Vandahl Keep

House Vandahl's seat on a grey rise above Valenfeld — a keep with more banners than coin, more titles than tenants, and a Lord-Holder who has not come down from the upper hall in a year. It guards silver rights that are running out and a claim on Caer Vallen that no one else bothers to contest, because it is worth nothing.

The keep is built to be seen from the valley road, and from the valley road it works: grey stone, high curtain, the Vandahl banner snapping over the gate in any wind at all. Up close it comes apart. The cistern in the yard is dry and has been for two seasons — the household hauls water up from the town well like everyone else, and pretends the barrels are for the horses. The great banner hall is kept swept and warm and mostly empty; the Lord-Holder receives there, under the painted line of Vandahls back to the Imperium, and every third face in the painting is of a man who held twice the land this one does. Below the hall are the debtors' cells, and they are the busiest rooms in the keep, because House Vandahl's whole method now is to buy up a neighbor's debt and call the debtor a tenant — a way to look like it is gaining ground while it loses it. The silver that made the house is nearly worked out; the good near-town seams are stripped, the Deepening has pushed the new digging deep and dangerous and the house cannot afford the deep digging, and so it holds tighter to the paper of things: rights, claims, oaths sworn to its grandfathers. It even claims Caer Vallen, by blood, the seat where the god broke — a claim worth exactly nothing, which is precisely why the house clings to it, because a worthless claim is one no stronger house will trouble to take. The Lord-Holder has not left the upper hall in a year. The steward says it is his health. The steward is lying to be kind. What ails him is that he can read a ledger, and the ledger says the house is over, and there is nothing in the upper hall but the ledger and the honest quiet in which to keep reading it.