The Calife's Palace

Under the lapis dome, a careful man weighs the routes the desert can never get back.

I climb to the Calife's Palace at the centre of Aurel-Khar, the great lapis dome catching the last gold of the evening, and beside it the low circular building of the Council of Twelve. This is the seat above the records vault — not the archives beneath, where Tomás reads the ren…