A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) by J.V. Jones Page A

enough for them.
    Iron juice, Bullhammer had explained, was as black as the Stone Gods’ tears and only a little less likely to kill you. It had to be strong enough to stain a hammerman’s teeth, and keep them good and black for a season. “It’s no good using lampblack or ashes—the stain barely takes for a week. And as soon as a man sets to frothing at the mouth his spittle’s likely to run black.” Effie had nodded in understanding. If you were going to stain your teeth so you looked fierce in battle then it would be better if the stain didn’t wash off halfway through. Else you might end up looking foolish instead.
    The problem was that Blackhail hammermen hadn’t stained their teeth since Mad Gregor had led three hundred men to their death in the fast-rising waters of the Flow. All but a dozen of their number had been hammermen. Their bodies had been dragged downstream by the spring rush, across the rocky shallows known as Dead Man’s Ribs and over the towering, misty drop of Moon Falls. Effie had heard it said that the river rock had peeled the flesh from their bones, and the only things left for the widows to wrap were white skulls with grinning black teeth.
    Effie frowned. It seemed to her that there were far too many clan stories involving skulls and violent deaths. Still, it was interesting how afterward no Blackhail hammerman would stain his teeth for fear of riling the gods, and the recipe for iron juice had been lost.
    “Sour as piss,” Gat Murdock pronounced to the now-empty sampling cup. “Good enough for a tied clansman—or his wife.” Satisfied, he upended the cup onto a basswood rack and spat to clean his mouth. Like many older clansmen he was missing fingers, yet he moved no slower for it, and sealed the taps and dimmed the lamp as quick as if he had ten fingers, not eight. Effie watched as he moved to leave then stopped himself before reaching the stair. Turning to face the very corner that concealed her, he sent his gaze darting this way and that, checking if he was being watched. Effie held her breath, imagining herself still as the very stone the well was built from.
    Long seconds passed before the clansman’s pale-eyed stare passed her by. Satisfied that no one was looking, Gat Murdock reached for the high shelf where Anwyn Bird kept her twenty-year malt and slipped one of the precious wax-sealed flasks under his coat. Effie forgot she was being still as a stone and let her mouth fall open in amazement. Anwyn’s twenty-year malt! Wasn’t there a curse upon it? Anwyn swore that any clansman who drank her malt without her blessing would find himself short of his man parts within a week. Effie closed her mouth. She had learned all about man parts from Letty Shank. Any man who lost them was bound to be sorely displeased.
    Uttering a small grunt of satisfaction, Gat Murdock put his foot to the stair and began the short climb from the well. Effie forced herself to listen for the sound of his feet treading the floor above before emerging from her place behind the vat.
    Her arm was stiff and she rubbed it softly as she squeezed past copper pipes. Other parts hurt too; places where Cutty Moss’s knife had sunk deep, opening ragged hard-to-heal wounds that still wept water at night. She wouldn’t think about those now, though. She was a clanswoman of nearly nine winters, and men returning from the Clanwars had worse hurts to bear.
    She just wished Cutty’s knife had spared her face.
    Effie stopped her treacherous hand from rising to touch her cheek. Wouldn’t have been a beauty even without the scars, Mace Blackhail said so.
    Quickly, she turned her thoughts to iron juice. She needed good strong liquor to proof the potion. Anwyn’s twenty-year malt was too mellow—and too cursed. She needed something that could burn a man’s gums, and possibly his tooth enamel as well. Thoughtful, she scanned the flasks on the highest shelf. Will Hawk’s Dhooneshine in its odd sparkly flask stood beside