Torchlight flickered and danced across the damp stone, bathing the small chapel in the east wing of the royal palace of Yarzat in a warm and shifting glow. It sat six chambers removed from the grand hall, where petitioners and flatterers and hypocrites shuffled through each day beneath the shadow of the throne, and the distance between the two rooms was the best thing about it.
The floor was laid with cold flags of slate, though the statues of the divine had been carved from pristine coloured marble, which said something about where the money had gone and what the builders had thought worth warming.
Alpheo sat alone upon one of the smooth oak pews, his dark eyes wandering slowly across the holy pantheon.
