by J. V. Jones
Marafice Eye was furious. And he’d made the mistake of showing it. Iss was an old hand at these things; knew all about the delicate egos that vied for influence in the city, and knew to expect greater numbers. Any attempt to exclude powerful grangelords from a public procession was doomed from the start to fail. The Knife would have been better served inviting them all along from the beginning—the progress would never have taken on its air of secrecy and exclusivity and hardly anyone would have bothered to turn up—but then, the Knife had much to learn.
Iss was conscious of a falling in his spirits as he headed toward the great iron edifice of Almsgate. The wall was fifteen feet deep here, swelling to accommodate the gate towers. Lead-capped merlons and roofed archers’ roosts protected the walkway, yet Iss himself did not feel fully protected. At his back, at a carefully gauged distance of three feet, walked the Knife, and behind him, out of earshot as custom demanded, walked the eighty or so grangelords and generals who formed the remainder of the progress. Lisereth Hews was in attendance, mother to the Whitehog and the only woman in the party. Iss had spied her earlier, dressed in the white and silver of House Hews, her ermine cloak paler than the limestone she walked on, her ungloved fingers glittering with a dozen surlords’ rings. She had been daughter to the surlord Rannock Hews and now fancied being mother to one too. Many counted her a beauty, with her pale green eyes and unlined skin. Iss counted her dangerous. Her father had been slain before her eyes in Hound’s Mire. She knew what it took to make a surlord.
It was only a matter of time before she sent her assassins out.
Briefly, Iss turned his head and acknowledged her with a small bow. She returned the gesture in kind, her own bow displaying the proper degree of genuflection even though her gaze never dropped once from his. House Hews was ever subtle in its defiance.
“Lady of the Eastern Ranges,” he addressed her on a whim. “Walk with us.” Turning his back, he did not wait to hear her acknowledgment. The brisk swishing of her silks and furs told him how eager she was to be included in the surlord’s party.
Marafice Eye was not gentle around women, and he made no courtly show of welcome, nor did he give up his place for her, forcing the lady to walk around him to draw abreast of the surlord. She was a little breathless when she reached him. The morning light shone directly on her face, showing Iss that while her many admirers were wrong about her unlined complexion, they were right about her eyes. They were green like a cat’s.
“I trust Garric is well?” he said. “I notice he’s not among us this morning.”
Lisereth Hews made a small gesture toward the encampment. “My son has duties with his hideclads. He leads the cavalry drills at dawn.”
Her pride was unmistakable. Iss chose to inflame it. “I’ve heard he’s begun styling himself the Whitehog, after his great-grandfather. It’s gratifying to see a young man honor his ancestors. Let us hope their fates do not befall him.”
Lisereth Hews stiffened. Diamonds woven into her hair-veil threw sparks. “My ancestors’ fates have never been less than glorious. House Hews has given rise to forty-seven surlords. And you are mistaken, Surlord, if you imagine I would discourage my son from following them.”
Iss raised an eyebrow. Lisereth Hews was a clever woman, but she had the unhappy habit of turning shrill when defending her son, and it was remarkably easy to goad her. “My dear lady. I make no mistakes regarding your ambitions, you can depend upon it.” With a flick of his wrist he dismissed her, walking briskly forward with the Knife so that she stood alone on the limestone until the larger company met her.
Almost it was a relief to have her intentions out in the open.
Ahead lay the first of the northern gate towers, drum-shaped donjons built to house a hundred men. The wall was five storeys high here, but the towers were higher by another three storeys, and they dwarfed the gate they warded. Almsgate was cast from pure clannish iron, and no device had ever been built that could raise it. Manpower was needed. Two hundred brothers-in-the-watch raised it every morning on ropes as thick as a child’s thigh. When it was dropped at night the sound of iron hitting iron could be heard as far away as the Quartercourts. Whores timed their shifts to it, and young men tested their manhood beneath it, standing in the gate trough until the very moment the warden called the drop. A gold coin left in the trough as the gate fell would be flattened to the thinness of parchment and stamped with the impressions of gate bolts. It was legal tender, and highly regarded, and many contracts within the city stipulated payment by Almsgold.
