Some would call Gillen’s posting to the West Wall a promotion. He’d been given a lieutenant’s badge and was put in charge of a massive, gloomy keep and a hundred other exiles—all members of the regular army—plus his own squadron of bluejackets. It was a larger command than his former post at Southbridge Guardhouse.

Like he’d celebrate ruling over a dung heap.

The Westgate keep guarded the West Wall and the dismal, ramshackle village of Westgate. The wall divided the mountainous Fells from the Shivering Fens. A drowned land of trackless swamps and marshes, the Fens were too thick to swim in and too thin to plow, impassable except on foot until the hard freezes after solstice.

All in all, control of Westgate keep added up to little opportunity for a man of enterprise like Mac Gillen. He recognized his new assignment for what it was: punishment for his failure to give Lord Bayar what he wanted.

He was lucky to have survived the High Wizard’s disappointment.

Gillen and his triple splashed through the cobbled streets of the village and dismounted in the stable yard of the keep.

When Gillen led Marauder into the stable, his duty officer, Robbie Sloat, swiped at his forehead, his pass at a salute. “We got three visitors to see you from Fellsmarch, sir,” Sloat said. “They’re waiting for you in the keep.”

Hope kindled in Gillen. This might mean new orders from the capital, at last. And maybe an end to his undeserved exile.

“Did they give a name?” Gillen tossed his gloves and sopping cloak to Sloat and ran his fingers through his hair to tidy it.

“They said as they’d speak only to you, sir,” Sloat said. He hesitated. “They’re baby bluebloods. Not much more’n boys.”

The spark of hope flickered out. Probably arrogant sons of the nobility on their way to the academies at Oden’s Ford. Just what he didn’t need.

“They demanded lodging in the officers’ wing,” Sloat went on, confirming Gillen’s fears.

“Some in the nobility seem to think we’re running a hostel for blueblood brats,” Gillen growled. “Where are they?”

Sloat shrugged his shoulders. “They’re in the officers’ hall, sir.”

Shaking off rainwater, Gillen strode into the keep. Before he’d fairly crossed the inner courtyard, he heard music—a basilka and a recorder.

Gillen shouldered open the doors to the officers’ hall to find three boys, not much older than naming age, ranged around the fire. The keg of ale on the sideboard had been breached, and empty tankards sat before them. The boys wore the dazed, sated expressions of those who’d feasted heavily. The remnants of what had been a sumptuous meal were spread over the table, including the picked-over cadaver of a large ham Gillen had been saving for himself.