Spring was only just transitioning from tentative promise to fact, and the sun still set relatively early, bringing immediate darkness. Night was settling upon Tabbaqera as they finally drew near to the gates, and brought with it an unpleasant surprise: standing within the pools of freshly-kindled lamplight, soldiers were revealed. It was hard to imagine why they would be standing motionless at the entrance to the city if they weren’t keeping guard.

He slowed down when he noticed them but didn’t obey his instinct to turn on his heel and flee. Nothing short of walking up to those soldiers and spitting on them was more likely to catch their attention and earn their distrust than running. He and Qanath weren’t the only people on the road anymore, not this close; the foot traffic was still sparse, but they were no longer alone. He had the sense that he was mostly looking at farmers going home after a day in the fields. So far as he could tell, the soldiers at the gates barely glanced at them.

His shoulders remained stiff with wariness as they drew closer, but he didn’t argue again that they should cut through the wilderness and regain the road on the city’s other side. It was less the evidence that the gate-wardens were lackadaisical than it was a desire to get a closer look at the gates themselves. He was beginning to get a sense of the size of the walls, and it was awe-inspiring.

He bowed his head as they passed between the handful of uniformed people holding spears and looking bored, casting down his foreign eyes. He was almost certain he saw someone’s head turn to follow him, as if they had noted the pallor of his visible skin or thought to wonder what he needed so many weapons for. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that they might have laws about going armed. Either weapons weren’t a privilege restricted to the worthy here or these were abysmal gate-guards, because no one made a move to stop him as he passed through.

He picked his head back up the moment they were in. Not in the city: in the walls. What he had been thinking of as a door was more on the order of a tunnel, a few torches casting light and blackened patches onto the enclosing mudbrick face. He tipped his head back, gauging the height of the ceiling. The smooth arch, far enough above the torches to remain in shadow, was so tall he could have stood on his own shoulders.

The instant they passed back into the night, Havec turned around. The walls around this city were brown brick, ugly and dull, but the sheer size of them defied derisive judgment. They had endured, it was there in every weathered inch of them. That was all they had needed to prove.

When he turned around, he found Qanath watching him, chafing her hands together as if she were less certain about this scheme of hers than she had led him to believe. He wanted to look around a bit now they were here, but it was dark already. “Food?”

“I don’t know where to go.”

“Well, we could stand here all night.”

“You’re such a jerk!”

“Low-hanging fruit,” he muttered, shrugging his pack up on his shoulders and setting off into town. It was a strange place, the ways well-lit as befitted an urban center, yet even now they were within its embrace, weirdly quiet. It looked as if the people who had lingered after the exodus lived in a tight cluster around the one still-functioning gate. Although they rattled around in the city, they could have founded a decent-sized town.

Snatches of conversation and the odors of cooking food tantalized them. Havec led the way, casting back and forth down every intersection because they didn’t have a better plan. The buildings were small and mostly humble, brown stone or brown brick. Twice, though, they passed through intersections graced by monuments, one a two-story stele covered in verdigrised copper script, the other a bulky, bear-like figure standing on its hind legs holding a spear. The buildings were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, separated by the rare ally and even less often by a bed of flowers or vegetable patch. The streets were sparsely peopled, and at all times he was conscious of the deserted city beyond, its stillness and ominous quiet leaning like a weight on the mind.

“Here.”

The girl had pulled him to a halt before a building, large and solid, its shutters closed. When the door opened to release someone into the night, a wave of sound washed out in his wake. Laughter and the clink of pottery lapped around them before the door swung shut, but both of them hesitated.

Standing here feeling anxious wasn’t going to fill their stomachs, so Havec slung his bag onto the street and crouched over it. He groped all the way to the bottom before his fingers closed around his purse. Digging a handful of coins out at random, he passed them over to the girl. “I’m starving. Buy as much food as you can carry.”

“Havec…”

“Look.” He took a step closer and lowered his voice. “I made it past the guards with no questions, but that room is going to be way better lit. If we sit in there for twenty minutes eating, that’s twenty minutes people have to notice I don’t fit in.”

