Prince August sat in a white room.
It was not, technically, a room. It was a space within the palace that had been used as a conservatory once, before August had asked for the plants to be removed and the windows to be replaced with white stone panels. He liked the absence of view. It reduced distraction. And distraction, in August's experience, was something the world was enormously generous with when you had things to think about.
He had a great many things to think about.
His butler stood at the room's edge with the particular posture of someone who had learned to take up as little space as possible. He had been a vigorous man once, with opinions and a family and a name August no longer remembered. Now he was a convenient fixture. That was what loyalty looked like at its most refined — a person so thoroughly committed to function that the self had been vacated.
August found this both useful and slightly boring. He preferred loyalty with more friction. Friction told you things.
