Tide Tale Alley Books
| Type | Bookshop |
|---|---|
| Kingdom | Ovallia |
| Notable inhabitants | Pemadee, Barnaby Britto |
| Status | Its keeper taken prisoner in the Nelazgian invasion |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Tide Tale Alley Books is Pemadee's bookshop in Ovallia, standing in the alley it is named for, and the only home Barnaby Britto knew until he walked out of it.[1]
The shop
The shop is crowded and worn: musty books on overstuffed shelves, wobbly reading chairs, a scarred oak floor, and a storefront window whose whole view is the crumbling brick wall across the alleyway. A bell over the door announces anyone coming or going, hooks beside it hold Barnaby's cloak, gloves and scarf, and his chair and broom stand by the window. A ladder reaches the tops of the shelves. A sign on the door, its paper yellowed and crackled, reads Olphin Present: a warning to patrons, and to Barnaby a statement of what he was.[1][2]
The alley outside runs into the market square at the centre of the city, and the sea is close enough that Barnaby could smell the salt, the fish and the seaweed whenever the door stood open.[1][3] Pemadee brought gullys home to Tide Tale Alley, and Barnaby named his dragon Egras after the first grey and white one of them.[4]
Pemadee's office
Pemadee works in a small back room holding more books than Barnaby believed possible. Its one window has been jammed full of books to fit its shape, so the old man does his research by the light of a hanging lantern, at a cluttered desk in the centre of the room with a feather quill and an inkpot on it. On a side wall, surrounded by old tomes, a single glass display case held a translucent grey stone, one of the two Olphin Stones that he and Seely kept apart between them.[1][5]
The contract
Pemadee found Barnaby in Treenode on the day the Olphins were taken out of the town for Morgaedion, and made a contract with Lumikki Otsby the same day: he could keep the boy so long as the boy never left the bookshop.[5] Barnaby swept the floor, cooked the dinners and laid the table, and came in time to think of the shop as much a prison as Morgaedion was.[1][5][6]
Notable events
- A letter from Seely blew off Pemadee's desk while he was out, and Mauz would not let Barnaby put it back unread. It said another Olphin was alive at Treenode. Barnaby broke the contract that afternoon and stepped out of the shop for the first time in his life.[1]
- The Nelazgians invaded Ovallia and took Pemadee prisoner. He got a letter out to Barnaby by gully before they did.[7] Nothing further is recorded of the shop.