The wall was as tall and as solid as the one that had withstood many centuries of Shavig weather. On the bottom it was almost fifteen feet thick, good stone block on the outside, and filled with rubble (of which we had plenty). On the top it narrowed to less than nine feet across, but was still amply wide to allow the guardsmen to walk. It was a good wall, even if it looked odd with the granite stones outnumbering the blackstone.

Inside the wall, the bailey was oddly barren now that the miscellaneous small buildings my ancestors had added were gone. It had taken a great deal of work to level the bailey, since the earthen mound the keep had sat upon had settled after some of the caves beneath it had collapsed.

The new guards’ quarters were built against the wall near one of the six towers, the only stone building in the bailey except for the forge. The quarters were a neat, rectangular building that took up half the ground of its predecessor with twice the usable space. There was stabling in the bailey for a few animals, but most of the horses were outside, between the inner wall and where the outer had once stood.

I sighed, thinking of the outer walls, and decided to continue to work on the floor of the main hall—something that might be finished before I died of old age. Tosten was working alone on the floor and I joined him. Tiling was mucky and nasty, and the lime in the grout found its painful way into every little cut.

“Why did you rebuild Hurog so large?” Tosten asked, fitting a tile into the pattern we’d decided upon. “It doesn’t need to be this big anymore. Hurog isn’t rich and this seems pretentious. We could have had a hall half this size, two stories instead of three, and half the bedrooms.”

I could have argued the large. It only felt big because he and I and Oreg were the only Hurogs left to live in it. My sister, Ciarra, had married our cousin Beckram and lived at Iftahar, my uncle’s estate. Iftahar’s keep rang with the sounds of children and seemed much smaller than it actually was.

I said, “There is little expense involved—the granite is ours and only needs quarrying. I’d be paying the Guard anyway, they might as well do something for it.”

Tosten snickered, “I’d like to hear you say that in front of Stala.”

I widened my eyes and dulled the expression on my face. “Do I look stupid to you?”

“No one,” he said, fitting a tile against the grout he’d laid down, “is as stupid as that.”