The sounds were worse than the images, I could here them in everyday things, as wet food scooped on to a plate became entrails slopping on the dirt. Tearing fabric sounded like tearing skin. In the days we spent travelling to Alexandria, I ate little and slept less, drinking water to ease the tightness in my belly. It was so hot, there was never enough water. How did they all stand it?

Is this what men did? Thomas and the Baker, was it men like them that had made the world? The Skin Takers would have killed us, worse than killed us, but the sanso blade itself didn't really sound like anything. The sounds came as a result of steel's intrusion into a living body, the rush of expelled air, a gasp, and then the collapse.

Everyone seemed so normal afterward, Marisa especially. Of course, she'd been somewhere else during the fight and the gruesome execution before the fight. On the road, she was laughing and talking like it was one of her parties and Tokar was one of her men. She didn't seem to miss the leaf. He didn't seem to mind her attention.

"Could you stop?" I told her.

She looked so confused, like she didn't know what I was talking about.

"Just stop, okay."

Havella tried to talk to me about it, but she'd been with Marisa. She hadn't been there. And the crazy thing was, I hadn't needed to be there either, they would have let me go if I hadn't identified myself as Thomas's betrothed. I'd put myself on the wrong side of Makoto's twisted world view because I hadn't understood what it meant.

All my life I'd been protected from what people were really like. Even when Porus had attacked me, it had happened so fast, and Castor had been there, the whole thing had been like a bad accident. I hadn't fully understood what I was being shown.

Ahriman had been sending me a message. This is what the world is without my protection. This is what your world could be. Thomas's biggest problem with the situation seemed to be that Makoto had gotten away.

"I'll report them in Alexandria," he said, "and they'll send out a regiment. All those men will hang."

Men and women, actually. That had been the strange thing, a perfect, shirtless equality in brutal action. Had they been that way before Kanto had burned their homes and pushed them out of their lands? Had they always been Skin Takers?

"Savages," Thomas said. "Don't try to understand them. They live without universal law; their lives are brutish and short."

The Baker seemed to understand what I was going through better than the others. He didn't talk about it, but he watched me closely and remained nearby; a massive presence, comforting because I'd grown accustomed to it. Maybe felt like home in that I'd grown up with people watching me, servants whose purpose in life was to accommodate my needs, always hovering nearby.

He showed me a lizard he caught when we camped for the night.

"Look," he said. "It has no tail, but the tail returns." It squirmed and ran away, escaping the soft cage of his hands.

The road to Alexandria was wide and hard packed, wagon ruts harrowing the center lane. Everything was flat in Kanto except for the occasional bluff that rose out of the plains like a mole on a human body. Alexandria was built around one of those blemishes, a plateau that dropped off into sheer cliffs clothed in scaffolds and stairs. It was a defensive position that would prove impregnable to any army that didn't have flying ships, and Alexandria had been the original capitol of Kanto for that very reason. The emperor no longer kept his palace here, but one of his barons did.

The city had long outgrown its bluff so that houses and streets spread out from the cliffs like roots from a tree. The main boulevard was lined with taverns and inns, I could hear music playing through the swinging doors of the saloons. Men carried swords at there waists, but they were long swords, straight and thin, not sanso blades. Thomas got attention because of his weapon, and people took note of us as we passed. It was harmless curiosity, but the part of me that had tried to set a man on fire saw banditry and greed in every stray glance. It was a big city, there would be criminals, and some of them would be more attracted than intimidated by the sight of a sanso sword. They hadn't seen what Thomas could do with it.

The sun was in full blaze when we arrived and we stopped to water our horses at a public trough. A boy ran at us, and my body tensed, but Thomas knew him, at least by sight. He gave the boy a coin and sent him to fill our water skins at a well. I wished I could bathe. Dust caked my arms and legs, it seemed to have been worked so deeply into the cracks around my eyes that I couldn't rub it out. The sweat of our ordeal was still on me, and I'd never felt so filthy in my life.

"Are we going to stay here?" I asked.

"The others can find us rooms while we visit the library," Thomas said. "But we should be careful, I don't want to announce myself. If the baron knows I'm here, he will likely require a meeting."

"Why?"

"Formality. But I'd rather not linger. We need to be on our way before anyone realizes who you are."

The library was atop the bluff, and to reach the plateau we rode a lift that was powered by oxen turning a wheel on the cliff. I wondered how they had gotten up there, if they had been born on the bluff and never known the open plains.

