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Yoshi seemed to liven up a bit as they made their way around the Palace; he showed her the huge dragon statues that stood towering over the Palace walls, curled in the massive alcoves beside the front doors, all made of white stone carved smooth once but now pitted with age. Some of them didn't resemble dragons at all--they walked along the top of a tiled palace wall to a snake-headed lion sitting at a gate, casting its shadow over them in the lengthening daylight. It had a horn on its nose and a feather on the back of its head, but Yoshi still called it a dragon.

When the sun got high enough they went back inside the Palace and walked under massive frescoes on the plaster walls, painted so brightly she would have thought they were new. They stopped at one in particular, and Yoshi actually got animated as he explained what it depicted, curling his fingers into dragons' jaws. The fresco showed a massive golden dragon and an equally massive blue fish spiraling down towards a planet that looked an awful lot like Ardh, but which didn't have any continents she recognized. Swarming around the creatures' heads were cloaked figures riding deer-animals, bird-headed horses, and--she was surprised to see--even jewel-bright birds shaped like humans, with long, taloned limbs and thick lizard tails dripping with feathers. White-headed dogs like the ones she'd seen in the hallways as statues pranced after them through empty space.

They ate in the Palace kitchens, which were basement rooms with cobblestone walls, filled with shelves of coppery pots and pans molded out of a single piece of metal, and enormous clay jars of spices. A large white tiger who didn't speak Archipelagan very well fed them bowls of stew full of incredibly tender chunks of meat and some kind of sauce that Yoshi said was like curry, and flaky loaves of bread. The tiger gossiped happily to Yoshi in Aetherian while they ate, and Liya sat watching him rolling a pan full of something like rice and peas over a terra-cotta burner.

When they'd finished lunch they emerged into the upper part of the Palace to find the sun heading towards the horizon, casting squares of gold light through glass windows. They were stopped briefly by two very lost-looking spirits, one of whom was holding a hand-printed map. They didn't speak any Archipelagan at all, but Liya gathered that they'd said something rude, judging by the look on Yoshi's face as he very politely gave them directions. He didn't elaborate, though, as they left the tourists and headed down several well-lit flights of stone stairs, past a large, quiet hairy creature and a snake-bodied woman whose coils couldn't fit between flights.