Hissar

"...that he could have gained a sense of the hand that had made its mark her, on the outer wall of the old Falah'd Palace in the heart of Hissar."

DG, UK mmpb, p.65

"Water ran in ankle-deep torrents down the cobbled slopes beneath the palace walls, gushing down into the gutters bisecting each alley and causeway in the city. Opposite the palace wall, awning sagged precariously above closet-sized shops. In the chill shadows of the holes that passed for stone-fronts, dour-faced merchants watched Duiker as he passed by.

Apart from the miserable donkeys and the occaisional sway-backed horse, the streets were mostly empty of traffic. Even with the rare wayward current from the Sahar Sea, Hissar was a city born of inland drylands and deserts. Though a port and now a central landing for the Empire, the city and its people lived with a spiritual back to the sea.

Duiker left behind the close ring of ancient buildings and narrow alleys surrounding the palace wall, coming to the Dryjhna Colonnade that ran straight as a spear through Hissar's heart. The guldindha trees lining the colonnade's carriage track swam with blurred motion as the rain pelted down on their ochre leaves. Estate gardens, most of them unwalled and open to public admiration, stretched green on either side.

The historian ducked as a gusting wind pressed his cloak tight against his right side. The water on his lips tasted of salt, the only indication of the angry sea a thousand paces to his right. Where the street named after the Storm of the Apocalypse narrowed suddenly, the carriage path became a muddy track of broken cobbles and shattered pottery, the tall, once royal nut trees giving way to desert scrub. The change was so abrupt that Duiker found himself up to his shins in dung-stained water before he realized he'd come to the city's edge. Squinting against the rain, he looked up.

Off to his left, hazy behind the sheets of water, ran the stone wall of the Imperial Compound. Smoke struggled upward from beyond the wall's fortified height. On his right and much closer was a chaotic knot of hide tents, horses and camels and carts - a trader camp, newly arrived from the Sialk Odhan."

DG, UK mmpb, p.66-7

"The scene at the quayside of Hissar's Imperial Harbour was chaotic, a mess of unruly tribesmen and women..."

DG, UK mmpb, p.48

"The T-shaped quay was now a maestrom of belligerent Wickans."

DG, UK mmpb, p.50

"..then ritually touched his forehead in a now outlawed gesture of gratitude to a Falah'd whose bones were rotting in the silty mud of Hissar Bay."

DG, UK mmpb, p.69