The Seven Great Houses

The seven great noble houses that monopolize cursed blood each hold one power, and each bear one price for it.

House Hourshift works time — a brief arrest of it, a foreseeing of some seconds ahead — and the price is that its years are cut away a length at a time. House Whitescript holds memory, and can erase it, implant it, and pass it down alike; the price is that the border of the self grows ever less distinct. House Duskcandle comes near death. House Starcrown reads the stars. House Mirrorcourt makes mirror-doubles. House Vowkey binds by word-spirit contract, and is itself bound in return by every promise it utters. House Bloodflame kindles fire with blood, violent and short-lived.

Beyond the bloodlines, each of the seven holds one practical office of the capital as well. Seven gates answer to seven houses: the South Gate is House Bloodflame's, and its guards touch a cursed-blood sensor rod to every person seeking entry. The minting of coin belongs by dynastic custom to House Whitescript, and the figuring on the new silver of these thirty years past is far finer than on the old, so that a coin weighed once in the hand tells you which end of the road it came from. The crests, too, are each their own: House Hourshift's hourglass, House Whitescript's silver sand, House Vowkey's twin interlocking rings, House Bloodflame's flame pattern, House Duskcandle's inverted candle and black flame, House Starcrown's silver tracery, House Mirrorcourt's mirror figure — these are what is cut into the carriage doors on the streets of the capital, and one glance from far off tells which house is sitting inside.

Which of the seven stands higher is unsettled. At the Rite of Investiture of Blacktower Academy the names are called by the first character of the house name, Starcrown early and Bloodflame late, and yet the order of seating each house arranges for itself does not agree with that. In the instruction hall of the Academy, a few stools are left empty among the inner ring of main-line seats; which of them no one dares sit beside says it more plainly than any register.

The seven bloodlines guard themselves against one another, marry into one another, and contend for the throne. Among them a taut balance is maintained — and what keeps that balance from breaking is the crown at the center of the capital. As for what the crown is holding down, the Seven Great Houses themselves may not all be able to say.