Leaving the audience chamber he passed through a connecting passage at the side and entered the banqueting hall. Low tables, high benches, recliners, and decorative amphorae were ranged along the walls, leaving the middle of the room bare. A huge woven mat, the biggest Dion had ever seen, filled the floor, displaying a pattern of red and white diamonds.

Dion’s bare feet moved soundlessly on the fabric as he continued through the banqueting hall. The fading daylight shone from a smaller arch that led to the Flower Terrace. He was now squinting as his eyes adjusted after the near-darkness of the interior.

The Flower Terrace was smaller than the Orange Terrace and offered a view of the mountains rather than the sea, where even now the setting sun in the west was dipping between two distant peaks. Tulips, sunflowers, lavender, and cornflowers sprouted from pots arranged just inside the skirting wall. Though it offered a view of the thin strip of city below and the hills around Xanthos, the king preferred the orange grove and views of the sea on the palace’s other side.

Dion had hoped to find his mother here; it was her favorite place, perhaps because it was often hers alone. After swiftly scanning and seeing the balcony was empty, he placed his hands on the rail and looked down from the height.

Directly below, outside the Royal Palace’s lowest level, were separate structures for the stables and servant’s quarters: squat, utilitarian buildings. Within the palace at ground level were the cellars, kitchens, armory, and strong room. A wall guarded the palace grounds and a barred wooden gate, currently open, was the palace’s main entrance.

Raising his gaze, Dion saw the crescent of red tiled roofs of the residential quarter, although most of it was out of view, on the other side of the cleft in the harbor. Guarding it all, the main city wall was twelve feet high and two wide, holding the entire city in its embrace.

Behind the wall, farmland stretched to the west, on the left, and rocky hills rose on the right. A dusty road climbed the hills in the direction of the Gates of Annika, the pass that led to Phalesia.

If Dion’s mother wasn’t on the terrace, the next likeliest place was the highest floor, where there was a bedchamber for Dion, a series of rooms for Nikolas and his family, and a separate wing for the king and his wife, the queen. Dion’s mother often had the entire level to herself, for Dion spent time away trading and Nikolas could generally be found at the training ground, King Markos with him. Peithon worked from his own villa, close to the palace, and while her husband was busy, Nikolas’s wife, Helena, often spent time with her son at the home of her parents.