The window in the east wing let in the city's fifth hour.
Vane had been up since the fourth. The residence was quiet in the way capital residences were quiet — not the island's deep silence, but the occupied silence of a building running its maintenance in the lower floors while the upper ones slept. He could hear the kitchen at intervals. Staff arriving. The sounds of a house preparing for a day it had prepared for in the same way for decades.
He stood at the east wing window and watched Varum begin.
