Late afternoon stroll.

Late afternoon in Queen's View is not a particularly encouraging time of day for its citizens. The occasional showers should have died down by now, but they enhance the hot and humid conditions, rather than providing an occasional relief. They also bring out a stench of gutters and workers in the market and craftsman shops making their exit from the city proper towards the godforsaken shanty town outside the walls. You will probably call them a slum, a place nobody should visit of their own accord, for the fear of robbery, rape and beating. This, however, is not the whole tale, and as much as it pains the bleeding hearts and the almoners alike, the conditions in the suburbs were poor, manageable and while some of the streets beyond the wall were unwelcoming, nevertheless, it was not a place that was as lawless as many of its counterparts.

Well, still, at this time of year, with no university in session or unruly would-be magicians starting out at the Academy to look after, it was perhaps a rational decision for me to walk down the wide streets from Tax Office down the Guild Broadway, where most of the mansions of city's merchant and craft guilds were located, than turn right towards King's Boulevard, which runs parallel to the coast of Inner Bat. Looking at the petitioners leaving the offices, craftsmen in their best suits coming to the guild meetings and apprentices speeding away to their houses (or alehouses in any case) in the more affordable neighbourhoods, provided me with a glimpse into the city life that I did not have. Anyway, not since my studies at the university, which severed my ties to the brawling and bustling communities of youths and young adults reveling drunken and carefree.

Personally, I thought that the location of those guildhalls so near each other was a recipe for disaster, when the city population would be incised to riot. The patricians on the other hand, though that being near the government district would extend protection from troops patrolling the sites of Imperial power. The ever-burning rivalries between the guilds might have played a part in the selection of this raw of houses for debating professional choices, it made the spying on your competition so much easier.

I pushed through couple of debating bakers (seems the prices of wheat have gone down, but the shipping costs were up, again), turned the corner, glancing at the windows and stalls of couple of armourers, a lending office (only five coppers per golden owl per tenday) and looked with a certain curiosity at pet emporium employees, currently trying to convince some lesser noblewoman or banker's wife to purchase a crimson and tangerine mesh of feathers that I supposed to be a parrot or other jungle bird.

After a few more seconds, I did cut a corner, causing a string of expletives to be issued from the driver of a wagon filled with what looked like a desk of drawers and cabinet, ready-made for middle-income family of artisans. This has not slowed me down, and right on the hour, with the bells ringing in some considerable distance in the Temple District, I entered Queen of Gran's luxurious interior.