Sometime after midday, Karigan surmised that they’d reached the entrance to Gossham proper when they were stuck in a long line of travelers waiting to be cleared by Inspectors. A pair of enormous bronze statues loomed overhead—surprisingly, not of Amberhill the emperor but of horses. One held its head tossed back in defiance, and the other stood with head bowed, its neck elegantly arched.
“Just like you,” she told Raven. He bowed his head at her words as if to imitate the one statue.
When they got closer to the Gossham city entrance, she saw that from the bases of the statues, walls ran off in both directions. As she recalled from the atlas map, the wall was a horseshoe around Gossham, with few entrances, open only at the shore of the Great Harbor. Once they entered the city, it would be difficult to exit.
It turned out that they very well might not even make it inside. Karigan craned her neck when she realized Luke was being questioned hard by an Inspector whose Enforcer emitted an angry red glow. Luke tried to appear as affable as usual, but she could see his act was showing signs of strain and that the Inspector was having none of it.
“We will have a thorough look through your cargo and your wagon. All travelers from Mill City are suspect.”
That was interesting, Karigan thought. If all travelers from Mill City were suspect, did that mean the uprising had met with some success after all? Did the Inspectors fear insurgents entering the city to commit some form of mischief? That would be the opposite effect Cade had intended, making Gossham more watchful, endangering their rescue mission before it had really begun.
“I am but a simple merchant of wine,” Luke protested, “with a letter of introduction to Webster Silk himself.”
At that point, another Inspector joined the first and whispered into his ear, then pointed at a sheaf of papers in his hand.
The first Inspector gazed up at Luke with keen eyes. “Mayforte, isn’t it?”
Luke nodded.
“Your papers are in order. You may proceed.”
Luke tipped his hat, and the wagon jolted forward. What had made the Inspector relent? Karigan wondered. Why did he allow them to pass without looking through their cargo? She did not like it. Remembering she was supposed to be sick, she sank back into the straw, and just in time, as she came beneath the eye of an Enforcer keeping close scrutiny of the wagon and its occupants.
She did not breathe freely again till they passed under the shadow of the horse statues and through the gates. Finally, they had entered the imperial city of Gossham.
Within the walls of the city there were more branching canals, and it was clear that they, too, were streets of sorts, with boats conveying goods and passengers. Many houses and businesses fronted the canals, not the paved streets. The interweaving of roadways and bridges and waterways must appear, from a bird’s vantage, like a sort of weird lace.
Business looked brisk in most shops and at the booths of street vendors. Children ran alongside adults in grassy parks and played with toy sailboats in fountains along the way. Some of the founts made impossible ephemeral shapes sculpted of water that plumed into the air—horses, dragons, and giant fishes—and made a pleasing, chiming sound as prismatic droplets rained back into their basins. Was this etherea at work, or some mechanical innovation denied the less fortunate regions of the empire?
Karigan glanced at Raven to see how he fared with all the activity. He looked around, ears flickering and tail swishing. He did not appear alarmed but definitely attentive. She noticed he received the occasional admiring gazes from those they passed. She could not swear to it, but Raven seemed to know he had an audience and tossed his long mane and made his gait high-stepping and showy. When they stopped at an intersection to allow other traffic to proceed, a man actually asked Luke if the stallion was for sale.
“He is a gift for the emperor,” Luke said. “Not for sale.”
Karigan started, for this was the first she’d heard of it. Surely Luke was saying it just to put the man off. She had not thought about what would become of the horse when she went home. Could she take him with her, along with Cade and Lhean?
“He is a fine specimen,” the man said, “and of course the emperor loves his horses.”
“Enough to have named the city after his favorite, I hear,” Luke replied.
Amberhill named his capital city after a horse? Karigan had thought the name “Gossham” odd. She shook her head. The Serpentine Empire’s fearsome leader could be so brutal to his own people, and at the same time so—so whimsical?
Finally it was their turn to enter the intersection, and Luke bade farewell to the man with whom he’d been chatting. Further surprises along their route included a drawbridge over one of the canals that lifted by itself to allow a boater to pass, buildings taller than any of those in Mill City, and a mechanical that looked like a modified Enforcer, playing sequences of musical notes that emitted from its central orb. Then wonder of all wonders, a little metal dog danced and flipped to the music. The adults and children who gathered around appeared delighted, but though Karigan liked the dog, she found the music tinny and unpleasant, not at all like the melodious, natural sounds her minstrel friend, Estral, could create.
As they progressed, the city sloped down toward the harbor. It heartened Karigan to look upon the blue of the ocean with gulls wheeling in the sky and the harbor dotted with so many boats, though few had sails, but instead, stacks billowing smoke. Less heartening was a missing landmark at the entrance of the harbor. The abandoned keep of Mordivelleo L’Petrie, a clan chief of old, had been replaced by a colossus of a statue.