It held barracks for ten thousand soldiers, great storerooms, vast cisterns, training places for men and horses and wolves, armories, a dozen smithies, kitchens, stables, barns, stockyards, lumberyards, and space for all the workers, tools, and raw materials needed for twenty thousand people to survive a year under siege. And even at that, the Citadel was dwarfed in comparison to the castle that was Mount Thrall, for the mountain was honeycombed with halls and great rooms and apartments and dungeons and passages long forgotten that bored into its very roots.

Neither the Citadel nor the mountain had been full in decades and with the armies sent north and south, the place was even quieter than usual. Khaliras was now home to only the smallfolk, a skeleton crew of an army, less than half of the kingdom’s meisters, enough functionaries to keep the reduced business of the kingdom operating, the aethelings, and the Godking’s wives and concubines and their keepers.

Head among those keepers was the Chief Eunuch, Yorbas Zurgah. Yorbas was an old, soft, perfectly hairless man, even shaving his head and plucking his eyebrows and eyelashes. He sat huddled in an ermine cloak to ward off the morning chill at the servants’ gate. Before him was a desk with a parchment unrolled on it. His blue eyes studied Dorian dubiously.

“You’re short,” Chamberlain Zurgah said. He himself had a typical eunuch’s height.

And you’re fat. “Yes, my lord.”

“‘Sir’ will suffice.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chamberlain Zurgah stroked his hairless chin with fingers like sausages encased in jeweled rings. “You have an odd look about you.”

In his youth, Dorian had rarely seen Yorbas Zurgah. He didn’t think the man would remember him, but anything that caused greater scrutiny was dangerous.

“Do you know the penalty for a man who attempts entry to the harem?” Zurgah asked.

Dorian shook his head and looked steadfastly at the ground. He clenched his jaw and, without raising his eyes, tucked his hair back behind his ears.