Waiting for the sleep that he knew would come if he could only quiet the ache at his chest and in his gut. Where he shifted on the thin tick, the pallet beneath it barely long enough for him, he felt the chill airflow through the narrow gap that passed for a window in the closest corner of the room. Originally an arrow slit when the Bastion was new-built a hundred generations past, it had been knocked out and roughly widened as the open fields and huts it once overlooked and defended had turned to the alleyways and flagstoned court of the outlying keep long years ago. The wind still blew in from over the southern walls, though, twisting across him now. Just past High Winter, the Brandishear coast had yet to see snow, but the unseasonable warmth of the past two weeks’ sun had disappeared as quickly as the day’s light. As he walked along the walls of the keep not so long before, Chriani had watched the lights of the sentry towers echo the light of the city beyond, threescore thousand strong.
