Marafice eye spooned the jellied eel into his mouth and swallowed. Twice. Sweet mother of all beasts, how did these grangelords do it? Sitting around in their stiff silks and itchy collars, sipping wine as tart as acid and chewing fish parts? Any beggar in Hell’s Town could eat better than this: beer and sausage, beer and pork pie—and they could slouch in loose linens as they did it. Frowning in disgust, Marafice pushed away his plate and leaned back in his chair.

The throne.

“Is my lordship displeased with the food?” The question came from Marilla Theron, Lady of the Salt Mine Granges. Her husband, Philip, was hosting this feast in the newly cleared space of the quad. Red and gold canopies had been erected overhead and long oak tables had been laid out in a giant U. Marafice sat at the head of this construction, elevated a foot above everyone else on a dais of gilded wood. There was no room underneath the table for his knees and he sat with his thighs and weaponry exposed, on level with the tabletop and its unappetizing array of food. Some fool had made a three-foot-tall killhound out of cherries and turkey feathers, and there was a smoking dragon formed from salmon that was beginning to attract the flies.

It was not pleasant being here, with the sun losing power in the west and sharp mountain winds blowing through the two-hundred-foot gap in the wall. The Splinter, the tallest tower in the North, was gone, fallen, and it had taken part of the south ward and curtain wall with it. For the first time in two thousand years the city of Spire Vanis was not securely walled. And here were five dozen of the most powerful grangelords in Spire Vanis, making merry by the timber scaffolding and rubble heaps, as carpenters hammered nails and raised joists and laborers wheeled away carts loaded with granite and dust.

Bizarre did not begin to describe it. High atop one of the hills of fallen stone, a group of masons were sitting on tarps, gnawing on chicken bones and gawking at the spectacle below them. Marafice imagined he could feel their scorn. It made him hot and grumpy.

“The food, my lord?” persisted the unlovely boniness that was Marilla Theron. “Is it not to your liking?”

“Yes,” Marafice growled. And then, just to make sure, “No.”

He always found himself flustered around highborn women. He suspected they were looking down on him, and if the glance Marilla Theron shared with her long-nosed sister Margo was anything to go by, he was right. These women had nothing to do all day, save dress themselves in staggering amounts of jewels and silk and gossip about the shortcomings of men. At least working women worked.

Laughter drifting down from the masons was suddenly too much for Marafice and he flung down his handcloth and stood. He’d been surlord for twenty days now and he still wasn’t used to it: stand and everyone else followed suit.

So much gold glittered as the grangelords and their wives rose, Marafice was temporarily blinded. When his eye cleared he saw his handcloth had landed on the table, in a bowl of gravy and… something. The cloth turned brown as it soaked up the sauce.

Marafice frowned harder. “Sit. Eat,” he commanded the party, hearing the rise in his voice but powerless to stop it. “I thank our friend the Lord of the Salt Mine Granges for this fine supper. Feast,” he corrected himself. Suspecting a compliment was called for, he cast his mind for one and then corrected himself again. “Eye-boggling feast.” People tittered. Marafice stepped back. His left heel struck his chair leg and it toppled from the dais with a loud crack. Heat rushed to his face.

“I’m off.”

Snickering followed him as he walked across the open ground of the quad. I’m off. Where was his brain? Surlords didn’t say I’m off. Surlords said farewell and good tidings and blessings to you and your sons.

I’m off.

Truer words had not been said. Marafice Eye, Surlord of Spire Vanis, Rive Watch Keeper of Mask Fortress, and Master of the Four Gates was seriously off. His surlording skills were wanting and his patience was worn as thin as those fancy wafers that dowagers ate instead of bread. How had Iss managed to do it? Put up with all the cronying and flattery? The hours of ceremony, the feasts, banquets, balls, parades?

Reaching the entrance to the east ward, Marafice accepted the salutes of the sentries stationed by the gate. “I see you made ten years,” he said to Flukey Brown, the older of the two brothers-in-the-watch. Flukey’s bloodred cloak was fastened with a killhound brooch mounted with chips of jet to represent eyes. The jet chips were the mark of ten-year service. Another ten and they would be replaced with rubies.

Flukey did not raise his gaze to his surlord as he pushed back the door. “Aye, sir.”

Marafice studied him. He and Flukey had ridden side by side during the Hound’s Mire campaign. At the end of the daylong pitched battle, it had been he and Flukey who had ridden through the killing field dealing mercy to fatally wounded brothers-in-the-watch. Now the man wouldn’t look at him.

Get used to it.

Ducking under Flukey’s arm, Marafice entered Mask Fortress.

No matter how often the servants swept they couldn’t get rid of the dust. A shear of white powder had settled on the polished granite floor in the places where men and servants rarely stepped. The corridor leading to the Red Forge was clean, and not for the first time Marafice had to resist the urge to take it. That was his old stalking ground—the Rive Watch barracks—and the desire to head there for ale and the silent camaraderie of fighting men was strong. There’d be a big fire, overcooked ham and beans and small coin gambling. Old-timers would be passed out on the rear benches and new recruits would be heaping their plates high, unaccustomed to the luxury of free mess. God, he missed it. Now it was impossible for him to go there without upsetting the peace. Overnight he’d gone from being a fellow brother-in-the-watch, to an intruder. When a surlord entered a room soldiers stood.

And kept standing until you left.

Turning a sharp right he headed across the dust field to the Cask. It was the principal fortified structure in the fortress—and therefore the entire city of Spire Vanis—and it housed the surlord’s official and private quarters. The walls were twenty feet thick at the base. Inside it was as cool and quiet as a mountain cave. The Splinter’s collapse had damaged the two other standing towers, cracking masonry, collapsing roofs and destroying struts, but the Cask had remained untouched. It was where Roland Stornoway had holed up during the first ten days of his regency as he claimed power in his son-in-law’s name.

