The harbor smelled different in the early morning.
Not different from itself — different from the palace. The palace had its own smell: cedar from the record shelves, old clay, lamp oil, the specific dryness of stone that had been inhabited for a long time. The harbor was salt and wet wood and the particular sharpness of rope that had been in water and dried and been in water again so many times that the salt had become part of the fiber. Lysander had been walking between the two for two years. He noticed the transition every time and had stopped being able to say when he had started noticing it.
He went to the harbor before the second hour.
