Whatever had brushed against him at the walls didn't return. Rama waited for it through the entire approach, that same slow vastness he half-expected to flare again the closer they came, and it simply didn't, subsiding back into whatever distance it had reached out from in the first place. He filed it beside everything else waiting for later examination and let the gates take his full attention instead, because there was no time left for anything else.
The gates themselves stood twice the height of any structure Tirtayasa had ever built, timber reinforced with iron bands, guards posted in numbers that made the border patrol's six spears look almost casual by comparison. Beyond them, the city opened outward in a way that made their daughter go rigid with wonder against Rama's back.
"Papa," she breathed. "Papa."
He didn't blame her. Nothing in seven weeks at Tirtayasa had prepared any of them for this.
