This other figure was less richly dressed than the man who stood by the window and carried himself in a slightly hunched way that marked him as servant rather than master. There was another person in the room with him, standing in a corner near the lacquered wood staircase that descended steeply to the lower floors of the building. Under exquisite embroidered robes, his arms trembled with apprehension. The man should have been content, but he was not. A great change was coming to wash away the pervasive impurities that festered in every gutter and alley of the endless miles of the city. However tonight, as his own oil lamp shone out its happy flame from this private room in a tall tower, he should have had a smile on his lips. It was in his nature to regard any peaceful vista as suspicious. The man who looked out on this scene from his high window did not usually appreciate these nightly noises. Ten thousand subtle nighttime sounds merged together into the silent roar of life temporarily interrupted. Even in these early hours, before the farmers outside the towering city wall awoke to hitch up their beasts, the streets and alleys echoed.
The air was still but this ancient metropolis of stone and brick was never truly quiet. They were the lantern-flames of the sleeping city. Outside in the dark, hundreds of oil-fed stars gleamed up from across the jumbled expanse of tiled roofs. It was late and the largest city in the world was asleep. “I have learned that ridiculous messes arise when there is more than one plotter and more than one plan.” -Eliezer Yudkowsky "Love is of source unknown,(.) The living may die of it, and by its power the dead may live again." -Tang Xianzu
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