The quarters of Captain Eamon Vane were situated at the western end of the officers’ gallery, behind a heavy pine door marked with a painted brass plate. Commanding Officer · 14th Mounted.
Inside, the room was spartan and cold as an ice cave. A narrow iron cot stood against the granite wall, stripped of bedding down to its bare rope lacing. On the opposite wall stood a timber bookcase containing several volumes of royal military tactics and a dry-laid hearth filled with white wood ash.
In the center of the room sat a heavy desk of mountain oak, fitted with three brass-handled drawers.
Resting on top of the desk was a box-shaped iron dispatch box, four inches deep and twelve inches long, painted with black enamel that had crazed into a network of fine cracks under the sub-zero cold. The box was secured by an integral brass metal tube lock bearing the personal cipher of Quartermaster General Orson Brant.
Beside the box lay an empty heavy clay inkpot, an unshaped goose quill. A single sheet of dry thick parchment, weighed down by an iron spur.
Tomas, Nessa, and Kael stood around the desk. Their breath rose in gray plumes in the dim light of their two lanterns.
