The VIP gate delivered them to Crescent Bay in the same nauseating transition Leo had experienced before, but was a bit better now than the first time. There was the brief warmth, the momentary displacement, and then solid ground beneath his boots.
The air hit him first, salt-heavy, laced with fish, tar, and the faint sweetness of street-vendor sugar cakes frying somewhere nearby. Gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharp against the low rumble of wagons and the distant creak of ship rigging.
He had been here once already, weeks ago, arriving from the eastern outpost with the Oni delegation and seeing the city for the first time. It had seemed enormous then, a sprawling port that swallowed the horizon.
It still did.
