A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  “What say you, Raif? You think me incapable of walking on my own two feet?” Although Ash made both her eyes and her face strong as she spoke, it wasn’t nearly enough.

  He loved that she had tried, though. Crouching down, he felt for her hand through the blanket. “I know how capable you are of walking, but it would ease my mind if you rode.” He waited until she nodded before giving his answer to the Sull.

  “So it is settled.” Ark Veinsplitter’s face was grim. “What say you, Naysayer? Is two days’ hard travel enough to reach the kith?”

  “Nay,” Mal Naysayer said. “More like three.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Marafice One Eye

  So the Halfman is gone?”

  “Yes, and God and the devil help him if he ever returns.”

  “Are you sure he murdered Hood?”

  “Do not question me like one of your flunkies, Surlord. I know what I saw. Seven dead men cannot slit a live one’s throat.”

  Penthero Iss studied the Protector General of the Rive Watch carefully as they walked side by side in the black limestone vault below the Cask. Something would have to be done about his eye. He had been back only one full day, yet already the whispers had started. Marafice One Eye, they called him now. It was not a sight to warm a mother’s heart; the spur he had fallen on had punctured his left eyeball and raised great welts of flesh in a sunburst around the socket. Little doctoring had been done, and Iss suspected that the Knife had simply plucked out the deflated eyeball, pressed his fist into the cavity to staunch the bleeding, doused the entire thing with alcohol, and then got thoroughly and disgustingly drunk. Iss smiled faintly as he stepped into shadow. This would certainly add to the Knife’s reputation. The Protector General of the Rive Watch might become a legend yet.

  Marafice Eye had returned from Ganmiddich alone, telling a tale of how Asarhia had blasted his sept with sorcery in the slate fields below Ganmiddich Pass. All the sept had died, their spines snapped like sticks, their ribs smashed to pieces and driven like nails into their hearts. Marafice Eye claimed that although he was flung with equal force to the others, the soft body of one of his brothers-in-the-watch broke his fall. Regrettably, that brother’s boots had been kitted with steel spurs.

  “I will not be sent on any more of your petty errands, Surlord. If you want that cursed daughter of yours brought back find another fool to do it.”

  Penthero Iss nodded. It was obvious now that no one could get near Asarhia until she reached. Better to wait until it was done and collect her then. Besides, he needed his Knife here, with him. “You know the Master of Ille Glaive has doubled the number of his Tear Guard, and has turned no Forsworn from his gates all winter?”

  The Knife grunted. “He swells his numbers, as all the Mountain Cities do. The clanholds at war is a tempting target to one and all.”

  “No doubt. But if anyone is going to make first claim upon the southern clans, it will be the armies and grangelords of Spire Vanis. Not the Master of the City on the Lake.”

  “There is good land beyond the Bitter Hills. Swift rivers. Fine grazing. Roundhouses with proper battlements and defenses, not like those stone turds they build up north.”

  So the Knife had liked what he had seen of Ganmiddich. Perhaps the journey north hadn’t been an utter failure after all. Penthero Iss came to a halt by a limestone column carved with the image of a three-headed warhorse impaled upon a spire and turned to look the Knife in his one remaining eye. “A dozen grangelords are massing armies as we speak. Lord of the Straw Granges, Lord of Almsgate, and the Lady of the East Granges and her son the White-hog are just a few who have been calling their hideclads to arms. They see the time coming when they will ride north and claim portions of the clanholds for themselves.”

  “Lord of the Straw Granges! That fool couldn’t piss out of his own bed, let alone lead an army north.” Marafice Eye punched the column with the heel of his hand. “And as for that tub of lard Ballon Troak, who now styles himself Lord of Almsgate . . .” Words failed the Knife, and he punched the column again. “I’d sooner follow the bitch of the East Granges into battle. At least she knows how to ride a man then leave him for dead.”

  Penthero Iss smiled thinly. Marafice Eye’s assessment of the three grangelords might be crude, but it was entirely true. He was clever in low ways, the Knife. It was easy to forget that. “Whatever their faults may be, meekness isn’t one of them. They want land. All the grangelords do. They have sons and fosterlings and bastards and nephews, and the cityhold of Spire Vanis is hemmed in by mountains and barren rocks. North is the only way to expand. North, into those fat border clans.”

