Alistair walked the city that night because the room had stopped being a place where he could think.
He went past the chapel he had sat in his first week, the small one with the cracked yellow window, and he did not step inside, since Tobian Marrow had no faith, and a watched man should not suddenly find one.
He passed the Sealed Step without slowing.
Following that, he went down through the lower districts, where the lamps thinned out and then quit entirely, and he came out at the water.
The river ran black and quick under a sky with no moon worth the name.
The far bank was only a darker line against the dark.
Verissan kept its clean face up on the high ground and gave the river everything that face refused to look at, the tanneries, the dye-pots, and the men who worked them.
A figure stood on the opposite bank.
Alistair stopped without meaning to.
