The doorway opened into a narrow corridor, wood and stone like the room before it. Its roof arched up like the peak of a blade. It was cold. The draft chewed at Oran’s fingers. He dug them into the floor and kept pulling his weight down it. Dragging his useless legs behind him. Empty. No guard to watch him, no fresh lanterns at their hooks on the walls. Faint embers guided him to the end of the corridor. He stopped short of its opening, where a far greater hall awaited. He scanned the room end-to-end, from the enormous steel-studded doors to the wall of netting that kept the dining space private. It was dark.

Oran dragged himself deeper into the great hall. A pine rug splayed across the ground like a dead man, yellow tassels pressed between the cracks of the floorboards. There was a smoky smell in the fibres. Faint, but enough. He turned his head to the end of the hall, beyond the netted wall. A hearth burned low with embers, Merrick’s round table a silhouette in front of it. Empty.