The audience hall is not a great room, it's roof some twenty feet above and barely large enough to form the whole of the garrison. But it was the room given to Lady Victoriana as her apartments and one she feels most comfortable. It was here she first met Master Raginoz.<br/><br/>Once the studio her brothers first touched steel, it was a cold and barren place. Master Raginoz chose it for that. "The most dangerous thing to a castle is an apprentice prince." Now its stone floor wears intricate patterned rugs, which the footmen are just now uncovering from the lesser rugs protecting them during the audience. Where once stood racks with the implements of war now see shelves of books on every subject of man's knowledge. In the center where once sweat was spilled that blood be not sits a small dais with a simple and elegant chair and a side table filled with various notes and letters and proclamations Victoriana had left moments before. It is now being joined by other tables and chairs at the lady's word.<br/><br/>But what hasn't changed is the sun. This room faces North, towards the town of Hammensend two miles distant. The town and the farmlands between formed a vast tableau behind Lady Victoriana as she sat in state. It is here she gazes from windows scaling half the walls, surveying her people below as they prepare for the week of Growfest to bless the crops they will plant at its end. Touching the warm, stone frame of the window she understands why her brother always loved this room. In this panorama anchored to the corner of the room, the corner of the castle eighty feet above the plain below, it sees both East and West. It welcomes the Sun in the morning and farewells him in the eve. Why would her brother want anywhere else?<br/><br/>------------------------------<br/><br/>Aria was well below her cousin above holding court in her apartments. She was in the lower courtyard, "in prayer." The Castle itself was built upon a lone but uneven hill with chambers built into its side and down from above. The upper court and the keep surrounding are atop the high summit, flatted to accommodate the construction. The lower courtyard is below on another summit. Here the stables burrow into the side of the hill and before them is the garrison's drilling yard. And here is the Octagon, a ten foot patch as place as sacred to the garrison as the blood they spilled under the master's instruction could make it. Here was where the best among them learned to fight alone, to stand in front of their massed brother and lead them by example or meet the challenge of single combat.<br/><br/>And today it was Mayaheine's chapel, as Aria, too, felt the call to prayer.<br/><br/>-----------------------------<br/><br/>Ted rode through the outer gate late in the day. Straight ahead was the gatehouse to the upper courtyard but he turn left and descended towards. The nightwatch were at "vespers," before they had there breakfasts and stood the watch until midnight. It had been a long ride, four days patrolling south along the Nesser when he happened on the smugglers' track. Another 8 days of harrying them followed before he finally able to drive them into the patrol out of Copperstad. Not that he couldn't push them, he just knew the time had to be right or the scheduled patrol wouldn't be in the right place. Then another two days ride back to the castle. He knew as he dismounted that his steed was as bone weary as he, but he also knew to never put a horse away wet. As he walked his mount around the courtyard, he noticed her again. The lady's cousin from the east. Melody or Harmony or something like that. He stopped for a moment as she threw her sparring partner, the follow through with her waster making a full stop a hair's breadth from his nose. Perfect control.<br/><br/>-----------------------------<br/><br/>It's getting cold again, Dora notes from her spot on the tower more than a hundred feet above the upper court. The sun was moving in his path and this part of the parapet was now hiding from his gaze behind one of the roof's supports. Summer was nigh but the air here was still not thick enough to let the stone keep its heat long.....<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Hidden for size. Here is the real place I used to fence and based the Harkess estate on. Behind the trees in the foreground you can see the grey-blue roof of the stables in the lower court. The main gate would towards the lower right of the picture.</div><div class="spoiler_body">(http://www.burg-ronneburg.de/cms/wp-content/files/2009/08/Die-Kernburg-der-Ronneburg.JPG)</div></div>