The castle of Stilum was, by any generous measure, a modest place—unfitting for the company it now held. There were no golden chandeliers to dazzle the eye, no marble floors to reflect the light of highborn vanity, nor towering tapestries depicting great deeds of ancestors long dead. Its walls were stone, grey and pitted by years of rain, its corridors narrow enough that four armored men might pass only by turning sideways.
It had not been built for pageantry, but for defense.
Yet tonight, seven high lords with their vassals, the fractured remnants of a royal court, and the weary bones of a battered royal family all found themselves crowded within its confines like nobles stuffed into a farmer's barn.
The only thing keeping them from scattering to their own corners of the realm this very night was the promise of hot food—food that might, just might, drive out the taste of dry rations, smoke, and mud that had clung to their mouths since the retreat began.
