A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (51 page)

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 the 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.

“You need to control a grange, Knife. And the only way to do so is to marry into one. Wed a grangelord’s daughter and you become one of them. Fight them from the inside. That way they’ll respect as well as fear you.”

The Knife’s nostrils flared as he breathed and thought. “So it’s about respect, is it, Surlord?”

“You know it is.”

“Then
you
must know that marrying a grangelord’s daughter will not make me a grangelord. Those bastards have their estates and titles bound up tighter than a bathhouse whipping boy. It would take an Act of Ascendancy to allow me to inherit the title of grangelord on my father-in-law’s death.”

“Then you shall have one.”

Marafice Eye turned to look at him at last. The hollow eye socket was full of shadow, a hole with nothing coming out. “I have your word on it?”

Iss nodded.

“Speak it.”

“You have my word on it.” Iss felt his anger rising, but tamped it. He wasn’t done here yet. Increasing his gelding’s pace to a trot, he said, “I’ve been giving mind to whom you might wed. Suitable candidates are few and far between, but I believe I’ve found one willing to have you. Katrina Mallion of the Needlewood Granges is in need of a husband. She’s an only child, heir to her father’s estates, and her first husband died without issue.”

Iss waited for the Knife’s response. Seconds passed. A flock of snow geese passed overhead. Marafice Eye made a gesture to Styven Dalway, ordering the sworn brother to flank the surlord as they entered the bustling expanse of Pengaron Square.

Just as Iss was ready to explode, Marafice Eye put a hand to his chin and said, “Needlewoods. Aren’t those the trees that grow in swamps?”

Iss was having trouble containing his anger. “They may be. I hardly see that it matters. The Needlewood Granges lie at the western foot of the mountain, near Loon Lake. A portion of the holding may lie in marshland. What of it? Katrina Mallion is young, noble, and willing. And her father has need of hard cash.”

“So you’ve approached him?”

“Tentatively. Yes.” It was more than that, but Iss knew better than to admit it. He’d been working for over a month toward this match. Edward Mallion was a drinker and gambler, a wastrel who’d run his inheritance into the ground. The Needlewood Granges produced reeds, fowl and turf. Only production had been dropping these past ten years and now the granges barely paid for themselves. Mallion had already accepted a hundred count of Almsgold from the surlord’s coffers. In return, he’d given his word that he’d seek no further suitors for his daughter. Iss judged the match a good one. The Needlewood Granges were a minor holding in decline: they would suit his purposes well.

Iss said, “Katrina Mallion attended the Winter Feast at the fortress. Even dressed in the black of mourning she turned many heads.”

Marafice Eye grunted. “You have given no promises?”

“No,” Iss lied.

“Good,” the Knife said, digging steel spurs into horsemeat. “As I’ve given my word elsewhere.”

Iss felt the world turn out of focus. The jewelers, silversmiths, redsmiths, blacksmiths, armorers and wiremakers whose market stalls filled Pengaron Square became a blur of light and movement. Iss could almost feel the knives at his back.
This is what I will know at the moment of my death; this revelation of betrayal.

With an effort of will he forced his mind from that dark place. The sun had emerged from behind Mount Slain and was sliding its rays across the square. A table piled with pewter bowls and cook pots flashed like treasure as the sunlight touched it. Ahead, Iss saw the Knife in conversation with Axal Foss. The other six men in the sept had drawn close around their surlord, reacting to the slowing of his mount and the slight stiffening of his face.

Iss was aware of his heart as a living, moving weight in his chest.
I have been duped.
Tilting his chin upward he sent a sworn brother to purchase a jeweled cup from the nearest stall. He did not want it, would never even handle it, but he would not let the Knife know what his words had done. Let him think his surlord slowed to inspect silverware, nothing more.

He’d move at the first smell of blood.

Trotting his mount forward, Iss joined the Knife and they turned onto the great white-paved promenade that led south to Mask Fortress.

“So,” Iss said after a time. “Who is the lucky maid?”

“Liona Stornoway.”

Stornoway.
Stornoway
. One of the five Great Houses of Spire Vanis. Roland Stornoway could trace his ancestors back to the Bastard Lords. His family had birthed a dozen surlords and countless Masters of Purse, Chief Examiners, Protector Generals and warlords. The Stornoway holdings were vast. They owned lands so far east they bordered on Hound’s Mire, and their coffers were rumored to be brimming with Sull gold.

Iss kept a tight reign on his features. “A good match.”

Marafice Eye lifted the massive bulk of his shoulders in his version of a shrug. “I think so. The bitch is well seasoned and not quite right in the head, but I daresay she’ll suit me well enough. I’ll keep away from her and she’ll keep away from me, and once we’ve fucked to seal the match we’ll be done.”

“Such romance.”

Marafice Eye barked a laugh.

Iss wondered how he had done it. True, Stornoway and Hews were longtime rivals, and the Knife might have gained much by promising that Garric Hews would never make Surlord. But still. Stornoway was a proud house. How had they agreed to marry one of their own to a son of Hoargate? Then he remembered. “Liona, you say?”

“Aye. And if you’re thinking is she the one who got caught straddling the bookbinder’s son, then you’d be right.”

“Quite a scandal, as I recall.”

Marafice Eye executed another one of his shrugs. “Her scandal is my gain. Roland Stornoway has been wanting to be rid of her for months. No decent man would have her.” Stretching his lips into a savage smile, he added, “That’s where I come in.”

He was clever in low ways, the Knife; you could never forget that. This was a clever trick he’d pulled off, taking on the unwanted slattern of one of the city’s finest houses. Roland Stornoway must be pissing himself laughing. But then Roland Stornoway was a shortsighted fool. His death warrant had just been signed.