Iss thought the gate ugly and barbaric, ill fitted to the creamy limestone walls it was set within. Still, he had to admit its efficacy. Not once in the thousand years since its forging had an invading army breached it.
Pausing by the entrance to the western donjon, Iss made a show of asking his Knife questions regarding the army arrayed below, allowing Marafice Eye the chance to point and gesture and demonstrate his command. It was part of their deal. Lead an army for me, Iss had said at midwinter in the Blackvault. And in return I’ll name you as my successor. It was far too early for such a reckless declaration—even Marafice Eye would admit that—yet small things such as this parley led toward it. Eighty of the most powerful men in the city stood watch as the surlord paid deference to his Knife.
Marafice Eye was aware of it, but his mind was a soldier’s mind, and he was soon engrossed in the details of wagon trains and supplies. “We’ll need provisions along the way,” he said, his huge dog hands pushing northward. “The northern granges are wary of our passage. I’ve had Ballon Troak and Mallister Gryphon raising hell over it, threatening to withdraw their hideclads if we pass through either of their granges. Mother of bitches. They fight me at every turn.”
They’re playing a game with you, Iss thought to say but didn’t. This is about compensation, nothing more. Gold would solve it; that or the promise of first spoils on some lesser roundhouse like Harkness. It was an unusual thing, this raising of a surlord, and Iss was unsure how to accomplish it. There were benefits—he could not deny it. Marafice Eye was the most feared man in Spire Vanis, his name spoken with awe on the streets and with outrage in the granges. If a man counted on being Surlord for life he needed such a second at his back. But there were dangers, too. How long would Marafice Eye be content to wait for his prize? Butcher-bred in Hoargate, he had the kind of hard, practical ambition that seldom overlooked chances. He’d move at the first smell of blood. They all would. Lisereth Hews and her son the Whitehog, the Forsworn who’d been expelled from the city since Borhis Horgo’s death, John Rullion and his hard-liners, and the ancient houses of Crieff, Gryphon, Stornoway, Pengaron and Mar.
Iss shuddered, though cloaked in velvet-lined vair the winds from the mountain barely touched him. It moved a man strangely to contemplate his own death. The absurdity of favoring one candidate for murder over another did not diminish the fear.
Nodding to the gate warden, Iss indicated his intent to enter the donjon. From his years of service in the Rive Watch he knew the city’s gate towers well. They were damp and cold, the stairs and ways built narrow to exclude the passage of more than one man. The grangelords would have to pick up their heavy cloaks and travel in single file. Let them wonder as they rounded dark corners if an assassin was waiting in the shadows on the other side. That would be the closest most would get to becoming Surlord, that knowing of a surlord’s fear.
Marafice Eye commanded the gate towers and knew all about their dangers. Without waiting for his surlord’s permission, he stepped to the head of the party, his sword hand descending to the hilt of his red blade, his voice barking a command to the warden. The warden took possession of the Knife’s blackened birdhelm, then ran ahead to arrange the firing of torches.
Shouted calls to order accompanied the surlord’s entrance. Inside the donjon the temperature and light level dropped. The smell of old rankness, of fluids spilled by torture and cog grease long soured, sweated from the stones like groundwater. Iss descended sw
iftly, the anxious murmurs of grangelords falling soft upon his ears.
When Iss reached ground level Marafice Eye stood waiting by the donjon’s sole entrance, a doorway so narrow that a large man like the Knife had to face side on to enter. A sept of sworn brothers flanked him.
“Surlord,” he said formally, his gaze flicking over Iss’s shoulder to check that they were alone and that the rest of the party still straggled far behind. “I present your personal guard. Good men, picked by my own hand. Sworn to protect you in my absence.”
