The Key to HaraAfter a two-hour climb into the Fambrach Mountains aboard the train, Milia and her cargo finally arrived at the village of Zhil Lomao.
There wasn’t much to look at, the diplomat decided as her boots hit the snow. She sucked in the thin mountain air and shivered. The buildings here were simple with sweeping, curved roofs and walls built of logs with intact bark—none of them taller than three stories. Plumes of dark smoke drifted from communal fire pits into the vast sky. The scents of animal dung and cooked meats permeated the air.
Milia wrinkled her nose.
Lower in the valley, she spotted the mud brick structures that Neverri had indicated on Voi’s photographs—which aesthetically, in Milia’s opinion, felt sorely out of place. More notable, however, was an intangible obscur
