The war room of the castle sat at the base of the oldest tower — the one that predated Beltar's grandfather, the one that the castle had been built around rather than built to include. Its walls were black stone, older and rougher than the rest of the castle, and they sweated faintly in the cold even in summer. The ceiling was low. The torches burned in iron brackets without ceremony. It was not a room designed for comfort.
It was designed for the kinds of conversations that couldn't happen anywhere else.
The table at its center was enormous, a single slab of pale granite, quarried from somewhere in the eastern ranges three generations back and dragged here at considerable cost and, reportedly, the loss of two oxen and one cartwright's dignity.
It seated twelve.
Tonight it seated seven and still felt crowded.