A personal guard? What mischief is this? Iss knew better than to show surprise. Coolly, he inspected the sept, taking his time to note their weapons and their faces. They were big men, cloaked in black rather than their dress reds, their killhound brooches set with ruby eyes denoting ten-year service. Iss recognized two of them. Axal Foss was known as the Knighthunter, for the great number of Forsworn he’d slaughtered during—and after—the Expulsions. He was a veteran of twenty years, and had risen to the rank of Captain Protector. The other man was Styven Dalway, blond and handsome and much admired by grange-bred ladies. Iss had recruited him in Almstown sixteen years earlier after seeing him fight singlehanded against the King of Pimps and two of his cronies. Apparently, Dalway’s sister was a seasoned whore who’d failed to pay her cut to Edo Shrike, the self-styled King of Pimps, and the King of Pimps had seen her flogged for it. Dalway had killed him on the Street of the Five Traitors with half of Almstown watching.
Hearing the footfalls of the remainder of the progress approaching, Iss ordered the sworn brothers at ease. “Knife,” he commanded, slipping through the portal and into the gate court beyond. “Attend me.”
Almstown was famous for its markets, and the open area south of the gate was bustling with activity as merchants set down tables and rolled out canvas for the day’s business. Brazier men were lighting their grills, setting sausages and knuckles of pork to char in their own fat. A steady stream of mule-drawn carts was passing beneath the gate, bearing staples of grain and winter roots from the northern granges, while dark-skinned acolytes of the Bone Temple hefted baskets of forced plums and honey melons from the temple’s heated garden. All slowed their labors to watch the surlord and the Knife.
“So you’d see me thrice-guarded whilst you attend the clans?” Iss turned on Marafice Eye, caring little if his voice rose. “I already possess an honor guard of sworn brothers and a company of darkcloaks. Tell me, would you set guards to watch my guards?”
The Knife shrugged his massive shoulders. “I would see you alive on my return, Surlord. No more.”
Iss breathed deeply. The Knife spoke hard and true. The worst that could happen for Marafice Eye would be an assassination in his absence. Spire Vanis would not wait on his return. By the time word reached him in the clanholds a new surlord would be made. What then for the Knife? New surlords were full of fear; they had to move to smash their rivals. The Knife would find himself shut out of the city. Or worse. He might never make it back to Spire Vanis alive.
Iss stepped farther into the market square, making space for the crush of grangelords and brothers-in-the-watch that was rapidly assembling behind him. On his movement the sept of sworn brothers rushed forward into the crowd, clearing a space of fifty feet around their charge. Iss almost smiled. So the Knife would keep his surlord alive until he was ready to kill him. Absurdity heaped on absurdity. But then, what would one expect from a city founded by bastard lords?
“The sons of many granges ride north with you,” Iss said as the Knife drew level with him. “It is a good thing to take one’s rivals to war.”
Marafice Eye grunted. “Good for both of us, Surlord.”
Iss could not deny it. Looking south across the city toward the boiling mists of Mount Slain, he said, “Keep the Whitehog close on the journey.”
“I plan to.” Marafice Eye ran a hand across the hollow socket that was his left eye. It pained him some, Iss had heard, yet he refused to take anything for it. “I’d sooner watch the son than the dam.”
Then you are a fool, Iss thought with some satisfaction. Marafice Eye was a butcher’s son, bred in the stinking shanties of Hoargate. His taste in women ran low. He was comfortable amongst maids, whores and alewives. He didn’t know how to act around grange-bred beauties. And he didn’t know how to gauge them. Iss knew the son to be more dangerous than the mother: Lisereth Hews ran hot and cold and seldom hid her emotions; Garric Hews ran only cold. Yet the Knife could not see that. He saw Lisereth Hews’s arrogance and finery and knife-edged tongue. He saw and felt threatened by them.
“Knife,” Iss commanded, feeling at last a lightening of his spirits. “Send for the horses. This progress has ended.”
