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Karkedon is one of the biggest cities in the world—maybe even bigger than Alexandreï, depending on who’s counting.

I love cities.  You put a few people together, they’ll talk and get to know each other, but put a hundred thousand people together and nobody gets to know anyone if they can help it. The mind just gives up and refuses to see other people as people; you can be more alone in a crowded city than in any solitary place.

It was morning when we reached the city.  I left the ship and went up through narrow streets of pale buildings, apartment houses and storefronts of artisans and the offices where the scribes tried to keep track of it all, to the city center, where a building like any other building waited with no indication that Karkedon’s powerful were inside, plotting against the world.

Some things it is nice to be part of.