The hatch opened onto a flat roof with a low parapet and the whole city below it.
Ashe had found it earlier. She'd come back down to the common room at the seventh hour and said "there's a roof" and that was the entire invitation and he'd followed her up without asking why, which was the correct response to Ashe saying there's a roof.
It was flat stone, still warm at the edges from the day. No mountain above them. No compound visible. Just the valley and the flat eastern horizon and Seorak running its evening below, the mana-lamps coming on street by street, the vendors calling last prices, the city settling into itself.
He sat against the parapet.
She sat beside him. Close. The proximity that had stopped being managed somewhere between Korreth and the Keran valley and here, neither of them engineering it.
The city moved below.
"The fish vendor," she said.
He looked at her.
