The capital hadn’t changed at all in the two years since John last roamed its narrow streets. The ways were still thick with vendors and people, the buildings still growing haphazardly upward against the twin barriers of the walls and the river, the Orange Palace still rose in golden glory above the whole scene, as colorful and ostentatious as the lower districts were brown and drab. It had taken him a long time before he had stopped comparing the ramshackle buildings and begging children...