The city greeted them with a lie.
Apollo could see it in the geometry; nothing in the world ever aligned itself so perfectly unless there was something to hide.
The concentric rings, five, by his count, each a meticulous echo of the last, were drawn so tight around the central tower that it was hard to tell if they meant to keep something in or out.
He said nothing as they approached, just registered the way the symmetry pulled at his stomach, like the memory of a wound gone to scar.
The wind at the gate was stagnant, a taste like boiled bone and dried flowers. Nothing moved, not the air, not the water in the black canals, not even the pale weeds fissuring up through the stone.
The stillness made a sound of its own, a sort of hissing anticipation, and Apollo found himself matching his steps to it, too cautious to break the city’s rhythm.
Beside him, Lyra hovered just outside the archway, one hand grazing the hilt of her knife.
Her hair, normally a spill of blond tangles, was wrestled tight by the windless air; it made her face sharper than usual, cheeks drawn, the green of her eyes so bright it looked fraudulently alive.
She watched Apollo, but he didn’t bother returning the look.
He could feel the judgment even without seeing it. If she thought this was some test, his test, their test, the city had already won.
Nik and Thorin lagged a dozen paces behind, bickering in the low, mean way of men terrified of silence. Nik’s laugh was a battered thing, all cartilage and nothing soft, bouncing off the lintels and slumping dead in the dust.
Thorin’s voice, when it surfaced, was less a sound than a refusal to be quiet. They both pretended not to notice how the dog would not cross the threshold, pacing the shadows as if to warn them off, tail rigid as a blade.
The avenue was lined with buildings that, at first, seemed untouched by time, shutters straight, doors closed or open in careful ratios, every brick sharp-edged and mortared in unreadable patterns.
On closer inspection, none of the windows had glass. No footprints marred the perfectly swept walkways. The lamps hung in regular intervals, dead and clean. Apollo’s tongue felt salt-pricked: ’Real or memory?’
He made a show of confidence, walking down the main arcade with his chin up, but all the time he could sense the city parsing them, slotting each of their movements into some invisible equation.
He put a hand in his jacket pocket, fingers wrapping around the cold, uneven facets of the shard Torgo had given him.
It pulsed with a heat that wasn’t heat, a slow beat aligning itself to his own heart. He gripped it tighter. ’Not for you,’ he thought, meaning the city.
Lyra kept pace, eyes never resting on any one thing for more than a heartbeat. She was reading the city, too, or maybe the sky: anything but him.
Ahead, the avenue forked into three perfect roads, each one curved just enough to hide what lay beyond.
They chose the rightmost path, Thorin’s idea, since he imagined cities as nothing more than fortresses waiting to be besieged, and walked until the repetition of buildings began to blur.
Every street looked like the last. Every alley echoed the first.
Apollo counted the turns, the intersections, marked the way the sun, thin and unsympathetic above the clouds, cast no shadow on the walls.
’No birds,’ he realized suddenly. ’No insects, not even a rat.’ The absence made the world feel hollow as a dried gourd.
The first sign of occupation was a single scrap of cloth, a ragged blue strip, snagged on a nail above a lintel. It looked new, impossibly so.
Lyra stopped and ran her tongue over her teeth, then sniffed the air. "Fire," she murmured, and Apollo caught it too, faint and distant, the ghost of smoke gone before it could truly be smelt. The prospect of warmth, of something human, pushed them forward.
They found the source at the heart of the second ring: a square, or what would have been a square if any corners dared to exist.
The fire smoldered in a stone pit, wet branches hissing and steaming, but there was no one nearby. Nik peered into the pit, then circled it, poking at the embers with a stick. "Minutes old," he declared, then grimaced. "Maybe less." No one disagreed.
Lyra scanned the facades, the steps, the lays of dust. "Nothing moved," she said, but the certainty in her voice was absent.
The shadows were tightening; sunset in this city happened in a hurry, the last of the light draining from the sky as if fleeing the stones.
Apollo looked at the buildings, then at his companions, and then at the arc of stars beginning to define themselves overhead. "We need a roof," he said. "And we need it before dark."
Thorin grunted, "Pick one. They’re all the same," and gestured with his bandaged arm. The wound no longer wept, but Apollo could tell by the color in Thorin’s cheeks that the fever was waiting for an excuse.
They chose a triangular house at the edge of the square, its door standing open as if it had anticipated them.
The inside was dry, the floor swept, the walls plastered in a way that suggested recent repair.
There was no furniture save for a low table and a single, three-legged stool. Nik swept the room twice, checked under the table and behind the door, then shrugged. It was a shelter, at least.
They ate in silence. Lyra leaned against the wall, eyes on the windowless black to the street. The dog lingered in the doorway, whining once before settling at Apollo’s knee, muzzle pressed into his boot.
Thorin snored in the corner, the sound thin and defeated. Nik kept his hands busy with the knife, picking at the calluses of his thumb, then whittling a stick down until it parted in two.