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“I can’t blame them,” Sorasa muttered under her breath.

“Why would they want to do that?” the Elder asked. “I’m twice their size.”

He scrutinized the taverns again, looking over rat-faced men in greasy clothing. They looked back, jeering, showing yellow teeth if they had teeth at all.

Sorasa waved him on with a tug of her gloved fingers. “Boys do stupid things to feel like men, no matter how old they are.”

Inns and taverns sprouted like weeds all over Wayfarer’s, its streets narrow and overcrowded. Most people left the port quickly, creating a steady tide into the city. Sorasa kept them deep in that current, snug within a group of robed pilgrims more slack-jawed than Corayne. She breathed a sigh of relief when they escaped the jostling island and crossed the Moonbridge, named for its smooth, half-circle arch over the Fifth Canal.

Corayne’s gaze snagged and she slowed to stare at the monstrous Fleethaven, just as intimidating as the navy it harbored. It was dug into the next island, with a long channel leading to an interior circle. There were berths for each ship of the fleet, stalled like a horses in a stable.

“It’s a cothon,” Sorasa said, shoving the girl along. “And not much to look at. A shadow to the war ports of Almasad and Jirhali, a bad copy.”

Both flashed in her mind, the cities of Ibal and Rhashir thick with heat haze and palm shade. Where Galland could dock twenty warships at a turn, the others could hold a hundred with ease. The streets of Almasad went gold in her memory, glittering like they never had before. Sorasa forced another breath, the air sour with the beer stink of the northern capital. It was like a bucket of cold water.

“Such is the way of Galland. Everything stolen well and poorly remade,” she added, keeping her grip on Corayne’s arm. “If you insist on stopping to look at every cobblestone and corner ditch, I’m going to make Dom carry you.”

The city unfurled, dark and spattered with flickering lights like globs of red and gold paint. They bled on the waters, dancing in the wake of boats, ferries, and little skiffs rowing the canals. Sorasa got her bearings as they walked, resetting the points of her internal compass. Corayne tromped at her side, doing her best to gawk and walk at the same time.

“The Konrada,” Sorasa said, gesturing to the tower before Corayne could ask. It spiked up from the center of Ascal, black against the stars, windows glowing from within as if fire burned deep in her spine. “A cathedral to every god of the Ward, all twenty, built by Konrad the Great.”

Behind her, Dom did his best to smile. The look seemed foreign on his face. “For someone who hates traveling companions, you make a talented guide.”

His steady voice and superior tone split Sorasa’s head. “The tower is open inside, two hundred feet from dome to floor,” she continued, glaring at him. “Do you know what happens to a man’s skull when he falls that distance?”

The Elder soured. “Is that a threat, Sarn?”

“Just sharing happy memories,” Sorasa replied. “I have many in this city.”

Next to him, Corayne’s eyes nearly rolled out of her head.

They tried to avoid the main streets, sticking to alleys. The avenues connected the bridges like veins through a body and would have been easier, but more obvious. Even at night, market stalls and performer pavilions crowed, fountains choked with people washing clothes and filling buckets. Carts wheeled; dedicant priests walked in their rows; dogs nosed for scraps while cats shrieked. The city garrison patrolled, lanterns raised and faces slack beneath their helmets. Children laughed or wept around every corner.

Where Corayne gaped, Dom glowered in disgust. Sorasa could not help but agree.Ascal is a foul place,she cursed, stepping over a black puddle. Between the bridges, the stinking canals, and the many hundreds of thousands of people who lived within the walls, the capital was an experiment in how not to plan a city. Everything was infinitely more chaotic than any city of the south or west.

But chaos makes ease,she knew.In a crowd, on a street, in a city’s foundations.

They rejoined a grand avenue to cross the Bridge of Faith, its length set with great iron torches like spears. In daylight it would be rammed rail to rail with pilgrims seeking the Konrada and the blessings of the gods. Now it was all but empty, scattered with a few errant priests mumbling to themselves or preaching to beggars.

They stepped off Faith and onto the plaza, wide and round. Sorasa fought the familiar urge to run. She felt exposed, a hawk reduced to a mouse in the field. The cathedral tower loomed, watching over them with proud indifference.

Though she despised Ascal, even Sorasa could not help but admit the city was grand in every sense of the word, for better or worse. Such was the way of the northern kings, who saw themselves as emperors, burdened and blessed to rule from every corner of the horizon.

The New Palace was no exception, a giant hunched beyond the cathedral.

Corayne breathed a sigh, the gasping sort. Not in awe, but in fear. “I had a picture of it in my head,” she murmured as they walked. “What I thought the palace would look like.”

“And it came nowhere close,” Sorasa answered.I know the feeling,she thought, remembering the first time she saw the sprawling palace.The great seat of the Gallish kings, the fist of this land.It stole her breath then. It almost did now.

The palace rose at the city’s heart, walled on its own island, its towers and keeps a soft gray that flickered gold under the flaming braziers upon the ramparts. Galland’s lion snarled from a hundred green banners, streaming like emerald tears. Gargoyles and spires clawed the sky from the rooftops. Torches flared on the ramparts of a dozen towers. Lights pulsed behind gleaming windows of stained glass. There was another cathedral on the palace grounds, the Syrekom, monstrous in size, with a rose window like a gigantic jeweled eye. Parts of the palace were brand-new, the stone almost white, the architecture flamboyant and daring, a stark contrast to the rest. The gate was a mouth of iron, jaws wide at the end of the Bridge of Valor.

Two dozen knights lined Valor, armed with spears, their helms donned. They wore green silk over their armor, each embroidered with a roaring lion. At night they looked inhuman, unfeeling, in service to their queen and country.

“That is too many guards to bribe,” Dom said dryly from beneath his hood.

“I don’t plan to use a bridge,” Sorasa replied with equal bite.

“Do you intend to swim in that...substance?” he said, sneering at the fetid canals.