The word formed in her head and then sat there, finding no companions, no follow-on thought capable of joining it. Just: 'What.'
The town lay before her in the morning light, and it was not a border town. It was not even a particularly humble inner-kingdom town. It had the 'density' of a city district — the compressed, layered quality of construction built in stages, each stage more ambitious than the last, the whole thing radiating a kind of upward momentum, a sense of 'intention' that had no business existing two days' ride from the northern tree line.
Glass in the shop windows.
An actual fountain in the central square, visible from here, water catching the morning light.
Children running between buildings with full cheeks and clean clothes, laughing at something, entirely uninterested in forty-three armored riders appearing at the edge of their town.
And behind it all — over it all — the tower.
