"And you don't know where I could find him?"
"You might try the Colony," Foursmith suggested. "He might be in hiding there, among the other artists. At any event, the Colony is safe from Winslow, too. Perhaps you could stay there for a while."
"Good enough," Kesley said.
The Colony sprang from the blue-green grass of Kentucky like a sprawling, segmented worm. Its architecture bore no resemblance to that of any city Kesley had ever seen; broad, rambling, almost ramshackle, it presented an even more disorderly appearance than had Mutie City.
He wheeled the exhausted, six-legged horse the mutants had given him up the final stretches of the roadway, looking around cautiously as he rode. It had been a tense but, happily, uneventful journey down from Illinois.
The Colony, like all other cities, was walled. But it was as if a different architect had planned each segment of the wall. Here, it was high and carved from blocks of pink granite; there, it was a lazy stile of limestone. Towers of black basalt capped the wall at irregular intervals.
He rode toward the gate—an open gate. Pulling his mount to a halt as he approached, he turned toward the guard.
"Who are you?" questioned the guard, looking up from a notebook. Kesley saw a series of interlocking doodles scrawled on the man's page.
"My name is Kesley. I'm here seeking sanctuary from Duke Winslow. I'm also looking for a blind poet named Daveen. Is he here?"