The Veiled operative reached the capital on a moonless night, dressed as a cloth merchant from the southern provinces, her enhanced senses registering every guard post and watch rotation along the city's main thoroughfare with the automatic precision of a creature built for infiltration rather than inhabitation. She moved through streets she had memorized during previous operations, her route adjusted for the changes the rebuilding had imposed on the capital's topography. New patrol patterns. Additional checkpoints. Guard stations that had not existed before the crisis, manned by soldiers whose posture indicated recent deployment and the particular wariness of people who had been informed that the threats they faced were not necessarily the ones they could see.
