House Ravenfeather

House Ravenfeather has lived on the icefield of the Mute March for generations, and for generations has commanded the Wallwardens, holding the northernmost wall on behalf of the whole world.

Their cloaks are sewn from black feathers and are the standard issue of the Wallwardens. The feathers come from the winter crows of the Mute March, a hundred and more to a cloak, sewn with the quills pointing down so that wind and snow slide off along them. Each man's own name is embroidered at the collar in red thread, so that when a face cannot be made out at a distance the collar can be — too many men die on the wall, and a name is one of the few things that can be left behind.

The sons of the house have no separate rite of coming of age. At sixteen they go up onto the wall, and standing through the first night makes a man of them; the ones who cannot stand it through are never spoken of again for the rest of their lives. The headship passes to the eldest and not to the youngest, and on the day of succession the heir passes a night on the wall and only goes back to the city of the Mute March the next day to receive the honours. The rule has not been broken in four hundred years — written as 400 years, which is how the family register at the city of the Mute March records it.

Guardianship and sacrifice have been House Ravenfeather's values for 400 years. The price of it is that the south has all but forgotten they exist: pay and grain arrive last, they have no seat at the council table, and blood shed in the Mute March does not count on the ledgers of the capital. In their documents the officials of the capital call them “the northern garrison-men”. There is no house name anywhere in the phrase, and House Ravenfeather can read it well enough.

Overlooked long enough, a house begins to think other thoughts. With the wall beginning to crack and the Throne beginning to stand empty, what House Ravenfeather talks about in its council hall has changed — they have started to ask on what grounds the Mute March should go on standing in the coldest and most dangerous place there is, and the one that nobody remembers.