The city moved in patterns I saw from the outside.
I kept my hands loose at my sides as I walked the streets.
The thief worked the outer stalls. Male, compact, mid-twenties. Left-handed. His coat stayed open on that side. He lifted a comm unit from a vendor's tray without breaking stride. Clean work. I noted him. Not my jurisdiction. Not my city anymore.
I kept walking.
The credentials office didn’t open until morning. Hours to burn. I bought a flatcake from a woman who wrapped it in paper without looking at me and ate it standing at the corner of Vaanatan and the transit corridor, watching the crowd and faces intent on getting to their destination.
I clocked the man at the third pillar in forty seconds.
Two body-lengths behind a woman in a gray coat. He adjusted when she adjusted, stopped when she stopped. She was looking at printed fabrics in a window display. Her shoulders were easy. She did not know.
I folded the flatcake paper and put it in my pocket.
I fell in behind him.
He followed her two more blocks, then cut down a maintenance alley alongside the transit hub. She took it as a shortcut. He clocked the gap in foot traffic. His right hand moved to his belt.
I closed the distance in four steps.
I took his wrist before he raised it, turned it back and down, put him against the wall with my forearm across his shoulders. Quiet. He grunted and went still.
"Walk away," I said.
He walked.
The woman in the gray coat never turned around. She came out the other end of the alley, crossed the transit square, and disappeared. I stood at the alley mouth and watched her go.
I did not need to know where she went.
It only took an hour to submit my credentials request. Another day to kill.
By midday I covered the eastern quarter. I didn’t know the street names. I didn’t need to. I grew up in the Southern farmlands. A different culture than the city. But none of it was new. Every five years. The credential renewal cycle ran on its own clock. I ran on the ship's.
Faresh still lived in the Southern farmlands.
I knew this from the yearly message. Teacher. Married. Two children whose names I knew. Not faces. The last photo was two years old. The youngest was three months, wrapped in pale green, Faresh's face tilted down with an expression I understood but never felt.
I wrote back, Good. You look well. New year coming.
She replied, Come home sometime. I mean it.
I did not reply to that one.
I found a bar near the credential district, quiet in the middle of the day. I sat at the far end with my back to the wall and a view of both doors. The drink was local. Cherndan grain, slightly sweet. It reminded me of the smell of my parents' kitchen during the holidays. It was not my favorite.
I ordered it anyway.
My father spread the application materials on the kitchen table when I was seventeen and said nothing and waited. He never raised his voice. He didn’t have to. I told him I was testing for GP entry. He picked up the materials, squared them against the table edge, put them back in the folder.
Your mother will want to know, he said.
My mother wanted a wedding.
I finished the drink and set the glass down.
I wasn’t angry about any of it, not for a long time. They had their logic. I had mine. I knew it at seventeen at that table, and I knew it ten years later sitting in this bar with my back to the wall.
What I did not know was whether Faresh ate dinner yet.
A stupid thing to wonder. I noted it and let it go.
I spent the afternoon on the upper transit walkways, which ran the length of the city at the fourth-floor level and gave a clean sightline over the market rooftops. The city spread south toward the water. Pale buildings. Transit cables. The GP recruitment center on Strandan, where I walked in at eighteen with two changes of clothes and no plans to return.
I could send a message.
Short. In the city for credentials. New year soon. Nothing that opened a door I could not close before the eighth hour tomorrow when I picked them up.
Faresh would write back in twenty minutes. She always did. She would ask how long I was staying, whether I wanted to come for dinner. The children would want to meet me. I would say no.
I did not send the message.
The sun set over the water. The city changed registers, quieter and colder. I went back to the transit lodgings near the credential district and sat on the bed with my boots on and my back against the wall.
The message would keep.