Victory, William learned in the weeks that followed, was not a state of being, but a process of relentless, grinding administration, conducted in the lingering smell of smoke and old blood. Blackcliff Keep, for all its imposing exterior, was a grim, comfortless shell inside. The great hall, where he had been lauded, still bore the scorch marks of the final struggle on its flagstones. The storerooms, which he had hoped would brim with rebel wealth, held only the dregs of a long siege: sacks of weevil-ridden flour, casks of sour wine, and a paltry hoard of silver that barely covered the cost of repairing the gate his own men had broken.
His father, Sir Roland, had departed with the bulk of the king's army, returning to the Weeping Valley with a small royal escort and a writ protecting their now-absent lord's interests. The parting had been stiff, a clasp of arms that felt more like a transfer of burden than a farewell. "You wanted a kingdom, William," Roland had said, his eyes sweeping the stark battlements. "Now you must build its walls. Not of stone, but of law. And they are harder to raise, and easier to undermine." He had left William with twenty of their valley men as a core garrison, a pittance to hold this vast, sullen rock.
The people of the conquered fief—the five villages and two hamlets nestled in Blackcliff's shadow—viewed him not as a liberator, but as a new tax master wearing a different sigil. They were a dour, hard folk, their loyalties forged by the harsh mountains and the even harsher rule of the rebel lord, Borrell. Borrell was dead, cut down in the final rush, but his presence lingered in their averted eyes and sullen silences. William's first court, held in the drafty hall, was a parade of grievances and passive resistance. A miller claimed his grinding rights were being disputed by a neighbor whose cousin had served in Borrell's guard. A shepherd insisted his best grazing land had been seized by a freeholder who now flew the Marren hand-and-sword from a post, but with obvious reluctance.
"Justice," William's new steward, a thin, anxious man named Cuthbert who had survived the siege by hiding in a cellar, whispered to him. "You must be seen to dispense justice, my lord. Evenly."
But justice required knowledge he did not possess. Who was lying? What were the ancient customs of this valley? He made rulings that felt arbitrary, based on the supplicant's face or the volume of their complaint. Each decision, he knew, was sowing a seed of future resentment. He was building on sand, and the tide of their hatred was constant.
At night, the keep groaned like a living thing. In the lord's chamber—a spare, cold room that had been Borrell's—William's sleep was fractured by dreams of falling. Not from the cliff, but from a great height within the keep itself, tumbling past unfamiliar stone faces that watched him with blank indifference. More vivid was the memory, not of the climactic battle, but of the quiet kill on the ledge. The sentry's face, a pale oval in the dark, the feel of his staghorn dagger grating against a rib before sinking in, the hot, shocking gush over his hand. He would wake, his fingers curling as if still sticky, the silence of the mountain fortress pressing in on him like a physical weight. The crown of Blackcliff was a band of ice around his temples.
His only solace, a bitter one, was found in the company of Elric and the other valley men. They alone looked at him with something akin to familiarity, though it was now tinged with a new, wary respect. They drank their thin beer in the guardroom, speaking of home—the taste of the Weeping Valley's apples, the specific bend in the river where the trout were fattest. Their talk was a lifeline to a self he was losing. But even here, he was set apart. He was the Earl. The title was a pane of thick glass between him and the men whose blood had bought it.
The first real threat came not from the villagers, but from within the ranks of the king's own nobility. A month after the army's departure, a party rode up the steep switchback trail to Blackcliff's gate. At its head was Lord Daerlon, a florid-faced earl whose lands lay three valleys over. He had been at the siege, commanding the futile assaults on the main gate. He was lavish in his congratulations, his voice booming in the hall as he praised William's "daring stunt." But his eyes, small and shrewd, missed nothing: the sparse tapestries, the undermanned walls, the weathered faces of the Marren men.
