After the prayer, Xerxes half-expected a surge of strength to blossom in his chest. Or streams of light to fall from the sky and bathe them. Some sign that the Pontifarch had heard the prayer.

There was nothing.

After saying their goodbyes to Jad, they went back toward Puabi as fast as possible. With the Abhorrent about, sometimes it made more sense to avoid the open road and take less-traveled routes.

They pushed themselves hard, and as a result there wasn’t much time for conversation.

However, the monotony of running nonstop did provide ample time for thought. And Xerxes couldn’t help but wrestle with countless issues. He went back to the moment he had first met Kashtiliash, Jad, and Enusat. Encountering Kashtiliash while eating street food. Jad and Enusat approaching him to ask about longswords. It had almost seemed like destiny that they ended up friends. All of them were students of the Epitome, a rarity in lower starisles. Yet they ended up as roommates on Sin-Amuhhu, where they started a club devoted to the sword.

He also thought about Gandash, and the things he’d said.

“You do have your new best friends.”

“We grew up together, right? Best friends, no matter what.”

“You got tangled up with your fucking Swordmasters. Over and over again you’ve shown that you’d rather side with them than me.”

Now Jad and Enusat were both dead. He’d lost them, and he’d lost Gandash.

At least Kashtiliash was still there.

Then again, what did the bearded mage think about everything? Xerxes liked him, but had never heard him say much of anything. He knew precious little about Kashtiliash’s background. He had no idea what he wanted in life. At best, Kashtiliash seemed to float along and react to everything without ever seeking his own path.

Then again, do I even know what I want?

Hours blurred together. Days blurred together. They followed roughly the same path they’d taken originally, hoping that, if Gandash had already accomplished the mission and was heading back to the Gateway complex, they would run into him. They didn’t.

As Xerxes’ legs ached and his lungs burned, and the dust of the road caked on his arms and face, dark thoughts consumed him.

Some moments alone with Katayoun made him forget the rest. But the muck of travel that clung to them was difficult to deal with.

For the most part, they stayed away from any Abhorrent they spotted. But sometimes conflict was unavoidable. On three occasions, they attacked the monsters without warning, wiping them out within less than a minute. Only once were they the ones caught unawares. During that hectic fight, Dasi suffered some serious injuries, but nothing that Katayoun couldn’t deal with via Minor Restoration. Everything was made easier by the fact that all of the monsters they saw were types they’d dealt with before.

Xerxes lost track of exactly how much time they were on the road. One day, after going through a mountain pass, they caught sight of something on the horizon. A city, with smoke rising up from it. Not the smoke of destruction, but that of ordinary civilization.

They sped down out of the mountains and across the open plains and scattered hills toward their destination.

By the time the sun set behind the mountains, they were close enough that the city was a smudge on the horizon. At that point, they broke for dinner in some hilly terrain.

“Our timing is good,” Dasi said. “We’re starting to run out of lentils.”

“We could hunt if we had to,” Kashtiliash said.

“Maybe. Abhorrent will eat animals too. I bet they’re devastating the countryside.”

“True.”

They ate quickly.

“So how do we approach the city?” Katayoun asked. “Just go up to the front gates?”

“No,” Xerxes said, thinking back to some of Mystic Rabya’s classes. “We have no Abhorrent on our tails. None in the entire area as far as we can tell. I say we take our time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember what Rabya said? The more you know about your enemy, and the less they know about you, the more of an advantage you have.”

“Isn’t our enemy the Abhorrent?” Dasi asked.

Xerxes scraped the last spoonful of lentils out of his bowl. “Not necessarily. Remember, the original mission was to deal with unrest. We were supposed to escort some of the nobility out of the city. For all we know, we could be heading into a hostile environment.”

“At this point, Gandash has been there for days,” Katyoun noted.

“True,” Xerxes said. “If we’re lucky, then he’s got everything worked out. But it won’t hurt to spend a bit of time observing and planning.”

“Agreed,” Kashtiliash said.

That night, they camped about half a league from the city, in a campground next to a river.

At dawn, they moved closer to the city, eventually finding a hilltop that provided a good view.

Dasi, though originally assigned to a heavy cavalry unit, was a Sinitu mage who had used her shapeshifting spells to do scouting. Thus, it was no surprise she had a spyglass.

Producing it, she started scanning the walls. After a few minutes, she said, “The gates are closed,” she said. “And the settlements outside the walls seem abandoned.”

“No surprise there,” Kashtiliash said.

“Yeah.” Dasi continued looking through the spyglass. “I see a mage on the outer wall.”

“Anyone you recognize?” Xerxes asked.

“Looks fat,” she said. “I doubt it’s Tizqar though. Wrong proportions.” She lowered the spyglass. “Want a look?” she asked.

Xerxes shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”

“I’d like to,” Katayoun said.

While Katyoun looked at the distant city, Xerxes chewed his bottom lip.

“What are you thinking?” Dasi asked. “Gandy must be in there. We didn’t see any signs on the road to indicate he ran into trouble. Although I guess it’s possible they slipped off the road at some point to take a less-traveled route.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m just worried that it’s been days. The mission was cut and dry, and he was dead set on doing everything efficiently. Why hasn’t he started back to the Gateway complex yet?”

“Things change,” Kashtiliash said. “The mission orders came months ago.”

“True,” Xerxes said.

“And you know what happens when you deal with nobility,” Dasi said.

Xerxes looked at her. “Not really. What happens?”

