Brian and the Trickster followed Magnus out into the town proper, staring in wonder at the tall city. Most of the houses were made of wood, but multi-storied and painted bright colours. All the visible earth was covered in stone. It took the Trickster a moment to realise, but there wasn't a single plant in sight, not a blade of grass, not a single weed.

"What do they eat?" Brian asked.

"This close to the Glade, you don't really need to farm," Magnus told him. "They send teams out to hunt and gather food."

"It must be a lonely life inside the walls," the Trickster said.

"I had no idea you were such a nature lover," Magnus said. "Come on, we shouldn't dawdle. We need to get to the other side before the gates close by nightfall."

"Why? It would hardly be the end of the world to do some sight-seeing. We could stay the night in one of their prettily painted inns."

"We could," Magnus said, "but then the gods I sent to wait for us at the other side would get impatient."

"Oh." the Trickster was silent for a moment. "Wait. You kept that nasy dog, didn't you?"

"What's wrong with the dog?"

"FIrst of all, it's smelly and gross. Second of all, it doesn't like me. You bonded over that, didn't you? I bet you and the smelly dog are best friends now."

"See, I knew you would behave like this. That's why I sent them ahead, because I'm tired of you making a fuss."

"It tried to eat me!"

"It was guarding you so it could show you to its masters, like a well behaved dog."

"Yes, its masters, a bunch of lunatics who want to eat my heart! No offence, Brian."

"Look, I certainly wasn't going to volunteer to do it," Brian said. "The guys who do are a bit overzealous, in my opinion."

"Isn't zealotry considered a good thing for a cultist?" the Trickster wondered.

"No talk of cults," Magnus told them. "Remember what I said about this place?" No cults, magic, gods, or priests."

"Apologies," Brian said, sounding chastened.

There were more people in the town than Brian had seen before in his life, and more than the Trickster had seen in one place for a very long time.

"Did they ever rebuild Penny's old city?" the Trickster asked.

"A little bit. It's about a quarter of the size of this place, now. It is where this town gets its salt."

"I miss that place," the Trickster said wistfully.

"I thought that you were banned from entering."

"Yes, but that wasn't preemptively, that was because of all the fun I was having."

"I can't see why you can't ever--" Magnus bit off the rest of his sentence, and continued on in stoney silence.

Unlike in a village, it was evident that the citizens of the town were used to not knowing who they were strolling past, and remained incurious about the strangers in their midst. The Trickster was a little worried, however, about Magnus's cloak, which was cut very differently than the simpler garb of the townsfolk. Most of the people around them wore leather and undyed linen, colours evidently being more for houses than people in this town.

"There's something weird about this place," Brian said.

"I think it is the lack of trees," the Trickster said absent-mindedly. It did feel weird, after so many years, not to hear the sound of leaves in the wind. But the sounds she did hear seemed oddly wrong, too. The dull thud of wooden clogs on stone sped up as people passed them, and the chatter of the townsfolk was too intermittent. The Trickster looked again to see if they had been noticed, and nobody was looking at them.

"We'll come back for you, Magnus," the Trickster said, as they moved out off the road and into an open square.

"What do you--ugh," Magnus said, as a group of guards looked up, following the accusing finger of a man in an oddly square hat who was talking earnestly at the guards. The finger was pointing at Magnus.

"All right," Magnus said. "You can certainly try to escape if you want."

"See you," the Trickster said, and grabbed Brian as the guards moved towards them.

"Hello," Magnus said to the guards, opening his arms to both show that he was not armed and make his cloak obscure Brian and the Trickster's retreat. "Is there some kind of problem?"

The Trickster and Brian hurried back down the street, and ducked into the first narrower alleyway they could find. A woman was waiting there, hands on hips.

"If you want to not be followed, then you are going the wrong way about it," she told them.

"Then what do you suggest?" the Trickster asked. The woman beckoned once, and started walking away.

"Nowhere else to go," the Trickster said carefully to Brian. He hesitated a moment, then followed the woman, the Trickster trailing after him. They moved quickly down the street, made a few turns, squeezed in between two houses, and found themselves in a little gap forgotten when three houses of unequal size had been built around it. The paving stones were cracked, and a few wildflowers were growing in them. The woman stepped carefully across the pavers to not disturb the plants, and jumped over one of the rare fences that occasionally broke up the back-to-back houses of the town. It looked like this fence belonged to a storage house; badly cut planks were piled up in the yard, and there was a tall wooden warehouse. The woman ignored the open doors of the warehouse, and began to scale te walls.

"Absolutely not possible," Brian said, staring up at the three-storey building.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" the Trickster asked, clapping Brian on the back.

"I'm not keen to die," Brian said, then hesitated. "Again."

"I certainly would not recommend it myself, but we need to find somewhere safe to plan how to rescue Magnus."

Brian looked like he was torn for a moment, then moved forward and started to climb. It was easier than it looked, with handholds cunningly worked into the joins between planks. They reached the top of the building, and found the woman waiting on the roof.

"Watch your step," she said, and opened a newish-looking hatch into the ceiling space, gesturing to them to go inside.

It was cool and dark inside, and the Trickster heard the other occupants before her eyes adjusted to the light.

"You're home early, did you--Yvonne, that is not a good catch."

"There are more important things in life than stealing. One is helping your fellow humans," was the pious response from another of the room's occupants. The Trickster blinked a few times, and looked around. The first speaker was a teenage boy whose arms ended at the wrist. The second speaker was an elderly woman the Trickster uneasily recognised as a Templeman.

"I thought you might like to speak with them, Sally, their Master has just been arrested for blasphemy," the woman who had brought them said.

"Blasphemy? I thought that this was a godless place," the Trickster said.

"Blasphemy isn't to do with the gods, it's to do with pretending to be the gods," the teenage boy said.

"But he didn't do anything!" Brian said.

"He did wear a suspiciously godly cloak," the Trickster admitted.

"Well, you can be assured that we don't hold people's those against them here," the woman who brought them said.

"Thank you," the Trickster said. "But who is 'we'?"

"Ah," the Templeman said, gesturing grandly at the ceiling space.. "Welcome to the rebellion."