The Great Administrative Hall of High-Arch was a monument to office luxury carved into the living rock of the mountain.
While forty thousand smallholders and mountain herders in the valleys below drank silt from dying wells and scraped dust from desiccated furrows, the air inside the hall was warmed by two massive marble fireplaces burning seasoned beech logs. He smelled of beeswax polish, costly cinnamon tea, dried lavender, and imported Moroccan leather. Rich crimson velvet draperies muffled the howl of the mountain wind. The floor was paved with polished squares of black and white marble imported from the southern provinces at huge civic expense.
At the far end of the hall, behind a huge carved dark wood desk that had needed twelve heavy cart-horses and three block-and-tackle teams to haul up the mountain passes, sat Director Moros.
He was a stout man in his late fifties, dressed in a high-collared gown of dark green damask trimmed with sable fur. His soft, manicured hands. It had never held a cold chisel, swung a sledge, or hauled a canal tow-line, rested upon a neat stack of gold-embossed ledger folios. Flanking his desk stood Chief Clerk Thorne. He held an ivory notice tablet, and three private retainers in black velvet doublets, their gloved hands resting on the wire-wrapped handles of town dress swords.