While he waited for the horses to be led into the gate court, Iss called for his Master of Purse. Behind him he was aware of the grangelords growing agitated and impatient. They couldn’t send for their own mounts until their surlord was under way and they felt their lack of dignity keenly. Mallister Gryphon, Lord of the Spire Granges, was fuming. He’d tried to move forward out of the crush, only to have Axal Foss restrain him with an unweaponed hand. Lisereth Hews had managed to spirit five of her personal hideclads into the fray, and though she wasn’t unwise enough to have them escort her from the gate, she used them to clear the area immediately before her, so that she stood arrayed in all her House Hews finery for every merchant in Almsgate to behold.
Iss admired her nerve. Taking a bag of mixed coin from his Master of Purse, he stole the merchants’ attention from her.
“Gentlemen traders,” he addressed them, using the skills of voice he’d honed under Borhis Horgo. “I’ve heard tell the goods sold in Almsgate Market are the best to be had in the city. I would sample such excellence myself. Ready a basket of your finest wares, and my Master of Purse will purchase them in my name and bear them south to the fortress.”
An excited murmur rippled through the marketplace as merchants and traders reckoned the profit from this unexpected boon. Iss loosed the purse’s drawstring, allowing the gold and silver coin to catch the light.
“And you’ll pay us fair value?” shouted a suspicious vintner near the front.
“A silver over,” Iss replied, throwing the purse back to its master.
It was delicious to ride through Almsgate to the accompaniment of so much cheering. At his side, mounted on his massive black destrier trapped with Rive Watch red, Marafice Eye watched and learned. As they turned their horses onto the wide expanse of the Spireway, he said, “That was nicely done, Surlord. They’ll love you better for buying their wares than they would if you’d given them charity.”
Iss nodded. Sometimes he didn’t know if he was teaching the Knife or warning him.
The Spireway was the widest thoroughfare in the city, running north to south, from Almsgate to the Quartercourts. In the time of the Bastard Lords it had been known as the Street of Spikes, for traitors and petty thieves alike had been impaled on iron shafts along its three-league length. Later surlords had enlarged and improved it, commissioning decorative arches and stone statues and private limestone palaces to house their whores, their bastards, their gold. Theric Hews had excavated the great stone warrior’s pit that lay at the halfway mark, and Halder the Provider had built a folly of mock canals and sunken gardens that froze to an icesheet every year until spring. Still. Not even he had dared remove the spikes. The Impaled Beasts were the war badge of Spire Vanis. This city had been built on stakes and spikes and poles.
Iss absently counted the iron shafts as he rode. Black and ugly, they were, some broken by frost and rust, others tied with the red ribbons of marriage banns, announcing to anyone who cared to look that a marriage between two parties was taking place, and any objections or prior claims should be lodged with the officiating priest. It was a popular outing on holy days to travel from spike to spike, reading the ribbons. Every betrothed couple in the city had to publish banns, and it was counted a fine game to judge highborn marriages from lowborn solely from t
he quality of ribbon used.
Shifting in his saddle so he could look at Marafice Eye, Iss said, “It’s time you were wed, Knife. The man who would be Surlord needs a grange.”
Marafice Eye made a noise. Iss took it as a sign that he would listen.
“You cannot hope to rule this city without the grangelords. Yes, you could take the power, but could you keep it? The grangelords control the trade routes. They grow the grain and raise the livestock. You could fling open the gates but nothing would come in. The city would starve. Then where would your brothers-in-the-watch be? You could send them out against the granges, but they’d be fighting hideclads on their home ground. And whilst you’re waiting to hear news of battles and sieges, Almstown and Hoargate would riot. And would they riot against the grangelords? No. Because the grangelords would be holed up in their granges, well out of the city.”
Reaching the end of the Spireway, Iss guided his gelding east along the muddy course of wells and mineral springs that bubbled up from Mount Slain and was known as Water Street. An uneasy mix of bathhouses, tanneries and slaughterhouses made use of the natural springs, and the sept of sworn brothers swept wide as Iss and Knife rode through. The rising sun was just passing behind Mount Slain as it did every morning in winter, providing a false dusk for the short time it took to clear the peak. Iss tugged soft deerskin gloves from his belt and slid them on.