A fort was constructed on each corner of the bluff, their walls prickly with ballista ready to volley the plains and the city if necessary. Soldiers in grey and blue uniforms walked the walls on patrol, looking as grim as the Baker on any festive occasion.

"There's so many," I said. "Are you at war?"

"The bluff hasn't been attempted in well over a century," Thomas said. "If it were ever taken, it would be through treachery, not aggression. These men are simply doing their duty to maintain vigilance."

In the thousand years that Euphoria had reigned bloodlessly from our high mountain, Kanto had built a real empire out of steel and sweat and subjugation. This place wasn't in danger from anyone, but the way they managed their defenses was a measure of their will to continue their rise. If they ever became as soft as my royal honor guard, with ceremonial bundles instead of spears, it would be a sign that Kanto was ready to be sundered.

We reached the library, a massive square building surrounded by stone columns with a beautiful atrium at its heart. It looked like something Gracia would dream of building, and in fact it was modelled after their most ancient temples to the heroes of their sagas. Gracia had once been master of the world below the mountain, controlling the seas and therefore trade with all nations beyond the continent, claiming the coastal regions as satellite states. Kanto had been an upstart contender, confined to the hinterlands and hungry for the sea and the wealth it could offer. They had been unable to challenge the Gracian navy, so they conquered the forests of the northeast and those native peoples, and used the boundless timber to construct their kingdom.

When battle was joined again, Kanto lost. But they made headway on the coasts, and soon had shipyards of their own. Gracia smashed their fledgeling fleets again and again, but the great forest provided nearly unlimited resources for shipbuilding. Gracia, having amassed its fleet over generations, counted every board lost to the waves. They ceded small portions of the coast that were too costly to defend, and by slow attrition lost their influence. A trading empire based out of resource starved islands couldn't outpace Kanto's expanding influence on the continent. Eventually, Gracia was reduced to a shadow of its heyday, but the library had been built when the Kantons still envied the storied history of their foe.

Thomas paid for our entry with paper money, guests were expected to contribute to the upkeep of the library and I approved of the policy. The place was truly magnificent.

The stacks in Cloud City were said to contain a thousand years of accumulated knowledge, but we were not a numerous people, and neither were our scholars. The library at Alexandria was a castle whose walls had been erected with parchment and leather and thin wooden spacers. There were more books than I could guess at, and scores of people moved about the shelves or studied at small desks and chairs that crowded the floor between the walls of books.

"It's incredible," I said.

Thomas seemed satisfied with the remark. He pointed out a thousand or so volumes that were marked as atlases in the far corner, and we made our way to them. The open structure ensured that all light came from the sun. The library closed just before dark, as no candle or lamp would be allowed within to risk the impossible fortune preserved there on dry parchment. I could see into the atrium where some sat reading on benches in the open air, surrounded by green bushes and pruned trees. It was the most verdant scene I'd witnessed in Kanto, which suggested it was kept that way at excessive and deliberate expense.

"Here," Thomas selected a particularly musty volume. "Some of these date back two hundred years." He flipped through the tall, colorful pages, discovering ancient borders but no lost kingdoms.

I perused the shelf myself, and spied a volume whose title was written in an archaic Gracian script. I doubted Thomas could have read it, "The Highest Darkness" read the worn lettering, an odd title for an atlas. It was no larger than my hand, and contained thirty or so sketches, most of which were unintelligible to me, because they had nothing to do with any land mark I could recognize. This volume was a record of otherwise unexplored regions, sourced from different hands. They were fascinating, if somewhat fanciful, embellished here and there with sea beasts and spirits the reader was meant to beware.

In the middle of the collection was its namesake, a range of mountains completely unlabelled except for a dark spot where the title was written again, "The Highest Darkness." The shape of the mountains was familiar. The lines rearranged themselves in my minds eye. It was part of the Atlan ridge, only without a hint of Euphoria's existence in or around it. I puzzled this for a few moments, then flipped on, finally coming across what I was looking for.

The west coast was recognizable beside the legend "Forgotten Strait." On the edge of the page beyond the strait there was a miniature continent shaped like a crescent moon. The lettering was almost illegible.

"L-ethi-."

"I've got it," I said, and Thomas set his third or fourth atlas down open by the stack growing on his desk. He took the folio out of my hands and frowned over it for long moments.

"It's questionable," he said, "but if we compare it to more modern maps we should be able to identify this strip of coast."

That was the idea. While he was making comparisons, I saw a man in precisely tailored dress clothes register him and make a course correction.

"Thomas," I said.

