Bellusdeo said, “I recognize this road.”
Kaylin didn’t. “You’re sure?”
Dragon smoke was most of Bellusdeo’s reply. “It heads down, but curves; the corner is gradual, and when the road reaches its end, it will open into a space that is blessedly free of your cramped, ground-based streets. We walked through it when we left Killian’s building.”
Bellusdeo had immortal memory. Kaylin’s memory of streets was etched in slowly by familiarity and patrolling. She was certain the Dragon was right, and she tried to pay attention to the curve of the street and the way the buildings changed as they followed that curve. She realized that Bellusdeo was right: she could see the building in which they’d found—or been found by—Killian. That building was one of a few that were arranged in a circle around a circular road; in the center of that were more trees and what might have been a normal park, if not for the lack of color.
Would you have recognized this street if you’d found it?Kaylin asked Severn.
If I were walking it with you? Probably.
So it’s not racial. It’s me.
There are things you recognize that neither of us would. You’re not going to be able to compete with Barrani or Dragons for recall. None of us could. But neither she nor I thought that Killian was somehow a building.
“Can any of you hear Terrano or Mandoran?”
Teela shook her head.
“My brother?” Annarion asked.
“No, sorry. On the other hand, he’d probably be disgusted at most of what I’m thinking now.”
“I doubt it,” Teela said.
The curve of the street widened before it ended. The buildings were now almost stately; they looked like buildings that might once have housed guilds in a bygone era. Normal people hadn’t lived in them, but might have worked in them. It was hard to tell without examining the interiors.
Kaylin, studying those exteriors in an attempt to bludgeon them into memory, frowned. “Could we take a look at the inside of that building?”
“Try to stay focused, kitling.”
“I am. I think I caught movement in the upper windows. And they’re real windows, not shuttered gaps in the wall.” She turned to Bellusdeo. “You’re going to have to ditch the Dragon form if you want to go through those doors.”
The Dragon’s grin was all teeth. “I beg to differ.”
It took all present members of the cohort some time to talk her out of simply removing the front third of the building—and it mostly came down to structural stability. The loss of great chunks of a possible load-bearing wall would make any exploration unsafe for some of the people present.
And by some, they meant Kaylin.
Maggaron remained outside with Severn. If he resented this, it didn’t show. While he wasn’t fond of the streets here, it appeared that his view of the buildings and their construction had moved slowly to overlap with the views of all of the people who could see them.
The fog, however, was thinning as they approached the end of the road. The cohort, with the exception of Teela, couldn’t see the building Kaylin wanted to explore. They couldn’t see the movement in the big windows, either.
Kaylin frowned. “Do you think the cohort itself is visible here?”
“We can see them,” Bellusdeo said.
“We already know they’re here. I mean—” She struggled to find words and gave up because the right words would take too long. The wrong words generally took too long as well, but for other reasons.
“I think everyone but Teela should stay outside.”
Allaron nodded. Annarion’s lips compressed into a tighter line, but he said nothing. Or nothing that people who weren’t part of the group mind could hear. Teela was examining the doorway—a peaked arch that nonetheless contained two wide rectangular doors beneath what looked to be a stone crest of some kind.
“If the doors are locked,” Bellusdeo said, “can I break them?”
“Kaylin can pick the locks if they’re not magical,” Teela replied, which was a no.
“There’s little chance that the doors are not magically locked,” the Dragon said. “I don’t care if the signs are written in an ancient variant of Barrani—magic is not a modern contrivance.”
