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thought of preparing uniforms for three more Guards apparently decided her and she agreed.
    “Come then,” said Pel, “and I’ll lead you to the captain.” So saying, he began walking down the street. The three companions followed. Tazendra caught up to him, and they began talking as they walked. Khaavren dropped back and made a sign for Aerich to do the same. When the latter did, Khaavren spoke to him in a low voice.
    “I could not help but notice, my friend, that you started when our friend gave us his name.”
    “Well,” said Aerich. “And if I did?”
    “I should be happy to know why.”
    Aerich shrugged. “I am a Lyorn, and we are taught all that we need to know of the lines of the Houses. Now, I know very well that there is no ‘Pel’ belonging to the House of the Yendi. Therefore, he did not give us his true name.”
    “Ah,” said Khaavren. “But what then? He is a Yendi.”
    Aerich had no answer to this, so they continued in silence toward the Imperial Palace.
    The Imperial Palace was begun shortly before the reign of Emperor Jamiss I, and the earliest version was completed toward the end of his reign, which encompassed, in its nine hundred years, the entirety of the reign of the House of the Vallista in the First Cycle. The story has come down to us that the Tsalmoth Emperor who preceded him, Faarith I, took possession of the Palace before it was habitable, and that he was killed by falling masonry as he directed the installation of the throne. That the Imperial Orb, which was even then beginning to show its marvelous attributes, didn’t save him, was taken as a sign by Jamiss, the engineer who was directing the building. He thereupon claimed the throne and the Orb for his own. While this tale smacks of the apocryphal, we cannot deny that it has a certain charm.
    At any rate, the aforementioned Vallista reign saw, in addition to the construction of the Imperial Palace, the creation for the first time of forts and fortresses (the distinction, certain comments by the Lord of Snails notwithstanding, having nothing whatsoever to do with the presence of breastworks, nor the size of buttresses) along what was then the Eastern border. The construction of the Great Houses around the Imperial Palace did not begin until the Second Cycle, with the reign of Kieron the Younger, of the House of the Dragon. He ordered the building of the Great House of the Phoenix, opposite the Palace, as a tribute to Empress Zerika II, or possibly as a bribe to persuade her to relinquish the throne—history is unclear on this. The other Houses were built over the course of the Lyorn, Tiassa, and Hawk reigns during this Cycle, and doors were added to the Imperial Palace which looked out on each. Streets were laid on each side of these Houses, so that if one left the Palace by, for instance, the Athyra Door, one would pass the House of Athyra on one’s left.
    It is not our intention to weary our readers with a description of each Great House in the Imperial Circle, but we beg leave to make a hasty sketch of the Palace itself.
    The Palace was built before the Vallista architects had split into the Idyllic and Realist camps (and therefore, of course, long before the Reunification and subsequent splits), but the seeds of both major styles could be seen quite clearly, as Mistress Lethria has shown so well in her recent treatise. By the time of Emperor Tortaatik—that is, by the time of which we have the honor to write—the Palace had long since reached its final form, and the original building was a mere nucleus within, holding the throne
room, the personal chambers of the Emperor and his family, kitchens, and a few small audience chambers. The larger Palace rose nine stories into the air, contained full courtyards at each door, a separate four-story wing (with associated minister) for each House, dozens of balconies (pillared and plain), hundreds of stairways (circular, curved, twisted, and straight), thousands of windows (round,