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Naithrope is making her way back to her father's pyramid when it happens.
Well, she's not going straight there. The most direct route between the marketplace and home doesn't actually go by the Cinerarium. But Luzai liked to go out of her way to pass by the royal edifice, when she went out, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Arazni; and if she never did manage it, she never stopped hoping.
Luzai is gone, now, and Villibor with her, to save Auntie Ruvina in the only way left to them. But Naithrope knows that somehow, she's going to see them again someday, and when that happens, she can imagine this conversation:
"I managed to see Arazni, while you were away."
"Was she okay?"
"No, of course not. But I knew you would be thinking of her, in general if not in that exact moment. And I knew you would want someone to see her, and think of something better for her."
And then Luzai will start crying and hug Naithrope and tell her how much she missed her, missed all of them.
Naithrope is carrying some spell-scrolls that Father wanted, for one reason or another. He prefers to send his children for them, instead of a random servant, because the servants mostly aren't well-educated enough to make sure that what they're getting is exactly what Father asked for, and Naithrope and her siblings mostly are.
You would think that this would be an excellent opportunity to steal a scroll; but on outings like these, not-Aunti Mali counts the coins with a tight fist and has a specific list of what's supposed to be brought back. You can skim off a couple coins, if you're very good at haggling (which Naithrope is), but the scrolls, no.
If you need to steal a scroll from Father, you have to steal from what he's scribed himself; he keeps an index, of course, but he doesn't check it very often, and ever since Luzai and Villibor left Naithrope has been very careful not to pilfer anything from more recently than then, so hopefully when he does inevitably find out about the holes in his stash, he'll just think that they took more than they actually did when they fled.
The spellsilver, not so much, but she took other steps to deflect suspicion for that one.
...She's definitely going to get caught, eventually, if she keeps stealing from Father, but she'll be very well-equipped when she does. And Father has made it perfectly clear that home wasn't safe if she dealt straight with him, between Ruvina's death and Mother's visit.
But apparently the vicinity of the Cinerarium isn't safe, either. She doesn't know what's happening, but--everything slows down, and everything goes sort of weird and curved, and then something happens that feels sort of like a bug being flicked off of someone's arm, and then everything goes dark.