Qanath rolled her eyes impatiently. “And if they don’t have food I can carry away?”

He couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t. “Do what you can.”

Uttering another gusty sigh to make it clear to him how little liking she had for this plan, she did at last take the coins and vanish through the door. Seizing up her abandoned bag, Havec moved to the opposite side of the street and leaned against a wall. He straightened a moment later, snapping his fingers because he couldn’t remain still. She would be fine, she wasn’t doing anything perilous or illegal; the entire point was that he would attract attention at even so mundane a chore and she wouldn’t. He still felt as if he had sent her into a trap in his place: a little bit a coward, a little bit a traitor.

The door opened and he leaned forward eagerly. It wasn’t her, though, it was what looked to be two women based on the size and contours of the silhouettes briefly visible before the door slammed shut. One of them was talking but cut off suddenly. Both of them were peering at him, he realized. They moved away, and he didn’t think he was imagining their urgency. So, that was great: even standing out here in the shadows was drawing the attention of the locals. Maybe the guards hadn’t been terribly attentive at the gates, but he didn’t think they would ignore it if people came to them complaining about strangers lurking in shadows.

Before anything could come of it, Qanath returned. She seemed to be burdened by a heartening amount of stuff, but he couldn’t really get a glimpse of the haul out here. When he tried to take something off her hands, she hissed at him and pulled away. With a shrug, he took up her pack instead and led them north.

She said nothing for the first few blocks, but when they came around a corner and he set off into a street that was completely dark, she stopped. “Where are we going?”

“To find somewhere to spend the night.”

“But—”

He didn’t wait for her to start. “If you want to spend the night in an inn, fine, go back to the last place and ask if they have beds. I’m not risking it. Not after six years of waiting, not only a few days’ walk from home.”

She never responded, but when he took off into the dark again, she stuck to his heels. He kept on for a couple more blocks, to put a buffer between them and the parts of town where people lived. Other than desertion, he had no idea what he was looking for. There must be people other than themselves squatting amid all this emptiness, and he would like to avoid them. Having never laid eyes on this place during the day, though, he couldn’t guess what areas he ought to shun. They would just have to hope those people had as little desire as they did for company.

The buildings remained sound, everywhere open doors and open windows letting into vacant rooms that gave one a sense of patient waiting. Every echo carried an expectation that there be more, the silence breathless as one anticipated the noise that had once been there. All those missing doors and shutters must have been taken away long since to be used as firewood, but some of the larger buildings still had metalwork on their domed roofs, glinting dully through the tarnish in the light of the moon. In the distance, he could hear the tinkling of water in fountains still running despite the years.

Although it probably increased the odds they would encounter someone, he followed the sound. They came around a corner into the largest square they had seen. There was indeed a fountain at its center, a sculpture almost twice as tall as him. He approached it slowly, squinting in the meager natural light. It looked to be a porpoise standing on its tail, an odd choice of icon so far from the sea. The basin held only maybe an inch of water; the fountain must be clogged or partially broken, because the water trickled down the sides of the statue instead of spraying in the air.

A trickle was plenty good enough for tired, thirsty people who just wanted a drink. Slinging both bags to the pavement, he cupped his hands against the stone. It took Qanath another minute to set her burden down gingerly, then she followed suit.

Once they’d slaked their thirst, Havec led the way to the largest building fronting the square. Like all of Dareh’s architecture, it was blockish, imposing in an unlovely way, but some attempt had been made to embellish. Finials thrust from the roof at every peak and there appeared to be a relief carved into the wall over the yawning doors.

They set up camp in a corner away from the door, and this time, expecting it, Havec had his eyes on the girl from the first. Unfortunately, his attentiveness didn’t get him very far; he heard her whisper something soft and liquid, and then there was light. Either she had done her sorcery too fast for him to perceive or she was doing something he wasn’t capable of seeing. It was very disappointing. The light she conjured came from several of those crystal-like rocks, which she piled in a heap between them in the place of a campfire.