"A brilliant piece of work, my boy, brilliant," Daerlon said over a dinner of tough mutton and turnips. "Of course, it was a gamble that could have doomed the entire enterprise had it failed. The king is merciful in his rewards for such… theatricality." He took a long drink. "But holding a prize is different than snatching it. The Borrells have cousins to the north, you know. Wrothful men. And these mountains breed bandits like rats. Your position is… exposed."
William felt the heat rise in his neck. "The king's grant is clear. The position is mine to defend."
"Oh, undoubtedly!" Daerlon spread his hands. "But defense requires strength. I couldn't help but notice your garrison is thin. My own levies are returned to their fields. A pity." He leaned forward, his tone conspiratorial. "I might be persuaded to lease you a contingent of my own household troops. Seasoned men. For, say, a third of the Silverflow mine's output? Once you get it operational again, of course."
The Silverflow mine. The source of Borrell's wealth, now choked with debris and flooded after the rebel's final, spiteful act of sabotage. It was a wound in the mountain, useless. William understood the game. Daerlon was offering poisoned help, a way to make William a permanent debtor, to leech the life from his prize before it could even breathe.
"Your offer is generous, Lord Daerlon," William said, forcing a calm he did not feel. "But I shall first see what my own resources can accomplish. The king's justice upheld me here. I trust it will continue to do so."
Daerlon's smile didn't reach his eyes. "The king's justice is a mighty force. But it is also a busy one. Mountains are far away, and winter is coming. Things can… happen in the mountains." He left the next day, his pleasantries hanging in the cold air like a threat.
The visit crystallized William's isolation. He was a parvenu, perched on a contested rock, surrounded by the envious and the resentful. He walked the battlements after Daerlon's departure, the wind slicing through his cloak. He looked down at the northern cliff face, the site of his triumph. In the fading light, it no longer looked like a ladder he had climbed, but a gaping maw that had swallowed his old life and spat out this anxious, lonely figure of a lord.
Action was his only antidote to despair. He threw himself into the work of securing his rule. He imposed a tax, lighter than Borrell's but a tax all the same, to repair the mine's water pumps. He sat in judgment daily, learning, through painful repetition, the intricate lies and truths of his people. He trained with his men, not as their lord but as a fellow soldier, the familiar ache of muscle and the rhythm of drill a temporary reprieve from the ache of doubt.
One afternoon, a rider arrived, not from the king, but from the Weeping Valley. It was Alton, the steward, his face grey with travel and something else—grief. He brought a letter from Roland, its script more tremulous than William remembered.
William,
The valley is quiet. The bell is missed. The debt to the wool merchant is called due; I have sold the south wood to settle it. Do not regret this. A lord must clear his debts to look forward.
I write with heavier news. Young Elric's father, the crofter Hagar, took a fever and died. He spoke your name at the end. I believe he wished you well, but his son may carry a different weight. Remember, the blood that bought your crown was not only that of your enemies.
Hold your rock, son. But do not become it.
R.
William lowered the parchment. He saw old Hagar's face, protesting the loss of the bell. He had died with a fever, but also, surely, with a heart cracked by the loss of his grandson to a distant war and his lord to a distant mountain. The cost was a chain, each link a life, a debt, a piece of his soul, stretching all the way back to the weeping home he could no longer afford to yearn for.
That night, he climbed to the highest tower of Blackcliff. Below him, his new domain slept in the moonlight, its fields silver, its forests dark and unknown. The crown of this place was hollow indeed—a ring of fear, of memory, of obligation. He had sought a pedestal and found a prison of his own making. The ambition that had burned in him now felt like a banked fire, giving not light, but a constant, low heat of anxiety. He was a lord. He had his land, his title, the visible rungs of the ladder all climbed.
But as he stood in the wind, the echoes of his father's warnings and the ghost of a dead crofter's sigh in his ears, Lord William Marren of Blackcliff felt, for the first time, the true, vertiginous weight of the height he had attained. The climb was over. The long, cold balance had begun. And below, in the darkness, he could sense the shapes of those—Lord Daerlon, the sullen villagers, the ghosts of sentries—who waited, patiently, for him to fall.