Heir to Nothing: The Iron Foundation Vol 2

At fourteen, Aldric Voss has achieved what most lords spend a lifetime attempting: a cooperative of seventeen eastern holds, a functioning road network, a school producing the workforce he'll need in a decade, and a reputation that has reached the capital.It has also reached his enemies.House Marden - older, wealthier, and considerably more patient than the Draveth family that came before - has begun to investigate the source of Voss Hold's rise. What they find will force Aldric into his first real negotiation with a peer who cannot be outworked or outwaited. Meanwhile, the Commerce Committee in the capital has taken a formal interest in the Compact's operations, and Elara Mourne - the sharpest person Aldric has yet encountered - has quietly become indispensable to everything he is building.Running beneath all of it: Lyra Voss is ill. Not suddenly. Not dramatically. In the slow, measurable way that Aldric tracks everything, watching the numbers shift season by season, doing everything that can be done, and learning - for the first time - that some problems do not yield to better systems.The Iron Foundation is the second volume of The Chronicles of Aldric Voss. It is a story about institutions and grief, about what it means to build something that will outlast you, and about the particular loneliness of being the person in the room who can see furthest ahead.