Chapter 12: The Cartographer Walks Into The Amber Cup

The man came in on a Friday.

Not a Thursday, which would have meant Helen Marsh in her window seat with her Earl Grey and her unread novel, and Aeron had already been thinking about Thursday in the same way he thought about fault lines — not with dread, precisely, but with the particular attention you gave to things that were structurally significant. Friday was different. Friday the café held its late-morning quiet, the kind that Edinburgh's November produced between the departure of the breakfast crowd and the arrival of the lunch one, and Margaret had been wiping down the counter with the specific meditative focus of someone who was thinking about something else entirely.

The bell above the door announced him without drama.