Rogue Runner

Apologies if anything I say is unclear/downright weird, I have the flu and everything's a bit muddled. This is why I'm reading stories, not revising for my exam (FML). Anyway, crit! "She'd done so instinctively..." at first, I got confused as to what the girl had done; this may be because you used a new paragraph. Or it may just be the flu talking Even though I haven't read the previous chapters of your work, I'm really interested in the characters- I feel like I know their personalities already! Good job. "Bands of thugs sprang up like wildfire here and it wouldn't do to get caught by them at all" to me, the "at all" attatched onto the end sounds a little clunky. Maybe shift it to the middle of the sentence and see how it sounds? "...flower basins and terraces lined the square..." Not sure you need to tell us it's the square again, we already know; it could just be replaced with "it". "the woman... turned from stirring the great kettle..." I directly interpreted it as; I am stirring the kettle itself around on the ground. "Contents of the kettle" perhaps? XD "This city is going to the fields of decay faster than an untended field," sounds a little clunky for the repetition of "field". "I think the lady is near her cot." You forgot the ending speech marks here All in all very nice though! Can't wait to read more