She grinned. “I don’t know exactly. But don’t they like to sit around with their thumbs up their asses all the time?”

Kashtiliash grunted a laugh. “Yeah.”

Xerxes also laughed. “See anything, Kat?”

“I see a few soldiers with longswords. Isn’t that strange?”

“Jad said—” Xerxes felt his throat tighten, and cleared it. “Jad said they’d become all the rage recently. That’s why he and Enusat started studying the Epitome.”

She lowered the spyglass and handed it back to Dasi. “Other than that, nothing jumped out. They’re obviously on high alert. Lots of soldiers on the walls.”

“So what do we do?” Dasi said.

“Go knock on the gate,” Kashtiliash said.

Xerxes cracked his thumb knuckles. “No.” He paused as thoughts coalesced in his mind. “No, we don’t. We’re going to sneak in.”

“Why?” Katayoun asked.

“We have nothing to gain by rushing in. And who knows what we might learn by taking our time.”

“True,” Kashtiliash said.

“How much do you remember from Mystic Rabya’s lecture on covert infiltrations?”

**

After facing hordes of Abhorrent, the idea of sneaking into a city seemed tame. But Xerxes’ heart was in his throat when they finally made the attempt.

They’d discarded the idea of sneaking in through the sewers. A river ran through the city, so that provided options, but they didn’t have enough intelligence to work with. Scaling the walls wouldn’t have been too difficult. However, they did know that the city had defensive spell formations, just not where they were, or what exactly they did.

In the end, they decided on the age-old method of joining the throngs of refugees who sought refuge within the city walls.

They had rough traveling clothes, so that wasn’t an issue. The biggest sticking point were the longswords, or more precisely, the fancy sheaths.

Although longswords were more common than other lower starisles, sheaths such as the type available in the markets of Sin-Amuhhu were not. Furthermore, the sheaths couldn’t easily be concealed. In the end, they wrapped them tightly in waterproof oilskin, and buried them.

They also rubbed some cooking oil and dust on the blades of their swords to make them seem of lower quality than they were. It wouldn’t do anything to fool an expert, but for someone glancing casually at the weapons, it would suffice.

They devised a simple but believable story regarding their identities and reason for coming to Puabi. They even did some role-playing to get ready for talking to the guards.

Except, the guards didn’t ask about their story. They demanded an entry fee, glanced at their swords, then waved them through.

Xerxes had spent about half a year on a wildly advanced higher starisle. Given that, he was struck by how shoddy everything seemed. Many of the streets were unpaved. Half of the building eaves were choked with cobwebs. The buildings were made of pitted wood or rough mud bricks.

The people were different, too.

On Sin-Amuhhu, even the beggars seemed to sit straight when they asked for money. But here, everyone slouched and looked out of the corners of their eyes. Weapons were everywhere. Most people had daggers at their belts, plus an additional weapon. Short swords were the most common. There were longswords as well, generally carried by people with finer clothing that the rest of the populace.

Did we just end up in a bad neighborhood?

After wandering for about an hour, it didn’t seem so. The people, and the buildings, were the same everywhere. That said, there was an inner wall, and beyond it was the part of the city where the rich and noble lived.

There was no sign of Gandash. Of course, it was a big city.

Eventually, they stopped at a crumbling fountain to eat some flatbread. Katayoun and Dasi sat on the fountain wall, Kashtiliash and Xerxes got on their haunches in front of them.

“We should find a place to stay,” Dasi said.

“Saw a few taverns along the way,” Kashtiliash said.

“Look,” Katayoun said, nodding.

Across the road was a run-down building with the words ‘accommodations’ written over the door.

“Yuck,” Dasi said. “Looks like a place you could get a disease in.”

Xerxes grinned. “Which makes it perfect for us. Two rooms? Or three?”

Kashtiliash looked at Dasi. “Your call, Das.”

Dasi looked back at him. “I like the idea of a big bearded fellow watching my back. But if you lay a hand on me without asking, I’ll cut your dick off.”

Kashtiliash’s expression remained placid. “You keep your hands off of me, and we have a deal.”

Dasi laughed. “Deal.”

They got rooms, then asked some questions of the proprietor, an older man named Zaidu who had black hair that turned lighter as it went down his head, ending in white-tipped sideburns.

According to Zaidu, they were in the Unicorn District, which he said was ‘shitty and dangerous, but not as bad as some of the other places.’

Flaking the Unicorn District was the Citadel Ward to the east, and the Tome District to the north.

They split into two teams to spend a few hours gathering information. Katayoun and Dasi went to the Tome District, which Zaidu said was a peaceful place full of libraries. Kashtiliash and Xerxes decided to prowl the Unicorn District’s gambling halls and gray market outlets.

“Same rules as the Institute,” Katayoun said when they parted. “No brothels.”

“No brothels,” he said, nodded gravely.

The first gambling hall was around the corner. They lost a handful of minas on dice, but didn’t get any information worth noting, other than the fact that there was a curfew coming in a few hours.

They went down a few blocks to a cockfighting arena.

There, they heard some talk about ‘a passing army,’ but didn’t get much details other than some mounted troops and mages had been seen entering the city a few days ago.

“At least we know they’re here,” Kashtiliash said.

“Yeah.”

After the cockfighting arena, they went to another gambling hall. That was where they found the information they were looking for.

According to a pair of half-drunk porters, foreign mages had arrived in the city only a few days previous, but had been arrested, and were now being held in some sort of prison in the inner city.