Palace of Patience

The main Jail as well as headquarters for the Yellow Jackets, the Magistrates, and the Midnighters.

The Palace was a great square heap of pitted black and gray stone, ten stories high; the huge bricks that formed its walls had been arranged into simple mosaics that had now weathered to a ghostly state. The rows of high arched windows that decorated every other level of the tower were stained glass, with black and red designs predominating. At night a light would burn ominously behind each one, dim red eyes in the darkness, staring out in all directions. Those windows were never dark; the intended message was clear.

There were four open-topped circular towers jutting out from each corner of the Palace, seemingly hanging in air from the sixth or seventh level up. On the sides of these hung black iron crow cages, in which prisoners singled out for special mistreatment would be aired out for a few hours or even a few days, with their feet dangling. Yet even these were seats in paradise compared to the spider cages, a spectacle that became visible to Locke (between the backs and shoulders of adults) as he stepped off the catbridge and into the crowds of the Old Citadel.

From the southeastern tower of the Palace of Patience there dangled a half dozen cages on long steel chains, swaying gently in the wind like little spiders on cords of silk. Two of these were moving, one slowly headed up and the other rapidly descending. Prisoners condemned to the spider cages were not to be allowed a moment’s peace, so other prisoners condemned to hard labor would toil at the huge capstans atop the tower, working in shifts around the clock until a subject in a cage was deemed to be sufficiently unhinged and contrite. Lurching and creaking and open to the elements on all sides, the cages would go up and down ceaselessly. At night, one could frequently hear the occupants pleading and screaming, even from a district or two away.