Chapter 7: Aldric Buys the Innkeeper's Silence

Vethara announced itself with smell before it did with sight — woodsmoke and tallow and the particular sharpness of a tannery operating without much regard for its neighbours. The road widened from a cart-track into something that deserved the name, and by mid-morning we had joined a modest stream of foot traffic moving between the town's outer gate and whatever commerce the day promised.

Cassian did not slow his pace as we entered. He simply adjusted it — marginally, deliberately — so that he was no longer visibly ahead of the group but not quite within it either. A man who has spent twenty years moving through occupied territory develops a relationship with crowds that is professional rather than social, and Cassian's relationship with Vethara's morning market was the kind a surveyor has with uneven ground. He noted it, mapped it, and kept moving.

I noted him noting it, which was its own kind of habit by now.