by J. V. Jones
Surlord of Spire Vanis: What did anyone have to show for it? Iss, Horgo, Hews, Pengaron: All had suffered early deaths.
Marafice turned to face his father-in-law. “I know I must make alliances, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for them.”
Stornoway laughed; it sounded like he was choking. Dressed in an ancient black half cape with a molting beaver collar, he didn’t look like a man who controlled the most lucrative mountain pass in Spire Vanis. The Lord of the High Granges collected tolls on goods entering the city from the south. Bolts of silk, baskets of strawberries, pots of myrrh, alabaster lamps, glass beads, pigments for dyeing cloth and illuminating manuscripts, and dozens upon dozens of spices: saffron, nutmeg, black and white pepper, cloves, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamon, galangal, fennel, star anise, paprika. In theory Stornoway surrended half of all tariffs to the city but his accounts hadn’t been audited in decades. Substantial bribes paid to Horgo and Iss had taken care of that.
“You need friends,” Stornoway said. “It’s time to buy some. Philip Theron’s as good a place as any to start. Where Salt leads the Far West follows. As compass points go it’s a minor one, but as you’re so intent on fostering enemies in the east and north it doesn’t leave you much choice.”
Marafice scowled at his father-in-law. Garric Hews, the Lord of the Eastern Granges, hardly required fostering—the man had refused to acknowledge Marafice’s surlordship and had vowed to storm the fortress. To the North lay the lords of the Spillway, the Wheatfield, the Mercury, the Black Soil and Black River Granges. None of them were friends to Surlord Eye and some were in open collusion with Hews. Most of them had withdrawn forces during the strike on Ganmiddich.
Thinking of that moment of desertion made Marafice see red. “What’s it to you if I make enemies, old man? All the more people to murder me.” As he spoke he knew it was a mistake, yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Explain the difference between yourself and Garric Hews. From where I stand I see two vicious bastards who wish me dead.”
Stornoway’s cold gray eyes flashed in triumph. He’d been waiting twenty days for this. “When they punctured your eyeball did part of your brain go with it?” The Lord of the High Granges did not pause for an answer. “Time is everything here. Yes, mayhap you and I will duel later, but for the immediate future it serves us both to consolidate your position and secure the city. Poison you tonight in your sleep and I give the keys of the fortress to whichever grangelord is bold enough to mount the first offensive. Right now your sole strength is the Rive Watch. Lose you and I lose them.”
Mother of God the man was bold. A snake revealing himself to be a snake and not the slightest bit ashamed of it. Marafice glanced at the door. Where was Zerbina with the ale?
Forcing himself to think, Marafice paced the room. There were no windows at ground level, so he moved between blank walls. Coming to a halt directly in front of Stornoway, he murmured, “Remind me why I shouldn’t kill you for what you just said.”
The old man rested his canes on his lap. This close you could see the moth holes in his cape. “When the Splinter fell it took the fortress’s and the city’s southern walls with it. As we sit today the High Granges and its allies are the only things preventing Hews from launching an attack through the gap.”
“I have the Watch and the Cloud Fort.”
“The Cloud Fort stands off my southern border. I know exactly how much rain gets through that roof and many men stand beneath it getting a soaking. As for the Watch . . . well I think we all understand they’re best used as a last line of defense. The glory days of riding out and engaging the enemy are twenty years in the past.”
Marafice sucked air into his lungs to object, but by the time he was ready to speak he realized he didn’t have anything to say. At best he could remind his father-in-law that the Hound’s Mire campaign had taken place fifteen—not twenty—years ago. Certainly the strike on Ganmiddich had proved disastrous. There was no getting around that. Stornoway was right: The Watch was best for defense, not offense.
“How many hideclads are stationed at your grange?”
“Two thousand pensioned. I can call out double that number if needs must.”
“Do it.”
Again there was that flash of triumph in the raptor’s eyes. “A dozen companies will need to be stationed in sight of the walls.”
On land owned by the city, not a grangelord.
