The inner palace was the specific product of a lineage that had been large for a long time.
Everything scaled — the doorframes taller, the ceiling higher, the furniture the proportions of a world built for occupants who wore their height as a birthright rather than an exception — and there was a warmth to the stone and wood of it, the specific warmth of a dwelling that had been lived in by many generations of the same family and carried the accumulated presence of that continuity in its surfaces.
Maids lined the inner corridor.
Standing at measured intervals, heads bowed slightly at the arrival of the queen and her unusual guest — and they looked at him from the corners of their lowered eyes with the specific, careful attention that palace servants give to things that are unprecedented.
He looked back at them.
At each one.
