Crestfall was built on water.
That was the first thing Kael understood approaching it from the south — not a city built beside a river the way Valdenmoor was built beside its old roads, but a city built on the river delta itself, the buildings rising from a network of channels and bridges and reclaimed land that gave the whole place the particular quality of something that had decided to exist somewhere difficult and had made it work through sheer accumulated effort.
The walls were stone and older than Valdenmoor's.
The gates were iron and enormous and lit by torches that cast orange light across the approach road and the two dozen travelers still moving through them at eight forty in the evening.
The Church's assessment post was immediately visible — a booth beside the gate's left pillar, two Inquisitors in white robes checking displays and writing in ledgers with the bored efficiency of people who had been doing this for years and expected to keep doing it for years more.
