“The Towers don’t—”
“They have their limits and their instructions, yes. Within the confines of the Tower—as with Helen—they are...elastic. They have enlarged functionality. But their confines are very, very strictly drawn, very strictly contained. It was not always so,” he added. He looked as if he would say more, but fell silent as he glanced at Kattea.
Kattea said, “I’m better at finding stairs than you are.”
“This is true.”
“Put me down.”
“I do not wish to lose you, Kattea.”
“You’re the one who gets lost all the time.” She squirmed her way out of Gilbert’s arms, and he let her go. She then took off for the kitchen and paused to grab something from the table before heading out into the mess of a storefront.
“She’s eating your cookies,” Severn observed.
“Hey!”
The Arkon coughed. “They’re probably stale, anyway,” Kaylin muttered. To Gilbert, she said, “So...back to your function.”
“My function is simply to preserve the structural integrity of time.”
“Is that why the water was afraid you would destroy her?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not going to destroy her.”
“No.”
“Would you have?”
The Arkon exhaled smoke.
“Would you like to take over the rest of this conversation?” she demanded.
“Yes. There will be fewer interruptions of an entirely pointless and frivolous nature. You,” he added, “may help Kattea find the stairs.”
*
There were, as it turned out, no stairs. Kattea, however, found a trapdoor. She stepped away and Severn pulled it open, using the hook built into the handle to hold it in place. “Stairs?” Kaylin asked.
“Not exactly. I think there’s a ramp.”
“Think?”
“We’re going to need some light.”
*
Light was found—Evanton’s store had lamps with varying levels of oil—and Severn was proved correct: there was a ramp. It was, however, made of wood; sliding down was out of the question unless one wanted a backside full of splinters. The Arkon looked about as amused at the idea of ramps as Kaylin was at the idea of a backside full of splinters.
Mandoran and Annarion went down first.
Gilbert followed; when he was halfway down the ramp, Kattea leaped onto his back, which nearly sent him tumbling into the Barrani. The Arkon was pretty much steaming at this point. He glared dubiously at the ramp. “Private, Corporal, you go first.”
Kaylin opened her mouth.
“I do not believe the ramp will sustain my weight.”
He wasn’t wrong. Although he looked—for the moment—like an armored old man, his weight was closer to the draconic end of the scale; the ramp snapped when he was halfway down the incline. Fortunately, the rest of their party had already cleared the area.
“Have you considered the significance of these halls?” The Arkon asked, after he’d picked himself up and dusted himself off.
“I consider them pretty significant,” she said, after a pause. “But—Evanton wasn’t aware of halls beneath Elani, and I would have bet real money that they didn’t exist before Gilbert and Kattea made their way here.”
“Do you think they were created by the water?”
A good question. “No.”
“But the water found Gilbert and Kattea and moved them—two people who were not, originally, from our time—here?”
“Well, yes—I don’t think Kattea was lying.”
“And Gilbert?”
“Gilbert doesn’t understand enough about our way of life to be a good liar. No. I don’t think either were deliberately falsifying events.” She hesitated. Gilbert had forbidden the use of mirrors. And mirrors existed across the city—even in the fiefs. Except for now.
Now the fiefs were off the network; they could be reached by foot, but not by the magic that powered mirrored communication. “Has anyone heard from Tiamaris?”
“Yes.”
“Did Tara knock the fief off the mirror network?”
“Yes.” The Arkon glanced at Kaylin with obvious surprise, which was slightly insulting, and approval, which should have been, but wasn’t.
“And the fiefs exist post-disaster, whatever that disaster was.” She turned to Gilbert. “Are these halls a reflection of the mirror network?”
Gilbert said, “I believe so, yes. Helen believes that the underpinning magic of that network has been extant for far longer than your Empire. The magic is used, and channeled, but it is not well understood by your kind.”
“Or by yours?”
His smile was slight. “Or by mine. I believe the halls, as you experience them, are an instability in the underlying magic. As such, we can enter almost any building to which the network itself has been granted access. I do not believe it is sentient,” he added softly. “But it responds to sentience.”
“Not to ours,” Kaylin told him.
“No, perhaps not. To the water, yes, in some fashion.”
Kaylin nodded.