Location:Ashmarch — The Southern Gate Country
Date/Time:10–11 Sparkfall 9943 AZI, Quenchday into Grindday
Realm:Mid Realm
Ashmarch was loud in a way that had nothing to do with people.
Carts, mostly. A town that exists because there is a door in it does not grow the way other towns grow — it grows in one direction, toward the door, and everything in it is either going through or waiting to, and the whole place had the sound of things being moved and set down and picked up again by men who had done it four thousand times.
Cangwei had been in it two days, and nobody had looked at her once.
That was the first thing she had checked. She had walked the length of the upper street on the first afternoon with her hands loose and her shoulders down and had waited to be wrong about it, and had not been. Human form does not require thinking about after the first hour. Human bearing does. She had spent a fortnight in the north country practicing being somebody who steps out of the way.