  Aware that his voice was growing louder, Iss worked to control it. The thick walls of the Blackvault created echoes, and broken bits of his own words floated back. “The world is about to change, Knife. Land will be won and lost. A thousand years ago Haldor Hews rode out with a warhost and claimed the ranging ground south of the Spill and all land west of the Skagway. A thousand years before that Theron Pengaron marched north across the Ranges and founded the city where we stand today. Now another thousand years have passed, and it’s time to take more. War is coming, make no mistake about it. Houses and reputations will be made. Men will be made. Fortunes will be brought home and divided amongst brothers and kin. And the only question that really matters is, Will Spire Vanis move first to claim her portion, or will we wait until it’s too late and let the Glaive, the Star, and the Vor take it all?”

  Iss met eyes with Marafice Eye. “What say you, Knife? It’s been a hundred years since an army rode forth from Spire Vanis. The grangelords will raise their own forces and carry their own banners, but one man alone must lead them.” He stopped there, knowing he had said enough. It was always better to leave a man enough room to reason things out on his own.

  Marafice Eye’s face was hideous in the candlelight. His missing eye needed stitching, and weeks of white-weather travel had turned his skin to hide. Earlier Iss had detected a limp, and even now, as the Knife stood silent and still, he clearly favored his right leg. When he spoke his voice was harsh. “So you would give me an army, Surlord? Send me to wet-nurse the grangelords and their armies and claim land in the names of their soft-arsed sons?”

  Iss shook his head. “You will ride at the head of all armies. First claims and first plunder will be yours.”

  “Not enough, Surlord. If I wanted land, don’t you think I would have armed myself and taken some by now?”

  “But what of your brothers-in-the-watch? Would they turn such an offer down? Clan land and clan plunder would mean riches to them.”

  That made him think. It wasn’t as easy to turn down wealth for his sworn brothers as it was for himself. The Knife was deeply loyal to his men. Just this morning, the first thing he had done upon entering the fortress was walk to the Red Forge and tell his brothers-in-the-watch how he had lost eight of their men. Fool that he was, he had brought back all the dead men’s weapons, and they had fired up the forge then and there. The mercury-treated metal was cooling even as they spoke. New swords had been cast. The refiring deepened the red taint and set the memories of brothers lost in steel. It was the closest the Rive Watch came to belief.

  “Ganmiddich is fine land,” Iss murmured, echoing the Knife’s own words. “They say in spring the hunting is so good that a man just has to ride with his spear sticking out, and elk and deer simply run themselves upon the tip.”

  Marafice Eye snorted. Still, Iss could see the gleam of interest in his one blue eye. “Who would watch the city if the Rive Watch rode to war?”

  Careful now, Iss reminded himself. “He who leads an army must also raise one. Almstown must be smashed. Able bodies must be recruited and trained. Every man in this city who can fight must be made to do so. The grangelords can do only so much. They are known and feared only in their granges. You, Knife, are known from Wrathgate to Vaingate and the grangeholds beyond. You could raise an army and a safekeeping force single-handed.”

 
“The Rive Watch has defended the city and the surlord for twelve hundred years.”

  “The Rive Watch was birthed in war. Thomas Mar forged the first red swords with the blood of his brothers-in-arms. When he and his last twelve men took them up, they wrested the northern passage from Ille Glaive.”

  Marafice Eye could not deny it. Nor could he deny that it was the Rive Watch who smashed the city of High Rood, slaying the settlers and masons who had come from the Soft Lands to build a rival to Spire Vanis one hundred leagues to the east. The Rive Watch rode forth when it suited them; both Iss and the Knife knew it. And the only question that now remained was, Would they ride forth with Marafice Eye come spring?

  Iss needed them. The grangelords and their hideclads were not enough to take on the clans. Oh, they thought they were, with their swords of patterned steel and their horses bred as tough and ugly as moose stags, but the Surlord knew differently. Without a hard man behind them, they would crumble as easily as oatcakes in the hands of a child. “What say you, Knife? Will you lead the army north to crush the clans?”

