The Frost Ledger

Ilse Rooke reads debts for a living. Nine days after her mother’s death she finds an open page in her mother’s ledger with no date, no witness and no story: C. Vael. Debt unclosed. Price: one kiss, freely given. Casimir Vael is the Warden of the frost march, the man who called down an endless winter over his border eleven years ago to keep an army out of Callow Gap, and who has paid his levy at Ilse’s counter, in person and in full, every quarter for three years. When he walks up to her grille on Midsummer Quarter-day, the law says she must read the page to his face.

He doesn’t remember agreeing to it. The crown’s Treasurer would very much like a date. And Ilse, who has never in her life wanted anything she couldn’t put a number on, rides north into the winter to find out where the debt came from, with a steward who disapproves of her, a Warden whose hands are slowly being eaten by the cold he holds, and a page that warms in her saddlebag at exactly the wrong moments.

What she finds at the march is a keep that eats in its kitchen, a village that spits at its lord and brings him pie, a dead captain’s frost-ink signature, and her own mother’s hidden history with the Vael family. And what she and Casimir have to learn, with a Justice, a council and a Treasurer all watching, is the difference between a price and a gift.