“This might be something like Helen.”
“Your reasoning?”
“There’s some magic here—but I think most of it is yours. The light, the scan you’re doing to detect other magic. The eye on the external wall is the type of magic I’d associate with buildings that can play god within their own perimeters.” She shrugged, uneasy. “Mostly, it’s the portal.”
“Pardon?”
“Portals make me ill most of the time.” Literally. “I didn’t feel any discomfort at the transition at all. And that happens mostly inside of sentient buildings.”
“Can you sense any sentience?”
Hope squawked.
“Say that so I can understand it.”
If you insist, although I am already fatigued. I do not dispute your logic, but I do not sense an overarching control. Helen is noticeable immediately, as are the Hallionne.
“You think I’m wrong.”
No. I think you may be correct—but something is off in that case.He squawked again, this time in a short burst.
“How could there be a sentient building in the border zone?”
It was Severn who answered. “If it was built before the fall ofRavellon, its existence in the border zone would be poor luck on the part of the building. You can ask Helen; she might have more information. Or perhaps you can visit the High Halls and see if you can speak with Spike.”
“Once we get out.”
“Once we get out.”
If this was a building that was, in some fashion, like Helen, it was sleeping. The hall that the stairs led to was dark, the ceilings short and distinctly basement-like. Nothing about the building except the wall of statues that could only be seen through Hope’s wing implied that they were in a space defined—and rearranged at will—by any sentience other than a carpenter and stonemason.
If the eyeball on the external wall didn’t count.
Bellusdeo’s light brightened; the long corridor resolved itself into a wall with a door on each side, and a door at the end. These doors, like the side doors in the great room above, were better suited to closets. Or, to be fair, to Kaylin’s first apartment.
The doors to the left and right, like the doors above, were locked. There were no door wards, nor was there Kaylin-detectable magic on either the knobs or the locks.
Severn continued past them to the door at the end of this basement hallway.
“It had better not be another set of stairs.”
It wasn’t. It was a hall like the one they were standing in. In fact, it appeared to be identical to the one they were standing in. There were doors to the left and right, both locked, and a door at the end.
The third such hall caused a small spate of Leontine. Kaylin drew a dagger and scored the right door; it was wood, but it was normal wood. Sadly, it was a harder grade of wood. Bellusdeo chose to end Kaylin’s attempt to etch an X across the door’s surface.
She breathed on it instead.
Given that they were half-afraid that the building was sentient, Kaylin didn’t think this wise. But it was certainly faster, and the Dragon’s flame was controlled enough that she didn’t turn the door into ash. The mark was, of course, on the door in the next hall.
They were walking in a circle, an iterative loop. It was a defensive design; thieves or intruders couldn’t leave should they somehow manage to get in. They couldn’t return to the large room, either; the forty-eight steps that had brought them to this hall had vanished. Going back the way they’d come meant they were moving in the opposite direction through a series of connected halls that looked the same—because they were.
“Do you think it’s the same hall behind the side doors?” Bellusdeo asked.
Hope squawked.
“That would be inconvenient.” The Dragon was standing before the door she’d already blackened. “I am going to open this door.”
“That’s not a use of the wordopenthat would pass legal muster.”
