The road split, with a neat wooden sign pointing to the left for the town of Ottermarsh, to the right for the school. The trees had been thinning out all morning, leaving only smallish ones and bushy ones that enjoyed the myriad reed-dense streams and ponds fnking the road, so the sun spotlighted the red-and-yellow engraved-and-painted characters for us clearly. I couldn’t help being apprehensive, but I had yet to see a single mosquito or other biting insect, so I was starting to let go of that particur learned reaction.

  With Serru riding centaur-me, there was room in the wagon for Terenei and Aryennos up front, and Nurea, with Kylien and Zephys, and also the alchemist student, and a felid student-companion pair, although it was a bit crowded. The ornithians showed no sign of minding the extra weight, nor did the wagon. The other ornithian wagon also had extra passengers, and the riding horses were carrying double, or carrying bags while small groups walked with them to talk—little ways of making it easier for others to reach the same destination.

  The architecture of the school was mostly Forest-style wood, but the ground floor of many buildings was stone that made me think of Coppersands; some of the buildings were three tall stories high, and roofs were sometimes coloured tiles, sometimes wooden shingles. Only a small part of the greenhouse we’d heard about was visible from here, behind a building.

  All of it was built around a kind of central square with a fountain in the centre: it showed a fanciful tree with water pouring from bell-shaped flowers down into cupped leaves and ultimately into a basin. Near the fountain, two adults in startlingly stark white were greeting new students with friendly calm and giving them directions, though from here I couldn’t hear the specifics. I wasn’t willing to bet that it was a registration office that would be the first stop.

  Our various new acquaintances thanked us for the ride and disembarked.

  “Do you want me to stay?” Terenei asked Nurea. “Serru and Aryennos can handle the ornithians long enough to take them to the stable.”

  “You don’t need to,” Nurea said. “I’ll be okay.” She sounded vaguely impatient, her gaze tracking her new friends, especially the alchemist who was waiting for her.

  “If you’re sure. If you need me, I’ll be at the Dancing Oak, and I won’t leave without telling you.”

  “All right. I’m not sure I’m going to have much time.”

  I saw Terenei’s lips twitch, but he didn’t let the smile show. “Do what you need to.”

  Apparently, there was nowhere that teenagers were actually willing to give a cousin, or a cousin’s old friend, or a centaur they’d been fascinated by, a hug in front of peers. Terenei made sure Nurea had her second bag, and we escaped the central square, back towards the town.

  “Were you that bad?” Serru asked Terenei.

  He chuckled. “Probably. It’s only scary if you’re alone, but meeting others on their way is normal.”

  “It’s the same at the school I went to,” Aryennos said. “All the roads there funnel into four on the final stretch, so you end up meeting others from your general direction before you even reach the school itself, whether you get there at the st minute or a day or two early.”

  Terenei nodded. “I suspect they’re all simir, and I doubt it’s an accident. So. On to the Dancing Oak. My grandmother promised to send them a message making arrangements, since it can be a little crowded when a new css is starting. Are you staying tonight, at least? I know this has been a detour, and it’s been longer than necessary since you’ve been indulging Nurea. You probably don’t need to do much by way of buying new supplies and it’s still early, but...”

  “I think we should stay,” Aryennos said. “You didn’t get much sleep st night, Nathan, and you look tired.”

  I hesitated, torn between the urge to get to the end of this journey and disprove what the Zombie King had said, and my own growing fatigue after too many nightmares.

  “There will be a library here,” he added. “It won’t be the same as a civic one, and it might have some retively obscure old books. I can do some digging around in it for you. If there’s anything here, I can find it.”

  Plus I could make sure Serru had at least a little longer with an old friend.

  “For tonight,” I said.

  Terenei nodded “Then let’s go see what we get.”

  The town could have passed for any other, at first gnce. There might be a little more diversity in species and dog breeds and little things like that, but it was still a welcoming and creative environment.

  At a second look, there were... differences.

  Like the person riding around in a cart that had no animal pulling it, steering with a lever in each hand, the back of the cart full of sacks that were probably food of some kind, maybe grain.

