Gorjo City Retirement House

The house that Cliopher "Kip" Mdang purchases at the end of The Hands of the Emperor, located in Gorjo City in The Vangavaye-ve. Previously owned by Saya Dorn.

First / Ground Floor

 * Heavy wooden front door
 * Entry hall, with doorways to storerooms
 * Many "nooks and crannies"
 * Originally "a maze of haphazard divisions, disguising the original clean lines"; renovated
 * Front hall leads into "a set of broad rooms arranged around half the private courtyard and pool"
 * Kitchen with a table in the center, magic cooktop, "great stone sink", window overlooking the courtyard, "tiny door that hid Saya Dorn’s shrine", “opening cupboard doors and peering into the many nooks of the space", door that leads to the courtyard behind the house
 * Adjacent to kitchen, pantry with "drawers and racks and examine pegs and hooks and all sorts of intriguing little spaces" and a dumbwaiter; a description of the dining room says "the dumbwaiter leading up from the kitchen" so maybe it's in the wall in between kitchen & pantry?
 * Privy (presumably for guests / shared; the suites have their own privies)
 * "There are three large rooms and two suites on this floor" (Kip seems to imagine the two first-floor suites as Rhodin's and Conju's)
 * Dance studio / fencing room with reinforced floor
 * Parlour (mentioned in Esa'a)
 * Spiral staircase to upstairs, leading from near the dance studio to the sitting room / terrace: "outdoors, but there's a good awning over it"; "ornately curved prongs" and a banister, "the wrought-iron masterpieces leading down off the balcony"
 * Courtyard door -- "if you went in downstairs from the back [of the courtyard] you were right in the kitchen"

Second Floor

 * Airy sitting room ("projected across part of the courtyard", "reminiscent of the Kindraa Birdhouse in effect", "deep window seats, the smoothly curving wood beams anchoring the wall"; "the floor was a fine golden wood, smoothly sanded and pleasant underfoot") -- with brazier ("a copper-coated basin") and skylight in the middle of the room
 * Dining room (through "arched doorway" from sitting room, "the dumbwaiter here made a feature in a carved wall"; "carved plasterwork around the dumbwaiter leading up from the kitchen")
 * Three suites ("on the other side" of the dining room; "each containing a bedroom, a sitting room, a small office or reading room, and another small room or pair of rooms for children or clothing and other belongings," and a privy / water closet; “going through the suites he had imagined being homes for Ludvic, Fitzroy, himself”; "their doors a darker wood than the floors, very simple but pleasing in the clean lines")
 * Suite farthest from the sitting room with "great louvred-glass doors facing [Zaviya] square", "display ledge running around half the room" -- Kip's
 * Suite with "a deep embrasure in the arched window facing on the courtyard; perfect for a window seat" and "a pair of glazed doors opening onto the long balcony leading to the stairs" -- Fitzroy's (Kip imagines)
 * A third suite that Kip imagines as Ludvic's
 * Upper balcony: "more of a covered terrace, running along the courtyard side of the house; the little balconies off various other rooms, some of them at odd heights because of internal stairs"; "running along part of the frontage"; able to look in the windows from the upper balcony
 * Recessed, dark narrow spiral staircase leads from the sitting room (or just off the sitting room? "opening another door to show a recessed staircase") to the third floor

Third Floor
Solarium:
 * "The upper floor consisted of a large round room with a high ceiling and high windows. They had wide eaves and some sort of cooling system in place, so the room was filled with sunlight and fresh air and not at all hot. And hanging along the steam-bent beam that encircled the room were hundreds of glass floats twinkling and catching the light ... there was a balcony encircling the tower."
 * "a bench built to run under one of the great curved windows"
 * "a high-ceilinged room, round, windows curving around the entirety of the space and offering a view that looked across Gorjo City to the Gates of the Sea in the east. One huge beam, bent by steam (and perhaps magic) into a perfect circle, held the ribbed beams of the ceiling and walls in what felt like the perfect marriage of tension and repose. It was still cool and airy and full of light, the wide eaves and some lingering magics keeping the air fresh, and the hundreds of glass fishing floats hung around the room, catching the sun and spangling the richly polished wooden floor."
 * Arched windows
 * "in the centre of the room [...] another circular aperture opening to the sky," which does not align with the one on the second floor
 * Cupola (presumably)

Outside
"There were only the two houses on this courtyard: Saya Oyinaa’s had a bit of an addition that formed an ell with the main building, whereas Saya Dorn’s old house—their house—rambled across the other side of the square. The public square was reached through an alley between the Oyinaa house’s extension and a shed of some form beside theirs. Then the house, and beside them a miniature of the large house down to its little cupola on the roof."


