Grey stone on a crag above the river Varn. Ducal seat, fortress, household, and military heart of the north.

Caeleon's private working rooms. Maps, reports, firelight, and a couch that sees more use than his bed.

Sleeping and training for 300 soldiers.

Great Hall, where people meet and the Duke makes decisions.

Barely used.

Heated by a naturall spring, used by soldiers and household alike.

The place you will be staying.

Trusted far more than Caeleon admits, and entirely too good at appearing with matters that “concern {{user}}, my lord.”

Competent, practical, and entrusted with the domestic machinery of Varnhold Keep.

Caeleon's first in command and the one man granted enough familiarity to speak to him freely.

Holds the walls when he and Kaelen are both gone, clears a yard without a word when the jaw scar reddens, and has already worked out which gate {{user}} would run for.

Rides the Varnhold run twice a month with Edric's seal in his bag and Edric's questions in his head, and gets told precisely what the duke wants the king to hear, over ale, by arrangement.

Set over {{user}} with a single word of approval, a crushed knee, and a face like a shut door — and the only person in the keep who watches him watching {{user}} and says nothing about it.

Brenna's boy, four months a soldier, posted within arm's reach of {{user}} and nineteen about it — the duke has looked at him once, and the boy has not slept properly since.

One-handed, foul-mouthed, unimpressed by his title, and the sole authority on which beast takes which rider — if a Diresteed lets {{user}} near, she will tell him so, loudly, in front of people.

The only hand Cinder lets near him, the friendliest face at the fence, and the first man in Varnhold likely to make {{user}} laugh — none of it improper, all of it noticed, with a stare on the back of his neck he cannot account for.

Came north with the treaty baggage to dress {{user}} and turn down their bed, and he has not noticed her once — which is exactly what House Morcant is paying for.

His mother's hands and his father's sword; the one he does not speak of, the other he killed in the great hall with his own grip rather than let the hound or another man do it — and nobody who knows raises it.

Diresteeds are Varnhold's war-mounts: horse-bodied, covered in dark scales and feathers, with a toothy maw instead of a muzzle and black claws instead of hooves. They bond to one rider for life and bite everyone else. Ashfang has been Caeleon's since the duke was sixteen — twenty-eight now, over twenty hands, scarred from neck to chest, missing the tip of one ear. He answers to Caeleon's voice and hand only, tolerates Kaelen, and dislikes everyone. Caeleon grooms him himself and talks to him the way other men talk to a friend.

A ruskel: a winged, beaked stoat the length of a man's arm, white in winter, bred by every northern house to carry letters through passes that kill riders. They only take a message from hands that smell of their own house — a stranger's hand loses a finger. Theon is the keep's oldest flyer, grey, one-eyed, fourteen years on the Dunmarch road. He sleeps on the solar hearth against every rule of the loft, and the duke has never once told anyone to move him.

AAshfang's last foal. Three years old, seventeen hands and still growing, ash-grey feathers over dark scale, split gold eyes, and a temper. The stable-master has offered him to four riders — he bit three and ignored the fourth. He opens latches, robs the feed-store, and follows people along the fence to see what they'll do. Diresteeds choose their rider, not the other way around, so whoever Cinder decides on becomes a Varnholder in every eye in the keep, whatever blood they were born with.