  “My men will be given first claim on all land?”

  “And titles of grangelords as soon as roofs are raised over land held in their names.”

  The Knife stroked the dagger at his belt, his small lips pressed so tightly together that it hardly looked as if he had a mouth at all. “There is risk here, Surlord.”

  “Name what else you would have.”

  “Your title when you’re dead and gone.”

  If the branch of candles lighting the Blackvault had been nearer to the two men, the Knife would have seen Iss’ pupils shrink to specks. Always there was someone who wanted his place. It wasn’t enough to be surlord, not when any man with land and power could arm himself and unman you. Here, in this very chamber, Connad Hews had been held captive for thirty days of his hundred-day rule. His brother Rannock had stormed the fortress to free him, but he’d come seven hours too late. Trant Gryphon had already put a broadblade through his heart. Hews of the Hundred Days they called him now. And Penthero Iss could name a dozen other surlords who had ruled less than a year.

  It was a thought that brought him no peace. Quietly he said, “No surlord can name his own successor; you know that as well as any man. I had to seize power from Borhis Horgo. If you want power, you must seize it yourself.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, Surlord.” Marafice Eye was suddenly close, his dead socket inches from Iss’ face. “I have lost three septs to your daughter. Three septs. One eye. And the skin off my ankle and foot. There’s witchery here, and there’s more to come—I can smell it like a dog on a bitch. I know you, Penthero Iss, and I know you’re clever enough to take the clanholds with or without me, but I also know your interest doesn’t end with the clans. You have those pale, drowned-man’s hands of yours in meals bloodier than clanmeat. And I don’t want to find myself in a position where me and my men are sent forth to battle only to be abandoned when a brighter prize catches your eye.”

  He was so close to the truth, Iss wondered if losing an eye hadn’t endowed him with second sight. Clanholds first, Sull second: That had always been the plan. Strike hard while their attention was diverted. Strike hard, claim land for Spire Vanis . . . and a crown for himself. Surlord wasn’t enough. He hadn’t come this far, pulled himself up from farmer’s son to ruler, spent ten years as a grangelord’s fosterling, put to work as a retainer rather than the kin that he was, then another twelve years in the Watch, working his way up, always up, until Borhis Horgo named him Protector General and made him his right hand, to have it all taken away from him by some usurper with a blade. He had worked too hard and planned too long for that.

  Keeping his face still, he said, “You are crucial to me in all things, Knife. As I rise so do you.”

  “Name me as your successor.”

  “If I did it would mean nothing. A surlord must have the support of the Rive Watch and the grangelords. If I named you as my successor, the grangelords would laugh at both of us. ‘Who do Iss and the Knife think they are,’ they would say, ‘the Spire King and his son?’ ”

  “They say the Lord of Trance Vor has taken to calling himself the Vor King.”

  “Yes, and they also say his brain is addled with ivysh and he takes pleasure in little boys.”

  Marafice Eye sneered. “I want to be named, Surlord. It’s my business if the grangelords laugh or plot death behind my back. Today they think of me only as your creature, your Knife. Name me as your successor, and before this war is over I’ll make them think again.”

  Iss stepped back from Marafice Eye. He reeked of meat and horses, and he suddenly seemed dangerous in the way that wounded animals were. The journey home had taken eleven days. Eleven days alone with a blind and stinking eye and the memory of eight men’s deaths. Iss shivered. He did not like this new and subtle Knife. What he proposed was unheard of—a surlord naming his own successor—but Iss could understand the Knife’s motives and even recognize the sense behind them.

  Marafice Eye was nothing to the grangelords, a cutthroat with a red-tainted sword. He was not born to land as they were; he was a hog butcher’s son who spoke with the words and accent of Hoargate. While grangelords’ sons were learning swordplay in their wind-sheltered courtyards, Marafice Eye was learning to cut the hands off anyone who stole sausages or pork belly from the front of his father’s shop. He had joined the Rive Watch when he was fourteen, after his father began to suspect that not all the thieves his son maimed had actually thieved. Marafice Eye would have their hands for just a look.

