[h2]Chapter One: Broken Moot[/h2]

[center][i]The sea gives, the gods take. The sea takes, the gods give.[/i]
- northern reaver proverb[/center]
[center][b][i]Kingsport, the Crooked Isles[/i][/b][/center]

As usual, Kingsport lay under a thick blanket of mist, heavy with the smell of brine and dead fish. From the window of her solar she could only just make out the shadow of battlements that lay not forty paces from her. The city, if you could call it that, was invisible completely, hidden beneath its white and stinking shroud. Thank the gods for small mercies.

She hated this place, and had for nearly thirteen years, ever since her barbarian husband bargained with her father for her hand. That she had come to love her husband and had loathed her father since she'd been a nursling never quite made up for the indignity she suffered, having to live here, far from the sun and wine and stern but orderly gods of the south, whose names now she could not quite recall. She could remember their images, though, on the feast days when the Forge Priests would march through the narrow, sandstone streets of Kul Nabal, holding aloft the Holy Blades and the idols born on litters, resplendent figures wrought of silver, their eyes living flame.

The northmen had no feast days or marches, and their gods were dour things, carved of wood, demanding no true sacrifice for their meagre boons.

Still, she prayed to them now, prayed for their protection. For her son was a northman, and they were his gods. Her son, the only child of Aigoth Stone Foot, High King of the Broken Lands, Jarl of the Crooked Isles, Slayer of Giants and Trolls, He Who Humbled the Coward and Brought Peace to the Clans, Vanquisher of Southrons... Killed by his prey on a shark hunt. 

He was laughing, the men said, as he readied another harpoon and was dragged into the gray, cold water.

Leaving her, who for all her years here was a stranger still. And her son: the new High King.