Swamped

Marshall glances at the books, confused, and hands them to you.

"Could you hold these while I have a look? It's a bit awkward to use them with one hand."

"Sure," you say, not really thinking very hard about it. Marshall starts flipping through each book in turn.

"This is weird. They're both filled with strange symbols, which are probably letters, but it seems to be two entirely different sets. So, two different languages?"

You're more concerned with the kid, who seems to think Marshall is as important as Shume. Maybe it's because he saw you handing over a book, and figured Marshall must be someone to give books to?

"It's even stranger than that!" Marshall says suddenly. "I keep seeing 'words' with the same length and pattern of symbols. It's like one of these books is a cipher for the other. Where did Rider even get this one?"

"I'm not too clear on that, really. See, we got here through magic, but it wasn't the same thing as the gateways. And Rider says he got attacked on the way, I don't even understand how that's possible. Seems he grabbed it from his attackers, though."

You glance down at the bowing kid, and turn back to Marshall.

"I think he considers you an authority now. Might be because I handed you that book. Um, so if you want him to stop that, it might be easiest to give him something to do."

"I suppose," Marshall says. "But I'm not sure what would be helpful. What are we even trying to do right now? Help Rider? Help Ash? Get that staff to Captain Long? Find that Carma woman? Or are we just looking for a way to get off this ship?"

Point taken. You should probably figure out what you're doing.