As they walked arm in arm, Catalina drew slightly closer to Francisco. Her grip tightened almost without thought, her eyes moving restlessly toward the long lines of carts and the makeshift shelters pressed against the city's stone walls.
Francisco followed her gaze and sighed.
"War is truly an awful thing."
Catalina nodded, though she said nothing at first.
The road ahead was crowded with the human cost of the French advance. A Dutch clockmaker sat upon a crate, staring blankly at a scattered pile of brass gears—the remnants of a craft that had survived the journey, though perhaps not the man himself. Further along, a group of Flemish weavers argued in low, strained voices over the rising price of bread in the city markets.
There was no anger in them—only fatigue, sharpened by necessity.
