(tentative draft.  If this doesn't work, Thufir, let me know)<br/><br/>The city streets are empty except for the ghosts of the night-- lingering shadows in alleyways like sharks in black water.  The trio move as Freyja instructed, in a close group, hands unseen, their meager accoutrements in side-slung packs.  Freyja's head tips very faintly at shadows here and there, forcing momentary eye contact with one or another as a simple gesture of notice, of competence.  Her face is wrapped in a thin length of cloth, worn and threadbare, its color faded from black to a dingy gray, like the hooded cloak's she's provided for her companions.  The hood itself has a soft, subtle peak behind her head where the hilt of a sword rests along her neck and hair.<br/><br/>She leads them through sidestreets where taverns leak pipesmoke and the sour reek of body sweat mingled with the tinge of spilled grain alcohol and beer.  Occasional lantern-lit slats peek from board-reinforced doors and tight-shuttered windows.  Freyja asks them to walk close, with Machado in the rear, a request she delivered with a wry grin and the subtle reassurance, "if something happens, I imagine you'll be able to rebound."<br/><br/>Along the way, they near the gates-- a merchant gate, closed but for the pike and hatchet-wielding guards that man a plank-sided shack by this entrance.  From the condition of the road betrays the poverty of those consigned to use it for trade-- even walking the deep-rutted flagstones requires concentration for untrained feet.  Freyja steps quickly enough, but is careful not to string out their small group along the dark walkway.  Freyja tilts her shoulders for them to hear as she addresses them in a hoarse whisper,<i>"Muskrat's gate.  Smugglers, traffickers, servants and trappers are about all that come through."</i><br/><br/>Freyja walks a few dozen more feet, drawing little more than a spit of tobacco juice in her general direction before she reaches the pool of light near the guard shack.  The spit fans out on the stone in front of her, gleaming in the moonlight like blood.  She produces something from her pocket-- a few silver.  "A donation to the guard," she says with a commoner's affectation, an accent she slips on like a glove.  "Nights like this make good men thirsty."  She then draws back and leans against the cracked masonry of a crumbling security wall, accepting the shadows' cover and urging her companions to do the same.<br/><br/>... if the guards take the bait, they wait for three minutes-- time enough to hear at least a dozen rats make their way from gutter to gutter like flea-couriers.  Then they take a turn in the street and move faster, crossing the thresholds of ramshackle houses to make better time among the stones, and Freyja leads them on a winding serpent of a path through the church district, past homes stacked atop another like freakish card-structures, silent but for the grunting of a rutting couple here, the wailing of a babe there, drink-slurred curses elsewhere, and then the sound of water, the stench of rotten eggs and unclean water.<br/><br/>Freyja stops for only long enough to produce a broken mattock-head from her cloak, which she wedges with a piece of broken brick to form a lever.  It takes a couple tries, but she manages to prise up from the street the edges of a massive steel grate.  Wedging the brick under the puckering lip, she waves them on, and they disappear into the darkness...<br/><br/>... only to emerge, minutes later, into the vast square of the temple district.  The white stones gleam in the moonlight like the teeth of a massive smile.  "We go no closer," she whispers and skirts the square, then dips between the arches of sprawling elms to where a wrought-iron fence waits like the spears of a thousand soldiers.<br/><br/>It's there that she leads them along what appears to be a worn path beyond a concealing, overgrown forsythia bush, and then they pass between the broken facade of the church district into the near, and more reverently submitted, brothel district.  She looks to Lina for any sign of recognition, then speaks gently, her face a porcealin mask betraying neither concern nor scorn, but something more of a general good-natured concern.  "People make it a point not to recognize ANYONE here.  Don't be concerned about what you see... but don't stare."