When she shut the little-used wicket gate soundlessly behind her, she put the Castle out of her mind. Larissa drifted through the upper City's lovely and well-behaved Wards like a phantom. The orderly peace of an evening in Clifftop, usually soothing, tonight made the spot between her shoulderblades itch in expectation of an arrow. She was far too tired to have a good chance of plucking one out of the air tonight.

Down through Silver Dance and the groups of merchants attempting to impress one another as they mingled outside the clubs and theaters. The troublemaking part of her, suppressed for a century, urged her to throw back her hood and give the social climbers someone worth impressing. Larissa smiled mirthlessly and ignored the troublemaker within and the socialites without, gliding along the streets, merely a black shape that no one would notice, much less remember.

She silently attached herself to the rear of a sobriety-impaired party that had loudly announced its intention to go to the Artist's Quarter for reasons obscure but apparently unanimous. Some of the tension left her after she slipped with her unknowing companions through the upper gate and into the anonymity of the City proper. Larissa let her drunken escort make its staggering way on its own, purpose served.

Through Five Corners, still active, but sedate, with denizens sipping coffee, laughing and arguing at a hundred cafes along the streets. Solitaire lived here. Larissa had never visited, didn't know where to go to slip in and leave a note, and regretted this small thing as she had not regretted much larger ones. She hurried, to leave behind the voices that eddied around her, yet failed to envelop her--and this was the first time the knowledge of what she was doing hurt.

Then, at last, into the crowds that circulated through the Artist's Quarter at all hours, living camouflage in which no one would notice one more figure with hood raised against the chill air that sometimes blew up from the sea. It was all light and noise, and as Larissa walked, the voices and music blended into a babel, a roar that beat against her ears the same way that profound silence often did. Her eyes did not know which way to focus, and she did not force them, turning the world into a kaleidescope. Here a skirt, there a shop window became colored tiles that whirled around and around and meant nothing. She was no longer a part of any of this.

Had she ever been?

"Unreal city," she murmured, and broke the wrist of a man who was trying to cut her purse.

Larissa all but floated through the lower gate on a cloud of memory. The guards didn't even look up from their dice.

She was beside Gerard as they approached the South Gate, riding--Larissa having bowed with no grace whatsoever to the inevitable. Lucius ("that smelly beast") was a magnificent champagne chestnut, almost gold, with a beautifully arched neck and a liquid stride.

"I'll walk, thanks," Larissa had said.

"No, you won't," Eric had said.

That was another argument Eric had won.

Gerard had dragged her to the stables, ignoring her protests with the sort of buoyant cheerfulness only he could manage, all but tossed her into the saddle, and insisted they get lunch. That getting lunch involved riding was the first surprise. The second was riding through the gate and out of the Upper Tier. By the time they made it to the lower gate, Larissa had decided that being surprised was a waste of effort. She steered the unbearably perfect Lucius to match Gerard and his mount Zephyr, an unlikely name for a horse that had the build of Morgenstern crossed with a bulldog.

Clamor Smoke smelled of fires and hot metal, reminding her of when Eric had presented her with her sword, which now hung at her side, its weight grown familiar. "The prevailing winds carry the smoke out to sea," Gerard told her, not having to raise his voice to be heard over the clang of hammers on anvils.

"And how do the windward inhabitants feel about that?" she replied. Larissa did have to raise her voice.

"I don't believe Dad asked their opinion. Here," he said suddenly, kneeing Zephyr left, "we'll take a shortcut through Tattersail."

Leaving the highway worried Larissa. All the surface streets seemed to be filled to bursting with pedestrians. She had no idea how she would proceed without Lucius trampling someone, or many someones. Ahead of them was a sea of people, shouting and laughing and haggling.

Gerard rode forward as though the streets were clear--and, somehow, as he passed, they were. The crowds melted away before Zephyr, and Lucius followed without any prompting from Larissa. She was very aware of the stares of the displaced merchants and shoppers, and even more aware of those faces that were averted. It was as though a hush traveled in the clear space that surrounded the two Royals. When she tried to catch the eye of a man wearing a bright orange scarf, he was immediately looking elsewhere. So also with the woman in the green skirt, and the one with the purple shirt underneath a burgundy tunic.

Disturbed, she urged Lucius forward until she was riding knee-to-knee with Gerard again, and the crowds accommodated her. "We're not...we're not part of their world." She wished she'd stayed silent as soon as the words crossed her lips.

But Gerard was his reliable, stolid self. "Of course not. They're commoners. Would you want to live here?" He gestured at the weathered buildings, so different from the Castle.

"That's...not what I meant," she said, but quietly, and Gerard either didn't hear her or pretended it.

After that she kept her gaze fixed on Lucius's ears as Gerard detailed locations where he and the mysterious Uncle Caine had gotten into an improbably large number of bar fights. She wished she were back in comfortable freefall, with her newsfeed an eyeblink away and the unnerving world of dirt and decay lightyears distant.

Larissa was so distracted that she didn't notice the dish Gerard ordered for her at the restaurant called Bloody Bill's was fish, and ate the lot of it with a good will. Later, she was sick, not because she had eaten it, but because she had enjoyed it.