Leesil pointed to it and called to a nearby sailor on deck. "What's that over there?"

A young, sandy-haired man paused from coiling his rope to glance across the bay. "Elven," he answered shortly, "from the far north, on the east side of the cape."

"Never heard of them having ships."

"Never heard…?" The sailor looked at the half-elf as if he were a half-wit.

"Too bad we can't get a closer look," Leesil added.

At that, the sailor took one step toward Leesil and Magiere.

"I'd sooner sail a dingy into a winter squall!" He tossed the rope aside and walked quickly away.

Magiere didn't understand the sailor's caution, but she wouldn't forget it either. The elven people were so reclusive that she'd seen only a handful in her lifetime. If Loni back in Miiska was unusual for his kind, having settled away from his homeland, she wondered what these all-but-hidden people were truly like.

"How is it you know so little about your own people?" Magiere asked, still reluctant to exchange words with him.

"They're not my people," Leesil corrected. "They're my mother's, and I know nothing more of them than what I'd seen in her… and that was long ago."

He finished more quietly than he began. Magiere left the subject alone, at least for now.

"Oh, please, please let us dock directly." Leesil looked longingly toward the shore, his words nearly a prayer. "I don't even want to ride a skiff in from anchor after all this."

"Enough whining," Magiere retorted.

The land at the bay's back was a massive, rising slope that extended all along the shore. At its center was Bela, the king's capital city. More than three centuries past, before Belaski was so named or known as a country, Bela had been a small walled keep settled at the slope's crest. Over time it grew, until now it was a visible behemoth of white granite.

Villages closest to the castle spread into a town, and a defense wall had been erected around all. But the town, eager to become a city, wouldn't be contained. The population grew, new structures sprang up, the castle expanding as well, and the capital sprawled ever farther along and down the slope. A second fortification was erected around Bela, as it came to be called. Mixed buildings hid this wall's base from sight like unkempt, wild foliage against a stone cottage. Given more years, the city still wouldn't be confined.

Now, a third ring wall with regularly spaced towers existed, which reached almost down to the shore and the expansive docks that supported moorage for scores of ships.

"I don't remember it being this big," Leesil muttered.

"Because we always came from the flat, land side," Magiere added, "and never ventured far into it."

Magiere felt even more uneasy. Foolishly, she'd not considered Bela's size, a further argument against accepting the city council's manipulative offer. In Miiska, out of necessity rather than choice, they'd hunted three Noble Dead who'd already exposed their presence. Bela was at least twenty times the size of the little coastal town. Within its three ring walls, they must now find one undead-if an undead it was-with no clue but a girl's corpse.

As the schooner drew near the docks, the slope filled Magiere's view and the outer ring wall obscured the inner city from sight. Buildings of mixed size, make, and color were mashed together so closely she made out only a few vertical roads running outward like wheel spokes from the city's center. Each such passed through the third wall via a towering, fortified gatehouse with raised iron portcullis. Trails of smoke like a thinned gray forest in the air curled upward from chimneys all about the city. Warehouses lined the shore, and the air was suddenly tainted with a myriad of scents from fish to oiled wood, salt water to people and livestock.

A noxious breeze blew across the deck, and Magiere wrinkled her nose. Down the right coast at the city's edge was a building the size of two or three warehouses. On its bayside, massive wooden sluices dribbled water into the bay, while on the structure's side towering wheels turned, carrying seawater up and into wide troughs running into the building.

"Salt mill," Leesil choked out. "They're harvesting salt from the sea."

The smell clearly affected him the most, and his face turned pale and sallow before Magiere's eyes.

There were people everywhere. Uncomfortable numbers of them. Dockworkers and sailors clambered over the piers' upper and lower levels, moving cargo to and from vessels, handling mooring and rigging, and shouting to each other over the general din.

"This is impossible," Magiere said under her breath. Her gaze panned across the sprawling city. "How are we to find anything in all of this?"

"One step at a time," Leesil replied.

As they drew near a lower dock, the schooner's crew was in the rigging, taking in the last of the sails. Several sailors tossed out lines to men waiting to moor the ship, and the schooner settled to a stop.

Chap barked repeatedly, until Magiere's and Leesil's attention turned his way. He leaped from his perch of lashed crates and trotted toward the ship's dockside, where a boarding plank was being lowered.

"Come on. Time to get started," Leesil said.

He was off at a trot toward their cabin to gather their belongings. Magiere followed in silence, sharing little of her companion's desperate hurry. As they reached the hatched stairway, the captain was waiting for them.

"No need to go below," he said, dour and stiff, as if he disliked having to speak with them at all. He shoved a folded parchment into Leesil's hand. "Your baggage is gathered and being offloaded. You can turn over the billing to the council's secretary."

"Well, that's very kind," Leesil responded with an elevated politeness his expression didn't match. "And our thanks for the passage."

The captain looked briefly at Magiere and then turned a hard stare toward Leesil.

"Get off my ship, before I have anything more to explain to the port officials." He turned and walked away.

Magiere was puzzled by the last remark. The one dead assailant had been tossed overboard at sea, and another had managed to jump of his own accord. There was the third locked in the cargo hold, but the captain had questioned him and learned no useful information.

"What was that about?" she asked Leesil.

"Likely nothing," Leesil offered, and rubbed his head before walking around to the ship's dockside. "I think it's definitely time to disembark."

When they walked down the lowered boarding ramp, Chap already stood waiting on the floating dock. Beside the hound sat their packs and chest, and Magiere looked to the main pier overhead, uncertain as to how they were to get both dog and luggage up to the city level.

"This way," Leesil said. Grabbing his pack and one end of the chest, he waited as Magiere did the same.

Following him toward the docks' shore end, Magiere saw another floating walkway along the shoreline's rock wall beneath the overhead piers. At intervals spaced between every other pier were switchback ramps and stairs leading to the city level. Along the stone wall of the shoreline, she spotted archways to the sewers beneath the city that drained brackish water into the bay.

They headed upward, hauling their belongings. Chap ran ahead, stopping now and then at turns in the walkway to look back and be sure they were following. When they reached the city level, Magiere's anxiety peaked.

Every five or six steps, they were forced to maneuver around hurrying dockworkers, milling passengers, and wandering vendors and porters hawking their goods and services. At one point, a rolling cook's cart with dangling racks of smoke-cured beef came out of nowhere, almost running them over. Magiere stopped, dropping her end of the chest and causing Leesil to stumble.