The Aristocratic District of Ex. Following the war that robbed them of their estates, some of the aristocrats were offered homes in Ex. (See: 'The decline of the aristocrats.') The aristocratic district is located in the south-west corner of the city quite close to the river, an area where the air is loud with the sound of boats and people. The allocation of that particular corner was a joke on the part of an Exian councillor who had heard some of the aristocrats boasting about their love of quiet contemplation. He later relented, confessed and offered to move them to the eastern part of the city, but they turned his confession away and icily remained in the buildings that he had designated, with as much hauteur as if they had chosen the spot themselves because it pleased them. Today the area has its own library, built with funds donated by each of the families and accessible by invitation only, and its own merchants, who deal exclusively with their refined clientele. The streets are unusually clean and empty. (from a letter written by Lord Small less than a year after he settled in Ex, to a cousin in the North-West.) "They're going to kill us slowly here my sweet, our peace of time has gone and we are past they have given us houses near their noisy river where the boats beat together like murderers and when the river floods it comes in our direction because they have trained their water to hate us and when even nature spits at the sight of you what is there to do but die of sadness? and that is how we will die here in these towers where the ivy grows angrily like lint with silent eyes oh my sweet Louisa threw herself out of her window days and days ago I don't know how long the time here is wrong the sky is against us and the sun is inaccurate and the moon swells and shrinks three times in a single night while the constellations run backward and no-one knew where she had gone until we found her bones sitting in the ivy below the sill yes it caught her on the way down and she died in green netting never reaching the ground for there is strength in the earth and they have hauled us above the earth so that our feet cannot reach the food of the soil and even nature in their city has been told to hang us above the earth we are stars now hanging in the heavens and thirsty for the soil but we will build a library here and keep them out with our airs and graces their roving musicians will not walk our streets not that we can forbid them with laws and words oh no we have no power but if we chill the air with the nature of our uplifted blood then they will stay away and so will the street vendors those prying crawling creatures who say fish sir? boat sir? clothes sir? as we sweep by and the ground shrinks away from us we float above the earth in their eyes which do not want us to draw sustanance from our love, and in our eyes which scorn to tread where they are not wanted and which were wanted everywhere - once - when we held the clockwork of power in our hands"