Old Shen did not look up when they climbed the ladder.
He was at his station at the front of the stall, working through the afternoon's remaining inventory with the methodical quality he brought to everything, the specific patience of someone for whom closing time was a process rather than an event. He heard them on the ladder and he heard them on the roof and he went back to his inventory.
The city ran below them.
Korreth at the fourteenth hour had a different quality from Korreth at the ninth. The morning's urgency was gone. The market had settled into the afternoon rhythm, the vendors who had been running at full capacity since dawn now at the specific half-pace of people who had met their daily target and were completing the remaining hours on maintenance rather than ambition. The light came from the west at this hour, long and finding the market district's upper levels in a way it did not find the streets.
Kaito was already on the roof.
