The realm cannot pay what it owes. And the man sent to save it is walking straight toward an enemy who escaped him once already.
The northern harvest has failed in the cruelest way: the grain grows tall and green, and carries no life in it at all. A continent that fed itself on the north now starves, and a paralyzed Crown will not move.
Lucien Glacisse forces the truth in front of the King, that the kingdom cannot honor its grain contracts, and is handed sweeping authority to buy salvation from the one nation that still has food to sell. It means crossing a ruined border, a forest that lies about distance and hunts what walks through it, and finally the capital of Dagoneth itself.
There waits the merchant lord who once had Lucien's master murdered and answered for none of it, and who has spent the whole catastrophe quietly buying a state out from under its rulers. To feed the living, Lucien must beat a conspiracy dressed as commerce, while the cold he has hidden his whole life begins to show on his skin.
The Sovereign Default is the third book in The Ice Beneath, an atmospheric political fantasy about famine, finance, and the debts a kingdom cannot admit it owes. For fans of Robin Hobb and Joe Abercrombie.
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