"Thomas," drawled the man. It was the heaviest western Kanto accent I'd ever heard. "Whatever are the odds I'd find you here?"

Thomas snapped shut the atlas he'd been studying and straightened up, grimacing.

"Hello, Thackery."

"The last I'd heard you were out over Euphoria, no doubt preparing for your honeymoon..." he trailed off when he saw me. "In the emperor's name, young lady, you've gone native."

"I'm sorry," I said. Thomas seemed at a similar loss for words.

Thackery was old, but in fine form, his eyebrows and braid were as white, but he showed no sign of infirmity. "You must be princess Joi." He took my hand and shook it firmly. "I might not have recognized you, but I visited Cloud City once and I will never forget the look of your folk."

"I'm sorry to say I don't remember you," I said. A man like him would have stood out if the whole city were massed in a single crowd.

"You were only a girl then, but you have the same eyes. And that vest marks you, I'm afraid. My word, are those compass signs sewn into the fabric? And are you wearing a Gracian tunic?"

"It's a bit of a story."

"I'm sure," the old man grinned to reveal coffee yellow teeth.

"We're in a rush," Thomas said, struggling to find a way out of the conversation that did not involve a lie.

"I'm sure, I'm sure." Thackery gave him a quizzical look. "I'll arrange for you to see Master Locke this evening. I'm sure he wants to meet with you and your betrothed. There's been some confusion about you, princess, that I hope you can clear up. Seeing you together is a great relief, I do say."

Thomas seemed at war with himself, then his chin fell. "I would be honored," he said. "We'll be there."

"Good man." Thackery shook his hand and bowed to me before two stepping off. He walked as quickly as most people ran, in distinct contrast to the dragging pace of his speech.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"Thackery is the baron's majordomo," Thomas said. "Master Locke is the highest authority beneath the emperor, an equal to my father. I could not refuse his invitation."

"Then what does that mean?"

"It means you should wash you hair."

While I didn't appreciate him saying it, after our time on the road he certainly wasn't one to talk, I really did want a bath. The inn Havella had found for us was comfortable without resorting to luxury, and a private bath was available for a fee. She'd managed to find us lodging with a handful of Thomas's paper money and relatively limited Kantonese. The Skin Takers had made off with the entire lockbox of coin Castor had provided for my escape. I wished I knew how he was, probably happily ensconsed in the arms of his bodacious wife. I missed him. He and Thomas were nothing alike. I spent longer in the bath than I'd intended to, but it felt like the most comfort I'd had in a while and I had the excuse of scrubbing my vest.

Marisa, on instructions from Thomas, somehow procured me a dress in spite of not speaking a word of the local language. It was emerald green with several unnecessary layers of fabric pooling around my legs, and it required some adjustments around my top that Marisa was happy to provide. She actually seemed in a good mood, not a trace of the reserve that usually dimmed her eyes.

"Did something happen?" I asked.

"Tokar." She smiled.

"What? When?"

"While you were at the library. He kissed me, it was sweet." It was obvious what this meant to her, given her history in Kouros. Seeing it was enough to put a little light in my chest again.

Hikami slipped off of me and onto Marisa. She shrieked, dropping her needle, but she was just alarmed, not in pain. Hikami was playing with her, crawling over her like some alchemical admixture of serpent and puppy and candlelight.

She laughed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, he'd never behaved that way with anyone.

"Hikami must approve," I said.

The baron lived in a grand manor, four stories high and long as a city street. Guards and servants went back and forth, in and out, so that the whole seemed in constant motion. We were ushered inside by liveried footmen who bowed deeply to us both. As I was playing myself again, I saw no reason to hide my daemon, wearing him across my shoulders like a scarf in the hopes that he would bestow authority I didn't actually possess as a runaway princess. The footmen were certainly impressed.

The baron's private dining chamber was surprisingly cramped, given the luxury of the mansion overall. There was a square table, an oil lamp hanging from the wall, and only three chairs. Thackery stood in the corner of the room, ready to serve his baron's every need.

"Mr Caldwell," Locke said. "Don't stand on ceremony, come in and introduce me to that beautiful young woman on your arm."

I wasn't technically on his arm, but I'd have to let it go.

"May I introduce Princess Joi Longue, my intended," Thomas said regally.

"Excellent," Locke said, "now sit, both of you." We had no choice but to comply, and servants shortly delivered trays of snacks and drinks for us, though not the baron.

"We have a few things to discuss," he told me. "So as to keep it all above board I've asked a friend of mine to stand with you and look after your interests."

Then I saw Grandfather Lao.