Kurvroc's Loshev estate

The house Torgun Kurvroc kept in Loshev is old and built into genuine Mól ruins, and it is either a historical site or standing on one. The quality of it has gone to seed. It is only half furnished, it wants patching and roofing, and there is a stain down the outer wall. The books that were the best thing in it are gone, taken by the raiders who sacked the place.

Kurvroc died while the Valiant Few were north breaking the curses, and the funeral had been held before they got home. At the reading of the will, in a room full of Draazstone hobgoblins who had been days on the road, bequest after bequest turned out to be unfulfillable for the same reason the library was: the raiders had taken the objects. Hinta was given a few Mól-seeming pieces and formal title to the sword she had spent months restoring. Everyone else got nothing.

The estate itself went whole and undivided to Mikhail, in prose praising him as pleasant company and remarkably knowledgeable that reads as though somebody else wrote it. Every face in the room turned, and he noticed for the first time that he was the only person in it who was not a hobgoblin, and the only non-hobgoblin being given anything.

Hinta’s advice was to hold it. It is worth less as a house than as a bargaining piece, because the Draazstone hobgoblins regard the ground it stands on as their heritage. Mikhail wants to learn everything in it before it ever changes hands, on the grounds that Kurvroc was paranoid and there may be things in the walls.