Sonder noticed there was a rug.
It ran from the doors to the base of the platform, which was the correct thing to have in a room like this.
But it was plain and dark and had no pattern to it, and it was slightly too narrow for the space, so that it looked less like a deliberate choice and more like someone had been told a rug was required and had found one.
There were no windows. The light came from torches arranged in a way that technically illuminated the room without improving it in any way.
No consideration was given to where shadows fell, or what the light might flatter, or how a person standing at the far end might look to someone entering.
No one had thought about that because no one here had needed to think about it.
There were no attendants. No one arranged along the walls.
No ceremony, no court, nothing that suggested this room had ever been used for the purpose such rooms were built for.
If anything, it had the feeling of a room that had been constructed because castles had rooms like this, and for no reason beyond that.
Sonder walked in.
Her footsteps were unhurried and loud in the empty space, but she didn't soften them either.
There was nothing here that suggested pride or history.
Only stone and torchlight and a throne placed at the end of the room because a throne belonged there.
She looked at it as she approached.
From a distance, it had seemed imposing enough. Large. Elevated. The shape of authority was recognizable even when poorly executed.
But the carvings on it were uneven. Not crude from lack of skill, but from lack of care.
Shapes that were recognizable only because they repeated often enough to suggest intention. Animals, perhaps. Teeth. Crowns. Something meant to look grand.
The wood beneath the gold trim had warped slightly with age.
She stepped onto the platform.
There was some dust on it.
No one sat here often.
She turned around and lowered herself onto the throne.
The throne was uncomfortable.
The angles were slightly wrong and the seat too shallow, as though whoever made it understood what a throne looked like but had never considered that someone might spend hours in it.
The back pressed awkwardly against her shoulders.
The armrests were too narrow.
Sonder settled into it anyway.
She rested one arm along the side and crossed one leg over the other and looked out across the hall.
"I expected something of a welcome," she said.
Her voice traveled cleanly through the chamber.
She waited.
The man at the door said nothing. But his eyes moved briefly toward the corners of the hall.
Sonder had already noticed them.
The darkness near the walls was uneven.
Not shadows.
People standing inside them.
A few shifted as they realized they had been seen.
Then they emerged properly.
Just figures separating themselves from the dark with visible reluctance.
They looked at her sitting on the throne.
Sonder looked back.
There were a dozen in total.
A tall man stood in front of the others.
He wore a crown of gold and gemstones that looked far more expensive than the room around it.
The king.
He looked like the man in the cell on the ship.
The resemblance was unmistakable.
He was older, more worn.
He stared at her on his throne and said nothing.
There was a woman beside him carrying herself with the same restrained authority. She wore a crown of her own, though lighter and sharper in design.
They were all so pale.
"Your kingdom is lacking," she said. "But I imagine this passes for grandeur here."