A soft knock on the door announced the arrival of Caydis Zerbina with the ale. The servant moved across the room without a sound. Depositing a tray with a pewter jug and two cups on a footstool close to the fire, he looked to his surlord for direction. Marafice raised a finger. Leave us, it said. I will pour the ale myself.
You had to give it to Zerbina: He understood nuance better than anyone. Mayhap, I’ll keep him, Marafice decided, feeling comforted by the sight of yellow foam on top of the jug.
“Ale?” he asked Stornoway as Zerbina withdrew.
“Might as well.”
It was the closest Stornoway came to courtesy and Marafice obliged by pouring him the first cup.
Stornoway rested his ale against his bony thigh. “So do we drink to our alliance?”
Marafice stretched the time it took him to pour his own ale and stand upright. Hideclads patrolling city land—that was what his father-in-law was proposing. Spire Vanis owned all land within a quarter league of the city’s southern wall. Most of it formed the skirts and lower slopes of Mount Slain, but to the southeast the land opened into valleys. Stornoway’s grange lay there, incorporating high and low valleys and the lucrative Eagle Kill Pass. It was his right to patrol all roads and passes in his territory. It wasn’t his right to patrol city land. That took special decree by the surlord.
And only a fool of a surlord would allow it.
Or a desperate one.
Truth was he needed Stornoway and Stornoway needed him. The old goat was right when he said that if he, Marafice, died tomorrow it would be unlikely that Stornoway could hold the fortress. The Rive Watch were still suspicious of him and there was no telling who they might follow in wake of their surlord’s death. A handful of grangelords had served in the Watch—the Lord of the Black River Granges and Lord of Almsgate sprang to mind—and if any of them declared themselves as surlord they had a fighting chance of carrying the Watch. Stornoway needed time to ingratiate himself. Favors needed to be bought, and a custom of command and obedience established. Plus he needed Marafice to make a public show of acknowledging his grandchild, Marafice’s newborn son.
God help me to stay sane. Son indeed. Liona Stornoway had been visibly pregnant when he’d married her. The squalling, red-faced brat she’d produced was spawn of another man, some dirt-poor student at the Great Library whom she’d met while out taking the cure at Scalding Springs. Marafice flicked a speck of foam from his fist. There wasn’t enough hot water in the entire city to cure all that ailed his wife. The woman wasn’t right in the head.
Most days he managed to avoid her. Besides, he’d known what he was getting into. It was his price of entry into the grangelords: none of their sound-minded females would have had him.
Both of them, Liona and Stornoway, were eager to have Marafice acknowledge the baby as his own. Liona because her reputation was at stake; Stornoway because a surlord’s son could be useful to him. Marafice could hear him now, addressing the Rive Watch. “I don’t claim power for myself but as a steward for Eye’s son.”
Jon Marafice was his proposed name. Blond and tiny with psoriasis on his arms and buttocks and a mild clubbing of his left foot, he was awaiting Purification. During the ceremony a full name had to be given, complete with surname. As of today, Marafice had refused to grant him the use of Eye. The whole thing was a mess. Whatever the baby was named—Stornoway or Eye—his so-called father, the Surlord, would be the laughingstock of the city.
Marafice inhaled sharply. He could smell the hops in the beer.
Truth was it might be to his benefit to claim
the boy. Stornoway owned one of the richest and oldest granges in Spire Vanis. The old goat couldn’t live forever, and Roland Stornoway the younger, his son, wasn’t a well man. Jon Marafice would likely inherit his grandfather’s wealth, and that meant Marafice could control it until the boy reached his majority. Thirty years in the Rive Watch did not make one a wealthy man.
Nor did it make one popular. The grangelords did not love him: he was a butcher’s son, an upstart, and he’d drawn swords on them countless times. The watch controlled the city; access through its gates, access to Mask Fortress and the surlord. It stuck in the grangelords’ craws. They held vast estates outside the city but were reduced to supplicants within its walls. Now the man who had held this over them for seventeen years was surlord.
He wasn’t one of them, and his only ally in their ranks was sitting in that chair, canes drawn up on his lap, ale going flat as he waited upon a response.
