Though it was still morning, and still winter, the heat had already settled in for the day.
Three children shoved themselves up onto the roof of their home one after another, as they did whenever a triumph came down the roads of the capital. They were all of them too small to get a proper view from the street, so they had built a ladder out of crates and whatever else the alley had been willing to surrender.
The eldest scrambled over the gutter first, then reached down with now soot-stained arms and hauled the other two up after him.
It was a family ritual by now. Short of sprouting wings, the roof was the only perch in the world that offered a view of the grand avenue whenever the realm put on a show. To miss a spectacle in the capital was a crime against one's own eyes. Though according to their mother, climbing three spans up onto rotten cedar was the only hanging offence under discussion in this household.