  Like the tiny lights surrounding a shop window, a rainbow of colours that chased each other along like LEDs, which I was pretty sure lumina stones didn’t normally do.

  Like the mural on a wall that showed a detailed and expressive line drawing in multiple colours of an ornithian, which was very gradually moving, showing the feathery beast’s forelegs coming back to the ground into a more sedate stance.

  If I’d spent more time looking, I would probably have seen more; as it was, Serru nudged my attention back towards following the wagon.

  There were, it turned out, centralized stabling facilities. Sort of. One rge and grassy pasture, at least, and in it were horses and ponies, donkeys rge and small, goats, even two other pairs of brightly-coloured ornithians. The ground sloped towards more of that reedy terrain, but the pasture just followed the ndscape, and both of the other ornithian pairs were spshing around with evident delight in a stream running through the pasture near the lower edge. A long building lined over half of two adjoining sides, with many doors and most of them were standing open.

  Considerable activity surrounded the buildings in the centre of the complex. Terenei hopped down to talk to someone, and returned to lead the ornithians into parking the wagon neatly in a yard that held others. While he unhitched our feathery-scaly friends, Serru and Aryennos made certain all the bags had been collected and passed to me for the moment. Then we led them back, and a human in rather soiled charcoal-and-cranberry clothing took the reins. He greeted them with deft and apparently affectionate crooning and scritching, which they leaned into happily.

  Maybe this was the kind of job you sought out if you enjoyed interacting with rgish animals and making friends with them. It seemed unlikely that anyone would just be going through the motions and grinding for a wage.

  “They’re safe,” Terenei said, slinging his cream-and-teal backpack in pce using both straps, so it rested loosely against his lower back. “And they’ll be cared for properly. They can make friends with the other ornithians and py in the water and generally enjoy themselves.”

  I figured it wasn’t worth asking whether they’d get along with strange ornithians.

  “It’s like an inn for animals,” Aryennos said.

  “More or less. If the weather turned bad, they could get everyone inside and close the doors. Not that the ornithians would want to go in unless it’s cold. They love rain, they py in the puddles and groom each other. But the school doesn’t start or end semesters at times that the weather is usually bad. The inn for us is this way.” He gestured.

  Not all that far away, we went through an archway that pierced a long three-storey building, into a sort of courtyard. On the other three sides it was ringed by... well, cottages, really, at least two rows of them, with less than their own width between them, but each had bright flowers and a couple of chairs or a bench at the front. The closer ones were single-storey and the ones behind them were two-storey.

  Terenei held up a hand for us to stay, and vanished through an ornate door into the main building.

  “This is bigger than the one in Coppersands,” I observed.

  “There’s a lot of travel through schools,” Aryennos said. “People looking for specialists to help with something, people visiting students, merchants and wagoners moving goods, the regur travellers just looking to stop for a day or two, and usually there are at least a few people affiliated with the school that choose to live somewhere like this instead of having their own house.”

  “Is that what the cottages are for? More long-term residents?”

  “Probably not exclusively.”

  Terenei returned quickly. “My grandmother requested one of the cottages,” he said cheerfully. “And warned them that there would be a centaur with us, so they already took that into account. It’s all paid for.”

  “Unnecessary, but thoughtful of her,” Serru said.

  “You’re doing us a favour by making sure that Nurea got here on time with minimal stress. She’s not going to insult you by trying to pay you, but making sure expenses are covered seems like the least we can do. Besides, in theory I’ll be here for a few days, although I always had some doubts about that.” Terenei gestured. “They said it was on that side, number three.”

  The door of the cottage was high enough that not only did I not have to duck, the frame was well above my head. Even our huge new companion at the fire st night, whose name escaped me, could have cleared this, I was sure. The ceiling inside was likewise high. I had yet to see a building with a ceiling that wasn’t, actually. But then, they obviously had motivation to build to accommodate tall folks.

  The cottage had, as it turned out, two comfortable bedrooms, a small half-bath of its own, and a somewhat rger sitting room with a very limited kitchen area. Serru investigated the couches that looked to me like futons, and reported that both could fold outwards and there were tches underneath so they could be linked together into a single huge bed.

