she’d be likely to follow anyway. She’s going to do this—but I’ve been across the border zones before. It’s not the border zones that are the problem. She can walk into the zone from Candallar; he knows she’s here, and for the moment, he’s willing—barely—to let her be.
And Durant won’t be?
I don’t know.
* * *
The border zone between Candallar and the fief of Durant was similar, in the end, to the zone between Tiamaris and Candallar, or between Nightshade and Tiamaris. That was Kaylin’s first impression. Her second impression was slightly different. Although the same washed-out hues of gray were the predominant colors in the zone, and the buildings appeared to continue from the border itself, the length of passage felt shorter.
It’s not just you, Severn told her. The zone here is, like the zones between Nightshade and Tiamaris, amorphous; it shifts. But the elasticity of the space seems to have harder bounds. It did when I traversed them the first time.
Can I ask why you did it?
You can ask. I can’t answer.
Sometimes Kaylin resented the Wolves, which was petty. She struggled to set resentment aside, and managed to keep the actual words to herself. Harder, when they were on the inside of her head.
Severn’s hands tightened on his weapons, but the three emerged into the fief of Durant without conflict or difficulty. Then again, Bellusdeo was traversing the zone closest to the Ravellon border all fiefs shared. Kaylin considered this risky; it was, in theory, here that the Towers’ attention was focused.
But it did mean that no civilians, and no fieflord thugs, were in easy reach of a disgruntled gold Dragon, and Kaylin considered the risk worth the avoidance. Not that she had much love for fieflord thugs, but any situation in which she could avoid random killing, even in self-defense, was always the better one.
Bellusdeo, annoyance aside, had probably made the same decision. Or perhaps not. It was not just the border zones that she wanted to inspect; it was the border that each fief held with the shadow at the center of these separate lands.
* * *
The course of the day was about that border, and it wasn’t exactly short. While Bellusdeo inspected the Durant border, Kaylin looked at the buildings. Durant was a walled fief; it wasn’t the river that separated the fief from the rest of the city, for the most part. There was a bridge, but the wall itself occupied most of the city-facing border.
The buildings here were in better repair, which surprised Kaylin. If they were occupied, the occupants had chosen to stay away from open windows, and for the most part, those were rare; shutters ruled here, not glass, but the shutters were firmly closed. Or as firmly as warped wood could be.
Above the buildings—all of them, near or far—a Tower rose. It was unadorned, and it certainly wasn’t white, as the Tower of Tiamaris had become; it was a very workmanlike stone, a Tower that, on the exterior, could have been built by mortal hands, and not the hands of a resident almost-deity.
“What the hell is that?” Kaylin murmured, her eyes narrowing.
Severn glanced in the direction of the Tower. “Durant’s decor is a bit unusual.”
“A bit? Is that supposed to be a word? Two dots and a curve?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“What is it?”
“I believe it’s supposed to be a rudimentary representation of a smile.”
“A smile.” She turned to catch Severn’s expression. “You’re serious. Have you ever met Durant?”
“No. I’ve entered the fief before, but nothing I’ve been searching for has ended up in Durant.”
She looked at the smile again. “I can’t imagine why.”
Bellusdeo snorted. “You are discomfited because you feel that a smile is somehow welcoming.” She smiled. Given the size of her jaws, it was not in any way friendly.
“Durant’s doesn’t have any teeth in it.”
* * *
The Ravellon border in the fief of Durant showed no cause for alarm, or at least no sign Bellusdeo was willing to share. The occupants of the buildings that faced the dangerous border were, like the occupants in every other zone the Dragon had strolled across, entirely absent. Evidence suggested that they existed, but this was not the time of day to find anyone who had much choice in the matter at home.
Kaylin almost regretted it. She could well imagine that a giant...smile...could come under some fairly harsh mockery, and she almost wanted to ask a Durant fiefling what their fieflord was like.
Bellusdeo’s concern was more immediate. She cared about fieflords only