Qanath had bought a bit of everything that could be carried away, dumplings steamed in cornhusks, skewers of smoky pig meat, a heaping stack of flatbread, even a hearty dollop of vegetable paste in a bowl of woven straw. The latter had so much sweet garlic in it that Havec decided they ought not to talk to one another for a while, not unless they were standing at least five feet apart.

There were no attempts at conversation for the first few minutes while they crammed their faces with everything in reach. It was the first chance they’d had since they fled Xar’s house to eat anything but raw vegetables and crackers and cheese. It was amazing what a difference a bit of cooking made, and Havec made a mental note to go in search of a market before they left. See if they could buy something to take along.

The pace of the meal had just begun to slow into something less frantic when the stranger appeared. Havec hadn’t heard the man draw near; he caught movement from the corner of his eyes, and when he looked up, there the fellow was. Well into the room and approaching, eyes fixed purposefully on him. His mouth opened, but it was still full of food and anyway he had no idea what to say.

The man wore a curious garment, a draped smock that left his lower legs bare. It looked like something one might wear to lounge beside a pool, but his sturdy, workmanlike boots suggested otherwise. His hairstyle was even more odd, shaved bald save a circular patch on the precise top of his skull. His only accouterment was a medallion dangling from his neck on a long chain. He was classically Tabbi, brown as soil with the geometric features that distinguished the original people of Tabbaqera from the broader brows and rounder cheeks of the west. Although he wore no armor and wasn’t armed, Havec had the impression of a soldier. Something about his bearing or maybe the way he moved. The moment he stood at his side, he went to one knee, held his hands out demandingly, and started to speak.

But Havec couldn’t hear a word.

He glanced at the girl, wondering if she could hear him, if this was some sorcerous business only another sorcerer could grasp. Maybe a second type of siren, this one with a subtler song. When he saw the way she gnawed on a rind of bread unconcernedly, eyes on her knees, he was briefly too nonplussed to understand. Then she tipped her chin up slightly, gaze roving absently across the darkened recesses of the room. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

He looked back at the man. He had perceived Havec’s inattention and it upset him: leaning forward, he thumped an angry fist against the floor. It made no noise, and Havec felt no percussion through the stone beneath his rear. It struck him how clearly he could see the man; he wasn’t casting off moonbeams like a sprite in a tale, but every line and detail of him was as crisply illuminated as if he stood in the light of the noonday sun. He ought to be splashed with deep shadows thanks to the crystals’ muted glow, but he was not.

Havec swallowed, and it was hard to force the mouthful of food down a throat gone stiff with shock. Before he could find the breath to carry his voice, he saw the woman. She too approached on noiseless feet, and she made the man still shouting at him silently seem unthreatening: her visage was haggard, long hair hanging limp across her face, and her eyes let onto madness. An old man dressed in the rags and tags of a beggar appeared on her heels.

“Girl?”

“My name,” she said shortly, “is Qanath.”

Two more people had entered the room in the time it took to have that exchange. Now he almost thought he could hear them after all, but the murmur of voices was faint, as if emerging from another room. He couldn’t really see where the people were coming from; the few lumps of crystal cast a circle of light only maybe six feet across, but the visitors were visible beyond the edge of that faint white glow. Some of them were brightly lit, while some remained cloaked in shadow even when they drew close. Swallowing again, he reached out to the first man, who was still shouting.

“Do you feel—” the girl began, sounding uneasy.

It was at this point that the angry man latched onto his wrist. He couldn’t feel the contact on his flesh, but the oddity hardly registered. Before, the visitors’ voices had been distant, only half-heard, but he was plunged into an auditorium full of people all of whom were talking simultaneously, urgent voices raised. He let out an involuntary shout and shied back, clapping his hands over his ears. Only the icy knowledge that there would be more of them behind him prevented him from scuttling away like a startled crab.

“What is wrong with you?”

He didn’t want to say it; it seemed like such a stupid thing to say. “Can you not see them?”

The blank look on her face made the answer obvious. Casting her eyes uneasily over both shoulders, she asked, “What?”

“The people. There are like a hundred of them in this room with us, all of them trying to tell us something.”

Qanath only stared at him, although she did at least have the decency to look afraid.