  As far as Iss knew, the Knife had spent his first three years in the Watch being bullied in the usual brutal way. Perhaps it had done him some good: Iss did not know. What he did know was that by the time the Knife turned seventeen he had won himself the right to wear the red-tainted sword. Marafice Eye, a hog butcher’s son from Hoargate, wearing the red alongside grangelords’ bastards and third sons.

  Iss had always assumed that the Knife had joined the Rive Watch thinking he would become one of the Lower Watch: those men who were bound without oaths and could not wear the red and patrolled only those parts of the city where no one but the poor and starving lived. Now Iss found himself wondering if ambition hadn’t been within the Knife from the start.

  As Protector General he had risen as high any baseborn man could. Now, by publicly declaring his intent to become surlord, he sought to take the final step. Oh, he knew the grangelords would be incensed—they’d shake their well-manicured fists and swear they’d never accept a commoner as a surlord—but that wasn’t really the point. Slowly he was going to get them accustomed to the idea. In five years’ time what had once seemed so outrageous would have mellowed to plain fact: So Marafice Eye wants to become surlord . . . well, even Iss himself thinks him fit for it.

  Iss breathed thinly. There was gain here, but danger also. Your title when you’re dead and gone, the Knife had said. Yet would he be content to wait that long? It was easy to imagine him seizing control of Mask Fortress, sealing the Cask, and taking his surlord’s life. The Rive Watch was his and his alone; if he commanded them to march through the Want in midwinter, they would do it. And yet . . . The Knife was no fool. He needed legitimacy, and he would not get that by murdering his surlord. He needed time to remake himself as grangelord and warlord, and leading Spire Vanis to victory against the clans would be half of it. Iss’ resolve stiffened. Far better to have Marafice Eye close, let him have a vested interest in this war—he would fight better and longer for it—and later, when it was over and done . . . well, who could say what might become of a general on his long march home? The Northern Territories were about to become an extremely dangerous place.

  Comforted by that thought, Iss said, “You do know you will have to acquire yourself a grangedom by fair means or foul?”

  The Knife shrugged. “There’s a lot of ugly grangelords’ daughters out there.” His mouth was too narrow for grinning, but he managed a fair semblanc
e of a leer. “Or mayhap I’ll find some old fart willing to foster me, just as you did when you first came to the Vanis. I heard tell that the land you were born to was some sodden piece of farmland on the poor side of the Vor, not some fine castle-held estate.”

  Iss ignored the gibe. Land was land, and his father may have been a farmer, but his great-grandfather had been born Lord of the Sundered Granges. There was a world of difference between Marafice Eye and himself, and if the Knife didn’t know that, then he was a fool. No commonborn man had ever ruled Spire Vanis. Never had. Never would.

  Stepping toward the candle branch, Iss turned so the light limned his shoulders and shone through his fingertips and hair. “Tomorrow I will begin spreading the word that I see you as my natural successor. My word alone cannot make a surlord of you, but I will do what I can to change minds. In return you will form an army for me and lead the Rive Watch and the grangelords north.”

  Marafice Eye nodded. “’Tis agreed.”

  Iss looked at the Knife’s ruined face and trembled at what he had done.

  The Crouching Maiden crouched in the shadows at the rear of the house. It was a pleasant building, its faded yellow stonework glowing warmly in the noonday sun. The wind-damaged chimney stack leaked smoke near the base, and all the surrounding roof snow had turned black with soot and ash.

  The door and windows were especially interesting to the maiden, for while first glance showed the usual oak and basswood frames and rusted iron latches, second and third glances revealed other details to the eye. The windows were equipped with two sets of shutters, and although the inner ones had been painted in the same dark color as pitch-soaked wood and certainly looked like wood from a distance, they had the smooth texture of cast iron. Similarly, the door itself was a great hunk of weathered and peeling oak that apparently hung on two horse-head hinges that were crusted with black rot. Magdalena had been studying the door for quite a while and had come to admire the subtle untruth of the thing. It would take more than two rusted pot-iron hinges to support a block of oak a foot thick.