Lothian Manor swarmed with activity as preparations were underway to receive the most important guests to visit in the manor's century-long history.
That activity extended to spaces both large and small, including a storage room that had never been meant to hold a man. It was a cramped, windowless space near the guardhouse on the eastern wall. Its shelves were crowded with spare tack for horses, pungent tins of bootblack, and the air was thick with the greasy stink of the lamp oil barrels stacked along the wall. A single tallow candle guttered in a dish by the door, and by its meager light Valeri Leufroy sat slumped against a cask, waiting for whatever came next.
He'd lost all sense of time in the days he spent here. The candle would be replaced when someone remembered to, usually shortly after they dragged him out to relieve himself before passing him the scraps left over from their meal.
