The dining hall of House Ktorian did not echo.
Other great houses had dining halls that echoed — the , hollow grandeur of rooms built to impress, where every footstep and fork-click returned from the ceiling as a reminder of the ceiling's height.
The Ktorian hall absorbed sound.
The stone walls, the thick tapestries, the , dense weight of a room that had been holding family meetings for two hundred years and had developed the , architectural personality of something that knows how to keep secrets.
Eight people at the table.
The head of the family at its northern end — Vareth Ktorian, sixty-three, the gray-haired, silver-eyed patriarch of the kingdom's third most powerful noble house, which had maintained its position for three consecutive generations by the combination of intelligence, patience, and the willingness to wait longer than anyone else.
Around him — the inner ring.
