The Grand Cir­cus, a big, cir­cu­lar build­ing, sits on top of a squat, dusty hill. As they walk closer towards it, Gil real­izes with hor­ror that there aren’t any build­ings between them and the Divid­ing Wall. He ven­tures a glance up, and for a split sec­ond sees a lit­tle tri­an­gle of lights—pinpricks of red, green, and blue-white on the dis­tant sorcerer’s hel­met.

She grabs his hand and holds it, just like the cou­ple who passed them on the bridge.

He looks up at the Wall again. The lights are gone.

They angle past the huge gravitic gates at the front of the Cir­cus. These lead straight into the building’s cen­tral sand­pit area, which is encir­cled by sloped rows of stone benches. The Grand Cir­cus used to be called the Grand Colos­seum, before the Akka­di­ans out­lawed slav­ery.

Kiddu pulls him close to the Cir­cus’ cir­cu­lar outer wall, keep­ing close to the bricks, and they cir­cle around the side of the struc­ture. Gil breathes a sigh of relief—now there’s no line of sight between them and the Divid­ing Wall at all.

It takes them a minute to walk around back. The Cir­cus wall gets a bit shorter as they cir­cle around, rel­a­tive to the ground—the build­ing is dug par­tially into the hill. The old wall’s large stones are uneven and crum­bling in some places.

Finally, they reach an unre­mark­able gravitic door, a stone slab no larger than the hinged wooden door that opens to Gil’s room in the Tem­ple. Kiddu rum­mages in her outer robe’s pock­ets and pulls out a thin pearl­stone card. Inset into the edge of the card are a num­ber of speck-sized, dark-violet gems, arranged in a zigzag pat­tern and glow­ing faintly.

She closes her eyes and waves the stone card in front of the gravitic door in a vague figure-8 pat­tern. Noth­ing hap­pens.