Katarina took off.
She was not, in fairness, sprinting. She was jogging. Briskly. With intent.
It was, more accurately, the pace of a woman trying to catch a tram. And, that, frankly, was being generous to the thief, because Katarina, between her mother Brynn's 12 years of physical-cultivation drills and her own Mid-Foundation rank across all 4 paths, could have ended this chase about 4 seconds in.
She didn't. She wanted to see what the girl had.
The girl had, in fact, a lot. She ducked under a fish vendor's awning, vaulted over a low crate stack without breaking stride, and slid sideways through a gap between 2 stalls that, Katarina noted, she herself would have had to turn her shoulders for. The brown jacket flapped. The black hair bobbed. The crowd parted around the chase the way crowds always do, half-curious, half-relieved that it wasn't them.
[Hm. She's fast.]
