Place · Palace and seat of the Court
The Glass Palace
“Because doors close. And we close nothing, little witch. We hide.”
The palace rises from the Height, the only island of Nocturna with real rock: a tooth of basalt with the palace on top and, clinging to its slopes like gulls’ nests, the Balconies, the houses of the Longlived. It looks “like a fistful of violet glass spears bound together”: seven towers of different heights leaning against one another, held by bands of lead and bronze at the height of each floor, with glass walkways hung in the air between them.
Inside, the light arrives “filtered to the colour of plums”, the floors are glass, cold to the touch, and there are no doors. There are curtains of black silk. A door says there is something behind it; a curtain lets you think there isn’t. The heart of power is the Hall of Tides.
It can be reached by the Lighthouse Bridge, for everyone; by the Veiled Bridge, from the Cisterns, for the Court alone; or by the Tide Steps, a small quay at water level where the mist boats leave from.