There was a dead-end canal leading here, with a Gate on it, wide enough to allow for barges towed by horses to pass through it, and a second Gate for foot-traffic. The idea being that if you ordered a full string of empty barges, they could be put in the water here with your horses or some borrowed from the manor, and they could be Gated to a spot on another canal near or at their destination. There was no Gatekeeper here, but of course you’d need the proper talismans to use the things.

This was where the Gates at what they were now calling “Crescent Lake” were linked—anyone buying barges now intending to take them home and fill them would have to bring his own horses and tow them to the next Gate in line. With what Jonaton called a “hard link,” the Gate used far less energy to send things to the refuge from here than they would if they used talismans. And it meant no one needed to have a talisman at all to come here from the refuge, which meant one less thing for the mages to do.

Oh! And since we’ve got all those paper talismans now, that means far fewer talismans our mages need to make! Which means most of them can probably go settle at Crescent Lake now, rather than later . . .

If they would. The mages did like their comfort, and there was more of it here than there. It wasn’t as bad out there as it had been when they’d created the Gates, but things were still a bit primitive.

Not that she blamed the mages for preferring comfort in the least. She agreed with them, actually.

She tied Sundrop up to a ring in the side of the huge building that housed the barge-makers and went inside. She’d been here before—and already she could see that there were far fewer barges stored here. Plenty of people had already claimed what they needed, and there would soon be far fewer. There were also a lot more barges in various states of construction than she had ever seen before. Every single workstation was full, and there were dozens of hulls in various stages of curing. She waited until one of the barge-builders noticed her, finished smoothing down the fungus-paste on the barge he was working on, washed off his hands, and came to see what she needed.

“Lady Isla put me in charge of three home-barges,” she said, trying to project an air of someone who knew what she was about. “One for me, one for herself and Duke Kordas, and one for—” She stopped herself before she said “the children” and said instead, “four servants.” Because the boys would need an adult actually with them.