmm... Ah well, I’ll make it work. I’ve got a few pipes about three meters long lying around. I can probably weld ’em together.”
“That sounds perfect,” said Astrid. “In that case, do you think you could set them up like...”
She and the dwarf launched into a discussion about the design. Astrid had come up with a leak-proof way to join up the pipes using the bare minimum of connections needed to extend the length. The welding would be simple enough, but as they didn’t know how many meters they needed to go, they wanted to add a little at a time, checking as they went.
They stayed holed up in the workshop until evening when they completed their prototype.