Marafice pressed a fist into his empty eye socket. Thinking about his father-in-law was not good for his sanity, yet he couldn’t figure out how to avoid it. The man was always there for one thing, wheezing and tap-tapping around the fortress on his canes. One look at the floor and you could see that he’d been here. The cane tips left tiny holes in the dust. Spying them, Marafice comprehended that Stornoway was ahead of him. The Lord of the High Granges had taken the Walk of Bastard Lords toward the surlord’s chambers, and had not returned. Marafice touched the grip of his sword and then slid his hand along the gear belt to the hand knife mounted in the small of his back. If pushed he could draw it left-handed.

The Impaled Beasts of Spire Vanis, grotesquely cast in black iron, flickered in the torchlight as Marafice rounded the hall. Dragons, basilisks, werewolves, serpents, saber-tooth cats, moon snakes and dozens of nameless monsters had been rendered thrashing on sharpened poles. Legend held that the Founding Quarterlords had rid the Spire Valley of fearsome beasts before building the city at its head. Marafice didn’t know about that, but he understood well enough the message of the poles. Spire Vanis was a violent city. Rule it, and be prepared to put on a show. It wasn’t enough that your enemies died. They had to die in agony, in public, screaming your name.

“My lord.”

Caydis Zerbina, Iss’ former hand servant, stepped out of the surlord’s chambers and held open the door. Zerbina had continued his duties since Iss’ death, and Marafice wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Certainly it was good to have someone care for the fancy chains and silks of office, and discreetly bring food and drink and women when necessary, but it was a new and not entirely comfortable experience to have someone serve and anticipate your needs. In the past if he wanted a whore he’d walk to Cunt’s Street and buy one. If his kit needed cleaning he’d clean it. Now he couldn’t leave the fortress without an armed escort, and he had so many ceremonial robes and gewgaws that caring for them would take half of every day. At least Zerbina spared him that.

He was a queer bird though, a brother of the Bone Temple, and you could never tell what he was thinking. His dark brown face with its striking features and high cheekbones remained still as Marafice approached. Long fingers pushed against the ironwood door.

“Is Stornoway in there?” Marafice asked.

Zerbina bowed his head. Mink oil in his hair flashed green.

“How long?”

Twenty, Zerbina mouthed.

“Anyone else?”

No.

Marafice nodded. “Bring me ale… and a fresh cup.”

The servant understood the urgency of this request and departed. It was, Marafice supposed, one of the benefits of inheriting Zerbina. He’d served one surlord; he knew the drill. If Stornoway had spent time alone in the chambers there was no telling what mischief had been done. Food and drink were not the only thing that could be spiked with poison. The vessels that bore them could be tainted too.

Bracing himself for impact, Marafice entered the room.

The first thing to hit him was the scent of burning amber. The fumes made his eye sting and set off tingles of pain in the cavities behind his nose. Knee-high smoke rippled ahead of him as he moved toward the fire. White coal burning in the grate released small, tooth-shaped flames. Roland Stornoway stood in front of them, poking the embers with one of his sticks.

“Has Theron hit you up for cash yet?”

Stornoway did not turn around as he spoke, and Marafice was forced to address the back of his bald head.

“Theron gave a feast. He said nothing about cash.”

The Lord of the High Granges cackled with delight. His small bent back huffed up and down and he had to work to stabilize himself with his canes. “Chair,” he commanded as he wobbled out of control.

Fall and die, old man. Marafice couldn’t explain why he brought the chair anyway. Or maybe he could but it made him feel shame. After a lifetime obeying grangelords the habit was hard to kick. “Here. Sit,” he said, pushing the chair seat into the back of Stornoway’s knees and forcing the man down.

“Not so close to the fire,” Stornoway cried, lashing out with his right cane. The tip was smoking from the fire. It missed Marafice’s shin by half an inch.

Grabbing hold of the seatback, Marafice dragged Stornoway and the chair away from the fireplace. The man weighed less than a bunch of twigs. Roland Stornoway had to be eighty years old. He might have shrunk in size and weight but what remained was so hard and sharp that it seemed far more dangerous than bulk. Marafice was quick to release him.

Father-in-law. Marafice tested the phrase, hoping to find some sense in it. He was married to this man’s daughter. By seizing control of the fortress after Iss’ death, Stornoway had made it possible for Marafice to name himself surlord on his return from the clanholds. Trouble was Stornoway fancied that title himself. It hardly seemed possible—the man was hobbling into his ninth decade—but the truth was in his eyes. A gaze as shrewd and flat as a raptor’s pinned Marafice Eye.

“When a grangelord feasts a surlord it means he wants something. In Philip Theron’s case he’s after cash. He’s broke. He’d been banking on the clanholds campaign to fill his coffers but we all know that ended duck’s arse up.”

Marafice felt at a loss. Stornoway had that effect upon him. The man knew things—personal information about the grangelords that Marafice hadn’t figured out how to discover for himself. “Why didn’t Theron come out and ask me?”

Stornoway answered this with a withering look that said everything about how the grangelords viewed their new surlord, the butcher’s son. “He’ll send a request to your Master of Purse.”

“I won’t allow it. That bastard left us for dead in Ganmiddich, rode right off the field with the rest of them.”

“Yet you managed to swallow his food without choking.”

Thrusting away the words with his fist, Marafice stalked to the far side of the room. High-backed chairs carved from ebony and zebra-wood sat on a rug the size of a bull ring. Behind them a series of tapestries embroidered in red and gold depicted the military triumphs of Spire Vanis. Unframed and crudely nailed to the wall, their edges were curled and fraying. The hind legs of Callan Pengaron’s horse were gone, reduced to dangling thread. Marafice gave its rider another decade at most.

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.”