"Godsvault" by N. C. Jacobs

Godsvault is Book One of the Adventures of Winterborne, and is a dark epic fantasy written by N. C. Jacobs.

The dead of the North do not rot. They stand.

Mid-errand, mid-prayer, three hundred years patient, kept by the winter that took half the world. The living call it the Pale. The church calls it the god’s keeping. The delvers who walk among the standing dead to fetch back deeds and heirlooms call it work.

Azgardia of the Winterborne is a frostworker: winter-eyed, chartered, careful, and in charge. Her company is five names on one paper, answerable at law for one another’s debts, deeds, and remains. A mender who keeps the honest ledger. A warden struck from her forest’s rolls, who is the company’s wall. A huntmaster carrying his drowned hold’s last bow, and the company’s laughter. A point-man the Pale itself gave back, who counts the doors and opens them.

Then the church hires them to find what lies beneath the buried cathedral-city of Matins, and the road north begins keeping its own accounts. Because the dead are not being kept. They are being harvested. And the paper trail runs south, in a careful hand, to warm rooms that have been billing the north for three hundred years.

Some debts the church collects. This one is about to be audited. 

 

About the Author

N.C. Jacobs writes epic fantasy about professional crews, cold ledgers, and the debts that outlive the people who signed for them. Godsvault, his debut novel, was born at a table with his longtime gaming guild and is written the way they play: banter after cost, and nobody left on the ice. He also writes practical dog-training nonfiction drawn from years as a working K9 handler, including Your Dog Isn't Stubborn. You're Unclear. 

Palefall, Book Two of The Adventures of Winterborne, is coming.