Leftrin met her gaze. “They do.” He went to the door and looked out as if scouting for danger. That simple measure sent a chill up her back. Had he expected to see something? Someone? He spoke quietly. “It’s the same in some parts of Trehaug and Cassarick. The buried ruins, I mean, not the treetop cities. But it’s not the dark that brings them out. I think it’s when you’re alone or feel alone. One becomes more susceptible. It’s stronger in Kelsingra than I’ve ever before sensed it. But it’s not as bad in this part of town where simple folk lived. In the parts of the city where the buildings are grand and the streets so wide, I hear the whispers almost all the time. Not loud, but constant. The best thing to do is ignore them. Don’t let your mind focus on them.”

He looked back over his shoulder at her, and she had the feeling she had learned as much as she wanted to know, for now. There was more he could tell her; she sensed that, but she would save her questions for when they were warming themselves by a cozy fire in a well-lit room. Not here, in a cold city with the shadows gathering.

She gathered her things, including the loose tile from the hearth. She studied the picture again and then handed it to Leftrin. He took a well-worn kerchief from his pocket and wrapped the precious thing. “I’ll take good care of it,” he promised before she could ask. Arm in arm, they left the cottage.

Outside, the overcast day had darkened as the clouds thickened and the sun sank behind the gentle hills and the steeper cliffs that backed them. The shadows of the houses loomed over the winding streets. Alise and Leftrin hurried, the chill wind pushing them along. As they left behind the modest houses Alise had been investigating and entered the main part of the city, the whispers grew stronger. She didn’t hear them with her ears and she could not pick out any individual voice or stream of words: rather, it was a press of thoughts against her mind. She shook her head, refusing them, and hurried on.

She’d never been in a city like this one. Bingtown was a large and grand city, a city built for show, but Kelsingra had been built to a scale that dwarfed humans. The passageways in this part of Kelsingra were wide, wide enough for dragons to pass one another in the streets. The gleaming black buildings, too, were sized to admit dragons. The roofs were higher, and the doorways both wide and tall. Whenever they came to steps, the central sections were always wide and shallow, not sized for a human’s stride at all. Two steps to cross each step and then the hop down. At the edges, flights scaled for humans paralleled the course.

She passed a dry fountain. In the middle, a life-sized dragon reared on his hind legs, clasping a struggling stag in his jaws and forepaws. Around the next corner, she encountered a memorial to an Elderling statesman carrying a scroll in one long slender hand while he pointed aloft with his other. It had been crafted from the same black stone threaded with fine silver lines. It was plain that Elderlings and dragons had both dwelt here, side by side and possibly sharing abodes. She thought of the keepers, and how their dragons were changing them, and wondered if someday this city would shelter such a population again.