As soon as they reached the mouth of the canyon and stepped out of the forest, Tamsin stopped in her tracks. Her startled horse, who had been walking along beside her, whinnied in protest at the sudden stop.

"What's wrong, my lady?" asked Frieg, turning to look behind. He was walking his horse as well. Frieg had said it was better not to push the horses too hard, this far into the journey.

Tamsin hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. "It's nothing, let's keep going."

What Tamsin didn't want to admit was that she had been shocked by the sheer amount of distance.

Gwedric was a small valley, but more than that, it was filled with dense forests. You could be halfway up the side of a mountain and still only be able to see as far as a few feet away. Not that Tamsin had frequently been up the sides of mountains.

Actually, the best view in Gwedric could be seen from the top floor of the manor house, which was on top of a small hill. From there you could see all the way to the edge of Gwedric town to the trees beyond.

Tamsin had been so proud of that view. It was one of the few things she had actually liked about that house.

But Gwedric town wasn't all that large, and on this side of the Aldway Mountains the trees were much smaller and more spread out, so from this high up in the foothills you could see out across the entire valley.

Rolling farmland spread out before Tamsin's eyes like a patchwork quilt, overwhelming her with information. Her mind couldn't make sense of it all.

She was so busy watching the valley that she forgot to watch the road in front of her and stumbled on some gravel. On a road this steep, that kind of tumble could be dangerous, and Tamsin briefly considered how ironic it would be, after all this effort to turn back time and save her life, if she almost immediately died of falling down a hill.

Luckily, Frieg caught her and set her upright before it came to that.

"Whoa," he said. "Maybe you should ride on Krista after all."

"No, sorry," said Tamsin, blushing slightly from embarrassment.

Frieg continued to make conversation as they carefully made their way down the steep canyon road into the valley. He was clearly excited to have someone to share his knowledge with after a lifetime of travelling all over Viland. "See those canals?" he said.

Tamsin nodded. Almost every patch of farmland was surrounded on all sides by thin strips of shining blue.

"Jordaine is naturally pretty dry, but one of the Duchess's ancestors put a lot of his own personal fortune into building a system of irrigation. Turned the valley from a desert into the land of plenty you see before you."

"The clouds get tired trying to climb the mountains," muttered Tamsin. "Which is why they always stop in Gwedric for a rest. But they end up loving Gwedric so much they decide to stay forever."

Frieg laughed. "What was that nonsense?" he asked.

Tamsin shrugged. "It's something I remember a maid saying to Roger once, when we were both small and he was complaining about how he could never play outside because it was always raining."

"Well, I suppose there's some truth to that," said Frieg. "You wouldn't need to build an irrigation system to farm in Gwedric, if you could just somehow stop those damned trees from growing back. Sorry for the language, my lady."

Tamsin shrugged again. She had never really been that bothered by swearing.

"But where's the city?" asked Tamsin. She had been scanning the horizon but she didn't see any cluster of buildings larger than a Gwedric Town, and people spoke of the Gray City as if it was massive.

"You're looking too far away," said Frieg. "We're actually almost there."

Tamsin's eyes followed where Frieg was pointing, just below them and to the left a bit, and she stopped in her tracks again.

The Gray City, as it was known, was really just an extension of the old Coal Fort, which was itself rumored to have been constructed on top of an ancient coal mine. Some people said it was named after Duke Colhe Jordaine, the first imperial Duke to control the region, and the spelling had been corrupted over the years—just as the original construction of the fort had been corrupted, new stone walls appearing in tiers down the side of the mountain as the city outgrew its old boundaries over and over again.

This seemed like the more likely explanation. After all, there was no record of major coal deposits anywhere near here. But still, rumors persisted of secret tunnels beneath the fort, with ancient mine shafts eight furlongs deep, or perhaps deep enough to reach the beating heart of the Aldways, where Cohle Jordain himself had made a pact with an old mountain god to grant an immovable strength to Cohle and his descendants—with the trade off that each of them would have a heart made of coal.

"For some reason, everyone I've met who's actually from Jordaine always smiles when they tell that last part, which rather makes me suspect it's some sort of inside joke," said Frieg, who had been telling Tamsin all about this as they wound their way down the long canyon road to the entrance of the city.

Tamsin was only partially paying attention.

Tamsin's eyes had glanced past the city at first, taking it for a particularly craggy mountain peak. It seemed to be entirely made of gray stone, climbing up the mountainside in rungs. Each rung was really a wall, separating an older part of the city above to a new part of the city below. But for a city of stone, it somehow didn't look all that sturdy—something about the construction felt haphazard, like it hadn't been planned that way; it just naturally eroded into an extremely delicate rock feature—a wonder of nature that might crumble at any moment.

"Why build a city on the side of a mountain anyway?" asked Tamsin.

"I don't think they planned on the city showing up," said Frieg, as they walked their horses across a wide stone bridge to the entrance of the city. "It makes sense to build a fort on top of a mountain, because then if anyone wants to attack you they have to climb a mountain. But cities tend to spring up wherever work is, and forts tend to generate a lot of work, so..."

The gate of the city was wide open and a good number of people seemed to be flowing in and out. Some of them were stopping to talk to guards before passing, but some of them weren't, so Tamsin and Frieg just slipped in with some of the others passing by.

As soon as they were past the gate, Tamsin froze again, once again overwhelmed by everything she saw.

Frieg, who was eyeing the central street that led upwards to the next rung of the city, sighed. "Now that we've finished climbing down a hill, it's time to climb back up again," he said. "Come on, we should try to find a stable to board the poor horses before we attempt it. I couldn't bear asking them to make that climb after a long journey."

But before they could go anywhere, a guard wearing chain mail and the black-colored livery of the house of Jordaine put a hand on Frieg's shoulder.

"Halt!" he shouted, in what Tamsin thought was an unnecessarily loud voice. "I don't recognize you! You can't just go in and out of the Gray City willy-nilly if you're not a known resident. The House of Jordaine has a lot of enemies, you know."

"We're not enemies of Jordaine!" said Frieg.

Gods, I hope not, thought Tamsin. Not this time.

"Oh, yeah?" said the guard, narrowing his eyes at them suspiciously. "Who are you, then, and what business do you have here?"

Frieg looked at Tamsin.

Well, she was going to have to say it out loud eventually.

Tamsin drew herself up to her full height, which was not very tall.

"For-the-purposes-of-this-conversation," she said, very quickly. And then, in a much louder and slower voice, "I am Viscount Roger Gwedric, heir apparent of Earl Erhard Gwedric, promised in marriage to Duchess Alesia Jordaine. And I am here to see my betrothed."