Which added layers of ironic flavor to life. The people who’d built this hotel had had a great nobleman’s town house as their model; in fact, back in France before the Revolution “nobleman’s town house” was what the word hôtel had usually meant. It had acquired its modern meaning only after Madame la Guillotine resulted in an abrupt turnover and repurposing in Parisian real estate.

The joke was that now it was exactly what they’d dreamed, what a hôtel had originally been; and that it had been taken for that purpose simply because it looked suitable to men who were shrewd and practical and wouldn’t have known the Italian Renaissance from an Olive Garden dinner special.

It had still needed a great many modifications over the last generation, and not merely because electric machines didn’t work anymore. A palace wasn’t just a place for a ruler to live comfortably, exhibit their stuff and hold parties, though those were essential parts of government. It had to be a barracks for troops and have dormitories for servants, workers, clerks, pages and squires; a clutch of offices and strong rooms; chapels and their attendant priests; armories and repair shops; an infirmary; schoolrooms; kitchens to feed all those as well as put on banquets; and court chambers to hear cases and settle disputes, with their records and law books and land-title registers; and stables and carriage houses and more, including dungeons.

Probably being in the middle of a chartered town full of skilled artisans and well-stocked merchant warehouses meant it didn’t need the dairies and winepresses and weaving sheds and gristmills its rural equivalents would have, but it was still the center of a Great House with hundreds of residents and a ceaseless to-and-fro.

They rode through a low outer wall that closed off several blocks; it was mostly ornamental, which meant that the Counts didn’t feel the need for a real fortification between them and the citizenry, though at need they could always retire to the castle. A small guard of halberdiers clashed the butts of their polished weapons down outside the gates; she was glad to see the Count wasn’t wasting manpower. The cast-bronze lions there looked more recent than most of the decor.

“Made here in Walla Walla in my father’s day, my lady, may God receive his soul,” de Aguirre said proudly as they dismounted and varlets ran to take their horses. “We have a fine foundry and good artists.”

Tiphaine nodded; she was already running over what she would say to the assembled local magnates.

Not to mention I’m hungry. A hunk of bread and cheese in the saddle isn’t much of a lunch, particularly when you had dog biscuit and jerky for breakfast.