A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER SEVEN
No one waited, save the door guard and a handful of welcomers for the Nobles that Kid had travelled with. The outside of the South Tower rose as sharply and as stippled as the North Tower, but having never fully seen that facade until he was forced dutifully to leave it, the comparison was only a passing one. The interior, however, was markably different. There was more material on the walls, mostly depicting the Noble Families that resided within, showing their Heraldry, their importance and their stance within the politics of Unity. There was no Kombayn here, only Unity.
Symbols of the MonoGod bedecked and bejewelled the recesses and apses of this Tower’s Great Hall, similarly placed as it was to the one within the North Tower, architecture something distinctly remiss in originality for the Four Towers. Like the North Tower, the vegetation and the process of building of the Tower saw much in the way of compromise, so that some rooms were difficult to enter by conventional methods. In contrast to the boldness of the pomposity the South Tower presented, the vegetation here had not been tamed, as it had in the North Tower. There were many more contradictions to come, but right at this moment, Kid was lost in a space full of people, all gently jostling for position, while the fleeting Workers danced their winding way through them. Again, no one noticed Kid, with the limp and the broken face.
In truth, not quite all, however.
“Are you - what’s it say here - Fuscus Praefuscus, Third Son of blah, blah, blah -“ asked the Attendant, quite bored with the piece of paper he had been given in a rush. He examined both sides with a distracted frown, awaiting the answer from the cripple.
“I am.”
“Follow - boy?” sniffed the Attendant, already several long paces forward. Apparently, his name was given as Salmonid Smoltificus, though he preferred not to mention it often, for good reason.
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