  “I sleep better when I’m not a centaur anyway,” I said. “But no one else needs to know that. Are you two taking one of the bedrooms so you have some privacy?”

  All three of my friends paused to look at me in perplexity.

  Serru, after a couple of beats, said, “Terenei and I are not having sex.”

  Oops. I felt myself blush.

  “What?” Terenei said. “No, I virtually always find sex boring. All the fun is in flirting and hugs and that kind of thing. Why would we be doing that?”

  “From what I’ve gathered, Nathan’s world has some... complicated associations around sexual activity and expressions of affection.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  “Well, it’s been a couple of days since I misread anything that badly,” I said with a sigh. “I guess I was due for it.”

  “It’s not important,” Serru said. “It wouldn’t be realistic for you to question everything at once, and it’s understandable that some things look enough like what you know for conclusions to look obvious even if they’re incorrect. I’m not offended, and I know Terenei isn’t.”

  “It isn’t the first time I’ve ever confused someone,” Terenei said cheerfully. “I’m perfectly happy to share a bed with anyone here, but you’ll be mercilessly snuggled for a lot of the night.”

  “It isn’t even time for lunch,” Aryennos pointed out. “We don’t need to decide on sleeping arrangements right away. There’s no time like now for tracking down the library and doing a little research. I won’t get much help, they’ll be busy, but I know my way around libraries, and if there’s anything on the premises, I’ll find it. There are better odds of esoteric information about the Quincunx or travel between worlds or newcomers here than in Coppersands.”

  “That’s probably the most useful thing any of us can do here,” Serru said. “We haven’t used many tents or all the extra food we brought along, the bag with the extra camping supplies still has plenty in it and we’ll reach a general store quite close to the next site.”

  “You could just rex,” I suggested. “Take a break. You’ve had me tagging along with you for... I don’t even know how long. More than three weeks, I think. Maybe you could just find a way to have some fun for a while.”

  “What an extraordinary concept,” Terenei said. “What are you pnning to do?”

  “Honestly? Just wander,” I said. “It’s fascinating looking around and watching people. I promise to stay out of the way of the new students. I remember a couple of first days of my own. But I’m as curious about the town as I am about the school.”

  “I can’t imagine you could get into any trouble. Everyone is alert right now for new students or their family members who might be lost or need help. But you could come to the greenhouse. It’s open to the public and I think Serru might appreciate seeing how many different pnts are in there that are considered useful in different regions, even far out in the provinces. There might be the odd one even you don’t know.”

  “It would be interesting,” Serru admitted.

  “I probably would not do well in a greenhouse as a centaur. It would be much too easy for me to move the wrong way. You go ahead.”

  Terenei nodded. “All right. Have a good time, and I hope you find your way to the park. I suspect that getting lost in the library will take longer than anything else. We’ll see you both ter this afternoon.”

  I gave Serru a look of confusion as she sat down on the nearest chair.

  “There is no way Terenei is going to willingly go anywhere without changing to clothes that are a lot less practical and a lot more eye-catching,” she said.

  “But I don’t want you waiting,” he protested.

  She tilted her head to one side. “We might run into people you know. People you went to school with, or met while you were here. Your teachers. You’ll be unhappy if you’re still dressed to be on the road. You always have half-done drawings you haven’t used yet. Pick one, finish it, make it real, and change. Go. I’ll wait.”

  Terenei hesitated, but she just looked at him calmly, and after a few heartbeats, he ughed and spread his hands. “I’ll be fast.”

  Serru nodded. “Good luck with the research,” she told Aryennos. “I’m curious to see what you’ll find here. Enjoy exploring, Nathan. Do you still have money on you, after Coppersands? In case you want a drink or see something you want to buy?”

  “I still have a bit,” I assured her. It wasn’t a lot, but I didn’t expect to need much. “And I’ll make sure I can find my way back to the Dancing Oak.”

  “Hm.” She fished in her bag and pressed several coins into my hand. “Just in case. With any luck, there will be no accidents or injured kittens this time.”

  “If there are any, I’m sure Nathan will find them,” Aryennos joked.