The morning sun had barely touched the slate roof of the riverside counting house when Nari dropped lightly onto the stone lintel above the high archive windows.
She crouched on the narrow stone molding, her long lynx tail coiled tightly against her thigh while her tufted ears swiveled to catch the internal ticking of the building's timing mechanism.
Inside the vaulted ledger hall, the air was thick with the scent of bitter ink, damp ledger vellum, and the greasy lavender resonance of the Choral network.
Before descending into the main chamber, Nari closed her eyes and extended the spatial perception of her four Wings, mapping every exposed spatial threshold in the structure.
She detected four distinct folding apertures: one disguised as a wide fireplace in the clerk's alcove, two leading through the double doors of the deed vault, and a fourth hovering near the high wooden catwalk where the ceiling beams converged.
