The guest quarters assigned to the survey party were located on the ground floor of the southern service court, inside an ancient barrel-vaulted stone chamber that had once served as the castle armorer’s store.
The walls were four feet thick, built of dressed limestone blocks pointed with dark volcanic cement mortar that had hardened into artificial bedrock. Two narrow, iron-barred slit windows overlooked the cobbles of the lower bailey. Meanwhile, a low arched doorway, fitted with a heavy oak door and an inside iron sliding bolt, opened into the service hall.
In the center of the chamber, three animal fat candles burned steadily on a scrubbed deal table, their flames sheltered from drafts by horn lanterns.
Paxa Sel sat on a low wooden bench near the cold stone hearth, oiling the leather hinges of her razor-sharp kit and rechecking the linen wrappers around her glass phials of willow-spirit-extract and burn-salve. Across the table, Fellis Dain was sharpening the steel chisel tip of a spare sounding rod with an oiled carborundum stone, his braced left hand resting comfortably in its sheepskin sling. Meanwhile, his right hand kept a steady, forty-five-degree edge. Yseld Arken stood by the shuttered slit window, her hooked climbing staff leaning against the stone reveal. She watched the torchlight patrols move across the lower bailey.
