"Let them burn," said the Knight-Commander, then turned away. "Let them all burn."
I stumbled as the memory took me, caught in the act of stepping from the walk to cross the street. For a moment I couldn't remember if I'd looked to either side, but apparently I had. At least, neither carts nor carriages bore down on me as I crossed into the trade quarter, and there were others crossing the street alongside me.
It wasn't anything dramatic that had set it off; just a chance of appearance, an aging clerk who looked something like the old Knight-Commander, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Some days the memory is all but gone; other days, it's all but inescapable. Today, it seemed, was somewhere in between.
On the far side of the street, I took a moment to reassemble myself. I was here as Asrab Dul, a countinghouse clerk who frequently ran errands for his master. My clothes were still the same working-class formality, fancy enough to be respectable but nothing more. The height of the buildings here in the city of Verigor was enough to shield me from the worst of the daylight, so my skin wouldn't give me away.
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