He went to the settlement on a Wednesday, in the late morning.
Not with an escort — he had learned in the first months that arriving with people created a different kind of visit than arriving alone. With an escort you saw how the settlement responded to official attention. Alone you saw the settlement.
He walked the northern road from the palace gate and felt the transition in his body before he registered it consciously — the change from the organized stone of the city streets to the ground that had been shaped by use rather than by plan, the paths worn into the earth by the repeated movement of thousands of feet over months. The settlement did not have streets. It had places that had become streets because enough people had walked the same line enough times.
The smell changed too.