I wanted this, Marafice reminded himself, raising his cup in toast.
“To an unholy alliance,” he told his father-in-law.
“Aye,” replied Stornoway, smiling his brown-toothed smile. “And as a show of good faith I’ll even drink first.”
CHAPTER 5
North of Bludd
“WE GO THE long way,” Raif reminded Addie Gunn.
The small fair-haired cragsman frowned, said nothing, thought about it some more and spoke. “Most people given the choice between traveling through the clanholds or the Sull Racklands would pick the clanholds.”
“I’m not most people.”
“They’re after you.”
Raif considered this, decided it didn’t matter if Addie meant Sull or clan. “I know.”
Not long after that the sleet started. The clouds had been dropping all day and the temperature had hovered above freezing. An unsettled wind sent the sleet spiraling around rocks and brushcone pines. No soil softened the headland, and crevasses between boulders were the only places for trees to seed. The pines were gnarled and dry. Their needles had the color and texture of rusted nails.
The air smelled of gas. Earth had moved in the night, and Raif found it easy to believe that matter trapped beneath the surface was leaking out. He and Addie had been woken in their tentless camp at midnight. A low rumble had been followed by a series of concussions as unstable boulders crashed to lower ground and dead and diseased trees fell. The quiet that followed had lasted until dawn. Neither wolves nor owls wanted to be first to let their presence be known in the darkness.
Addie had brewed tea, and he and Raif watched the moon set and stars turn. There didn’t seem any point in pretending to sleep. When dawn came it was a relief to hear the birds. Ptarmigan, ravens, woodpeckers and longspurs called from cover as the sun rose. The world looked the same, but didn’t feel it. Addie and Raif were on the trail within the hour.
It was midafternoon now and Raif was beginning to flag. The wound in his chest was pulling tight and a looseness in his knees forced him to concentrate on every step. Addie too was weary. Fighting the wind and sleet on three hours sleep was draining and his shoulders and head were low. One hand cinched his cloak at the throat while the other white-knuckled his walking staff. The fact that he had brought up the subject of heading south into the easier terrain of the clanholds was telling. It was the closest Addie Gunn came to complaint.
Raif said to him, “We should start looking for a place to camp.”
Addie poked his stick into a pile of scree, testing for firmness. “Might as well stop here and sleep on the boulders. Ain’t getting any cozier.”
“You know this land?”
“Know. What’s to know? I’ve eyes. I can see.”
Raif scrambled up a shoulder of granite and looked north and east. Addie was right. There was nothing to see but more of the same landscape of stunted trees and granite bluffs. They were north of Bludd and ten days east of the Maimed Men. Since they’d left the lamb brothers’ camp three days back the going had been slow. Bad weather had hampered the pace. Raif’s desire not to set foot in the Bluddhold hadn’t helped either. The borderland was a breaking ground of rocks.
“At least the bird won’t be out.”
Addie’s statement took Raif a moment to understand. Easing himself down from the ledge, he said, “When was the last time you saw it?”
Addie hadn’t shaved in four days, and sleet caught in his bristles. A cap he’d stitched together from strips of black lambskin rested too low above his eyes. Wait and see, he’d told Raif a few days back. A week of rain and it’ll shrink up just right.
Wagging his chin, Addie said, “Bird was out this morning afore the wind kicked up.”
He was speaking about the hawk they’d seen every day since leaving the Lake of Red Ice. The bird was not wild. It had silver jesses tied to its legs. Neither he nor Addie had spoken the name of who they believed had fastened them there. Raif did not want to think about the hour he’d spent in Yiselle No Knife’s tent. She was Sull and her people believed that he, Mor Drakka, would end their existence. The hawk belonged to her.
Raif met Addie’s gaze and Raif could see the question in the cragsman’s eyes. We’re in danger here: how could stepping into the clanholds be worse?
“Find us some cover,” Raif said.
Addie nodded slowly, thinking. “An hour back we passed that creekbed running north. Be undercuts there if we’re willing to turn east.”
