It's an ordinary, quiet night. The . . . patrons, or whatever they are, of the lab equipment shop downstairs, took off about forty-five minutes ago.

There's silence, mostly. You can only be out at night in Sothis if you have business. But there's some business. Every so often a party passes under Katie's window. Their conversation is mostly what Katie has become accustomed to thinking of as "focused", though occasionally some is just downright tense or revelrous.



Wind. Distant insects. Dogs.









Something shuffles downstairs.



And continues to shuffle.





"Are we good?" The voice is insistent, alto, and right underneath Katie. And it's female.

"Yes, fine". Higher. If Katie knows what female halflings sound like, it sounds like that.

The shuffling moves deeper into the shop. A glass clinks. Laughter starts, whispering at first, then merely hushed.

"Oh my god." A third voice.

"All this stuff is fake, you know. This and this and this used to be one bespoke fixture."

"Fuck."

Whoever it is is going through the merchandise.

Expensive, heavily regulated merchandise. Katie's parent have only been in Ulunat for two weeks, but she's picked up that the proprietors of this place have gone to a moderate effort to secure it against thieves.