My Brother Bet I'd Be Dead by Spring, So I Made My Ruin the Strongest March in the Realm novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Coin for His Debt
The king gives Maela to an old toll lord to pay her brother's gambling debt, and when she refuses in front of the court she's handed a dead province, its debts and a bet that she'll be dead by spring; at Penhal the tax collector is already loading the people's seed grain.
My father sold me to pay my brother's debts on the first frost of autumn, in front of the whole court.
He called it a wedding.
"The Lord of Aven Ford has asked for the hand of my daughter Maela," the king said from his high chair. "I have given it."
The Great Hall of Kerys was full for the autumn feast, and two hundred lords and ladies turned to look at me.
I was sitting at the end of the lowest table, where I always sat.
The Lord of Aven Ford stood up at the high table and bowed to me with a cup in his hand.
Everyone called him the River Lord, because his chain across the Aven took a toll from every boat.
He was fifty-eight, with a gray beard oiled into a point and a ring on every finger, and he had buried three wives.
Beside the king, my half-brother Tanguy raised his own cup and smiled at me.
Tanguy was the crown prince, the son of the first queen.
He was thirty and handsome, and he had never once said my name without a laugh in it.
I was the king's other child.
My mother had been a lady from the south whom nobody named, and she died the night I was born.
When I was fourteen, my father sent me to work in the Counting House, the crown's treasury office, because nobody wanted me at his table.
For ten years I copied every debt, tax and payment in the realm into the crown's books.
I remembered every line I wrote.
So I knew exactly what this wedding was for.
I stood up.
Enora, my maid, grabbed for my sleeve from behind my stool.
"My lady, sit down," she whispered.
I walked up the middle of the hall between the tables.
"I thank the River Lord," I said. "But I won't marry him."
The hall went quiet enough to hear the fire.
My father's face didn't move. "You'll do as you're told."
"My brother owes the River Lord nine thousand crowns," I said. "Horses, dice, and a house on the river. He signed for it last spring."
"This marriage pays that debt," I said. "I copied the agreement into the book myself."
Tanguy's smile stayed exactly where it was, but his knuckles went white on his cup.
The River Lord set his cup down. "The princess is mistaken."
"Then the prince still owes you," I said. "Shall I tell the hall the day it's due?"
The River Lord sat down.
My father stood up instead.
He was sixty and tall, and he never raised his voice.
"You've shamed your brother and your king before the court," he said. "You won't marry. Good. Then you'll have a house of your own."
He looked down the hall at his steward. "Penhal."
The laughter started at the high table and rolled all the way to the doors.
Penhal was a province on the border with the hills, at the top of the Aven river.
The year before I was born, the king's army took it and hanged its lord on his own gate.
Now it was a broken fortress with three thousand crowns of unpaid tax and three hundred starving people.
I had copied that number into the book every quarter for ten years.
Nobody had ever paid a coin of it.
"Penhal, its fortress, its people and its debts," my father said. "Go and see what's left of it."
Tanguy laughed into his cup, and then he stood and lifted it to the hall.
"A thousand crowns says my sister is dead before spring," he said. "Who'll take it?"
Lords were already reaching for their purses.
"I will," I said.
Tanguy turned around.
"Bet with me, not with them," I said.
"If I walk in here alive at the Spring Court and Penhal still stands, you pay its debt yourself," I said.
"Then you kneel right here and ask my pardon."
The Spring Court was the first day of spring, when the king settled every debt and wager made before him.
"And if Penhal falls and my sister is still breathing?" he asked.
"Then I marry the River Lord," I said. "And I never say another word in this hall."
The River Lord looked at me.
My father nodded once. "Witnessed."
Tanguy's smile came back, wider than before. "Done."
My father took my rooms, my allowance and my escort before the feast was over.
That was the price of opening my mouth.
I left Kerys at dawn with one cart, one mule and one maid.
Enora had chosen to come.
She'd been sold into the palace kitchens at nine, a famine child from Penhal, and her grandmother was still there if she was still alive.
"You didn't have to come," I told her on the cart.
"Somebody has to show you where the well is," she said.
Penhal's gate had no doors left.
The fortress was a square stone keep on a gray crag above the river.
It had half a roof, and its outer wall had fallen in three places.
In the yard below the keep, three hundred people stood in the cold.
They were thin in a way I'd only ever seen written as a number.
Children had old faces, and the women held their shawls closed with both hands.
Every one of them was watching six carts.
Soldiers in the crown's blue were loading the carts with sacks of grain.
A man in a fur collar stood beside them with a ledger under his arm.
He was the crown's tax collector for the south.
I knew him from the Counting House, where he'd brought his books every quarter for nine years.
He saw me and bowed very low.
"Princess," he said. "Welcome to Penhal. Your brother sent a rider to say you'd be coming."
An old woman in a black shawl stood in front of the last cart with her arms spread wide.
"That's our seed grain," she said. "Take it, and nobody plants in spring."
A soldier moved her out of the way with the butt of his spear, and she fell in the frozen mud.
Enora jumped off our cart and ran to her.
"Grandmother," she said.
The tax collector opened his ledger and smiled at me.
"Penhal's debt is yours now, my lady," he said. "This is the first payment."
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