“Let’s do it.”
Both men were silent as they made their way deeper into the Racklands. Addie Gunn was a smart man, Raif reckoned. Smart and good. The hawk wouldn’t fly in the wind and sleet. Now was as good a time as any to hide from it. Once the weather cleared, the bird’s owner would send it west. She would not imagine that Raif and Addie had backtracked east. If they spent the night under cover and raised no smoke they might be able to evade further surveillance. It meant a longer journey and more time spent in Sull territory, but Raif found nothing within him that was eager to return to the Maimed Men. As long as the journey lasted he had no responsibilities to anyone save Addie and himself. Later he would become King of the Rift, but for now he had a kind of freedom. And Addie guessed he wasn’t in any hurry to give it up.
The wind streamlined as they made their way northeast. It blew from the south, pressing their cloaks against the small of their backs and carrying the scent of copper and red pines. As they climbed higher the great dark mass of the Boreal Sway became visible in the far east.
“Largest forest in the Known Lands,” Addie said softly as they stopped for a moment to comprehend it. “A man could wander for a lifetime and never see the sun.”
Raif tracked the black mass until it disappeared into mist . . . and warned himself not to think about Ash. She was gone. The Sull had claimed her. It did not matter to him if she was somewhere down there. Swigging water from his flask, he turned away.
Behind the clouds, the sun descended. As he and Addie worked their way down into a draw the wind died and temperature dropped. By the time they reached the creek, sleet had turned to snow. Dogwood canes and winter-killed thistles choked the banks. A trickle of water darkened the rocks. Something dead—a fox or a fisher—lay eviscerated and partly eaten midstream.
“Wolf-kill,” Addie said, turning the carcass’s head with his stick. “It’ll be as much about territory as meat.”
Raif nodded, and headed upstream. There didn’t seem any place to rest his thoughts. Ash, the Maimed Men, the lamb brothers, even the wolf kill: everything seemed like a warning.
Pushing forward, he opened up a space between him and Addie Gunn. Last night’s tremor had felled shallow-rooted pines along the bank and Raif clambered over them. The sword cross-harnessed against his back kept striking his left shoulder and right hip. Its weight didn’t bother him, but its length was becoming a problem. Sull warriors had special harnesses for their weapons, ones that mounted swords higher on the shoulder so their crosshilts were parallel to the shoulder blade. Raif guessed he would need a similar rig. Clan
blades were rarely over four and a half feet in length and most were carried at the waist.
That was another thing: He’d have to learn how to use it. The sword was a full two-hander. Hailsmen armed themselves with hatchets and one-handed blades. Wielding Loss would require skills rarely practiced by clan. Grinding and refitting it would also take skills unknown at Blackhail. Someone would have to take a chisel to the rusticles that had grown from the crosshilts and grind the jagged metal left behind. Raif couldn’t imagine the repairs would make for a pretty sight. A grinding that deep would scar the blade. Still, there was something in him that wanted to see what lay beneath the canker. This sword that had belonged to a friend of his, Raven Lord, the man without a name.
Spying the black shadow of an undercut, Raif slowed to investigate. Water had flowed with force here and a broad seam of sandstone had been carved into a hollow. Crouching, he edged his way into the opening. The cave was shallow and smelled of muskrat. Iridescent bird feathers were half-buried in the gravel floor. An abandoned nest still contained pieces of eggshell and puffs of down. Except for a small mosquito pool at the rear, the cave was dry. Deciding there was enough space for him and Addie to spend the night, Raif backed out.
While he waited for the cragsman, he dragged one of the fallen pines downstream and jammed it against the cave entrance.
“Won’t stop the wolves,” Addie warned as he approached.
With no fire to build, camp preparations were sparse. Unable to forgo the habit of tea, Addie filled his pot with cold water, crushed some herbs into it and prepared for a long wait. Raif untied his bedroll and laid it parallel to the cave entrance, leaving the low-ceilinged rear to Addie. The cragsman argued the point, but Raif shook his head. If anything came for them in the night, it would have to deal with Raif Sevrance first.