The east gate was not the main gate.
That was the point of it. The east gate was the gate that people used when they did not want the main gate's traffic and its attendant eyes and the particular attention that the main gate produced simply by virtue of being the main gate. It was smaller, less ceremonial, used mostly by tradespeople and staff and the occasional administrative visitor who had been specifically directed there to avoid the formality of the front entrance.
It was also, as Elara had noted when she first arrived at the outer wall what felt like a very long time ago, the gate with the loosest record-keeping.
She came through it in the late afternoon with her hood up and the mask in place and the particular walk of someone who belonged somewhere and was simply returning to it, which was the walk she had developed in the streets when she needed to move through spaces that would have questioned her right to be in them if she had moved through them any other way.
