They left through the back entrance, left behind the dark library for the blinding light outside that rendered spots of Maisero’s vision invisible. It was a few moments later, as he could smell the fresh grass and the smell of the sea blowing past him, that he missed the smell of those old pages. He turned to see the old door behind him creak shut. The others had left him behind and were approaching the nearest road, and Maisero hobbled fast to catch up.

Just as the shore had been, so too were the streets. Lined with carnations, lilies, roses, tulips, bushes and vines left to roam wild along the tall structures man had built. From the scaly strip of cobblestone they crossed, shorter paths like legs extending from the body of an insect lead to small houses, with discolored and aging walls, topped with yellowing and whitening thatched roofs. The woman led down one of these paths and stopped at one of the doors. She knocked.

“This is an old friend of mine, don’t be too disconcerted by him,” the woman said. “You remember Edin?” she said, waiting for a reply from Balto. He nodded, and smiled.

A seemingly young man opened the door and swung it back. He would have looked young, the soft and pale skin on his body, if not for the scars of lashes that crossed over his face and his hands and arms. The room he’d opened the door into was dark, and curtains of dust hung inside.

“Hello Anastasia,” Edin began, smiling a little. “Here for lunch? I can make something quickly, if you and your guests would like some.”

Maisero wanted to encourage a positive answer to this, but was cut out quickly. “No, Edin, it’ll be alright. Would you come to the courtyard today?”

“What for?”

“The Sacredate is looking for the child behind me.”

Edin’s face grew cold and expressionless (although note whiter, he was already the whitest shade imaginable for a man). He nodded eventually, and shut the door without a word.

Anastasia walked back onto the street. “Balto, would you like to attend?”

Balto shook his head. “I’ll be heading back to the ship now, we should be leaving off soon.”

Anastasia grimaced, but nodded. Balto made quick work of a goodbye, making sure to give Sartore another pat on the head, then left on his way, chasing down the horizon. Maisero noticed that Sartore watched Balto fade away back to shore. Then, Maisero and Sartore followed Anastasia alone.

Theories were starting to feed into Maisero’s head. Why were these people being collected? For a secret meeting, of course. Why a secret meeting? Perhaps this was a growing resistance. A small armada gathering to build a bulwark against the Sacredate’s forces. His suspicions were confirmed when Anastasia knocked at the next house: an older woman answered, which followed with a similar exchange, although she seemed less surprised than Edin had been. She said she’d be there soon. Then came an older man, more cranky than the previous two guests, who decided that now was the appropriate time to complain and announce that he would take no steps outside of his house. After a quick threat from Anastasia, he promised he’d be there as well.

And on and on it went, until eventually they had reached the end of that stretch of houses, and there were no more people to collect There was a small fence marking the end of the road, and past it was a cliff thickly covered in green vines and bushes, tipped with flowers and color, lush and green; and yet, steep enough that one step there would send you tumbling the many hundreds of feet down, onto the rocks that the shrubbery clung to, and into the water

Anastasia stopped there and turned to the two of them. Maisero had almost forgotten Sartore even existed, although he wished it had stayed that way. Anastasia paused, looking at them with some discomfort, then sighed.

“You two have to stay quiet,” she began.