The northern district, in the summer, had a particular quality of heat.
Not the dry heat of the eastern areas, which burned clean and direct. The northern district's heat was humid, layered with the particular density of a place that sat near the old waterways and absorbed their moisture throughout the warm months. The streets there were narrower than the central districts, the buildings older, the population denser in the way that populations become dense when space has been occupied for generations rather than planned. It was the kind of place that had its own internal logic, different from the logic of official documents, and the difference between the two was often where the interesting things lived.