 * Approach: "they had passed under the great tree on the edge of Zaviya Square, and then there was the front door of their house, with magic gleaming in the windows"
 * Public square: "a small, leafy square around a central fresh-water pool filled with waterlilies"
 * Private courtyard and pool: "The courtyard was shared with the house opposite, forming a sort of private area with access on one side to a small inlet leading onto the nearest canal" and a "boardwalk that extended out from the courtyard between their houses"... "short set of stairs leading to the courtyard"; "The upper floors projected across part of the courtyard to form a sheltered area down below", "a comfortable-looking nook under the stairs, with a good view of the courtyard entrance and the dock", "the front gate of the courtyard"
 * "little balconies off various other rooms, some of them at odd heights because of internal stairs"
 * Bath-house, "little building with the passionflower growing over it", "a miniature of the big house". "The floor was newly tiled in lovely grey and blue tiles of a sort he’d never seen in the Vangavaye-ve; the walls were covered in a mosaic of waves."
 * View from the courtyard: "there was a clear space with a bench to look out on what he’d always thought of as the perfect view. Half a dozen houses all aligned to frame a long vista to Tahivoa lagoon and the distant rim of the southeastern barrier islands."
 * View from the solarium: "There were no other tall buildings nearby—no doubt another attraction to a wizard—and the views were of Mama Ituri on one side, the Son and the sky ship dock next over, then the city to the northern part of the Outer Ring, and finally the lagoon and the Bay of the Waters a darker blue behind it."
 * "And the view …out across the canal to a vista of Tahivoa lagoon, Mama Ituri to one side, the darker Bay of the Waters extending westward along the waters they had so recently sailed."

Furniture

 * Sitting room: “what appeared to be a set of rattan furniture in the middle of the room”; "Fitzroy’s harp and the fire-pot went into places of honour"; "There were chairs—actual chairs, with finely curved backs and seats made of ruddy brazilwood—and a beautiful ebony table—and mats of every quality from the most utilitarian to the sort that must have been made by the greatest weavers in the city. There were baskets, and wooden bowls, and a whole stack of firewood in an elaborate wrought-iron and bronze stand. There seemed to be clothes, and there were more cushions, and there were no less than three bookcases, and … “There’s so much,” Cliopher said, walking forward. The fire-pot of daylight illuminated the space with its comforting, warm light. It sat on a new table beside the brazier, which had gone out. There was another item on the table: a bilum made of fibres dyed midnight and fire-red and bronze."
 * In Kip's suite: "desk placed against the wall, between two windows looking onto the square. It was made of striped mahogany, polished to a lustrous shine, with clean lines and a modest set of pigeonholes and drawers."
 * Solarium: “Fitzroy had spread out the mats and cushions in the middle of the room, under the great windows. Though the items were all things he’d acquired in Gorjo City, the effect was subtly foreign. Perhaps it was the wine bottle, or the way he was lounging on one elbow, or the starlight pouring in through the windows.” Home to dozens of glass fishing floats: “the glass fishing floats Saya Dorn had collected gleaming and chiming in a circle all around them” … “the fishing floats gleamed and chimed softly as they moved in a wind from the window” … “the sunlight pouring across them in a splash of rainbow spangles from the fishing floats” “dusted each of the scores of glass fishing floats so they gleamed as they caught the light”
 * Courtyard (in Esa’a): “The space was oriented around a stone hearth in the centre, which held what looked like a more or less permanent fire burning merrily on it. Low woven platforms surrounded the fire, with a few wind and shade awnings strategically placed. Beautifully stacked wood encircled the seats and provided fuel as well as a visual delineation of the space. That was the centre: the fire of civilization. The rest of the courtyard was crammed full of a riot of food plants and flowers.”
 * (In Esa'a): parlor has a liquor cabinet
 * Solarium windows: “undo the latches and slide the sash up”

Lighting

 * Front hall "illuminated by a soft star of golden light, as bright as a candle, which hovered at the place where the ribbed arches of the entryway came together"
 * Bath-house: "well-lit from skylights"

Painting

 * Outside stair: "beautiful ironwork painted a pleasing clear blue"
 * Sitting room: "carved cornices were painted the same blue of the stair railing and white and a deep ultramarine, so they looked like curling waves carved out of wood; but the one that had broken was painted to look as if the snapped wood was the foam breaking out out of the shape of the wave ... The walls were a pale cream, the arches around the doors and windows picking up the same blues from the outside of the house."
 * In Esa’a: Entrance hall painted a bright teal, perfectly offsetting Western Ring yam masks

Magic

 * “There were lights on in their house. “Those are clever,” Fitzroy said happily, perking up as he looked in the window at one. “Set to glow as the daylight goes.””
 * “Enchanted cooktop” – “So old-fashioned but such good work. Imported, of course …no one does this kind of ironwork here, let alone the enchantments.”
 * To keep the air fresh
 * Pantry: “The faint chill in the air proclaimed that the old lady’s spells had not yet faded.”
 * Sitting room: “That’s a clever magic,”Fitzroy said, waving his hand generally. “It’ll carry the smoke straight up to the skylight. I can see what you meant about it being a bit …convoluted, this magic. Mostly it just wants someone to belong to, you know? It’s curling around me like …a cat, cats do that, don’t they? Or a dog? Like it wants me to pet it. The house misses your Saya Dorn.”
 * "The house called me"