The Trouble With Peace (the Age of Madness, #2)

The second book of the Age of Madness trilogy, set in the same world as Joe Abercrombie's First Law series, follows multiple characters as a fragile peace unravels into conspiracy, civil war, and revolution across the Union, a sprawling industrializing kingdom.

King Orso, the reluctant new High King of the Union, inherits a throne beset on every side. His Closed Council, the small body of advisors who truly govern, warns of threats from the Breakers and Burners, revolutionary groups spreading dissent through pamphlets and violence after an uprising in the industrial city of Valbeck. The Styrians, a rival nation, maneuver to pull the port city of Westport out of the Union through a democratic vote. When Orso pushes for reforms or tries to deliver justice in the case of a nobleman accused of rape and murder, the ancient wizard Bayaz, chief of the order of Magi and the figure who has secretly controlled the Union for centuries, shuts him down.

Inquisitor Victarine "Vick" dan Teufel, a spy who survived the prison camps of the Union's northern province of Angland as a child and owes her freedom to Arch Lector Glokta, the head of the Inquisition, is sent to Westport to ensure the city votes to remain. Through bribery, intimidation, and an elaborate scheme in which she stages a fake assassination attempt on the pro-Styrian leader Solumeo Shudra, Vick wins the vote decisively. Afterward, the real Styrian spymaster Shylo Vitari warns Vick that Bayaz controls the Union, the Inquisition, and the Banking House of Valint and Balk as a single instrument.

Savine dan Glokta, the Arch Lector's daughter and once the most powerful investor in the capital city of Adua, sees her fortune crumbling after Valbeck. She and Orso were formerly lovers, and when he publicly snubs her, her humiliation deepens. She discovers she is pregnant from a one-night encounter with Leo dan Brock, the celebrated Young Lion and Lord Governor of Angland. Their mothers conspire to arrange a marriage, and Savine accepts: Leo offers title, fame, and military power, while she brings wealth, connections, and ruthlessness.

Leo struggles with a sword wound from his duel against Stour Nightfall, the King of the Northmen, a wound that grows worse rather than healing. At the trial of the nobleman Wetterlant in the Lords' Round, the chamber where the nobles' Open Council meets, Leo denounces Orso as a puppet and is dragged from the room by Colonel Gorst, the king's bodyguard. After Wetterlant reneges on an agreed confession, Orso sentences him to death, alienating the nobility. Frustrated, humiliated, and stung by learning at his own wedding that Savine was once Orso's lover, Leo allies with Lords Isher, Barezin, and Heugen to plan open rebellion against the Crown.

In the North, Rikke, the daughter of the aging chieftain known as the Dogman, has worsening fits from the Long Eye, a form of uncontrollable prophetic vision. She journeys to the High Places, the remote northern mountains, with her companions Isern-i-Phail, a hillwoman and spiritual guide, and Caul Shivers, a feared warrior with a metal eye, to seek help from Caurib, a sorceress who returned from the land of the dead, her skull stitched together with golden wire. Through days of agonizing tattooing, runes are inscribed around Rikke's left eye to cage her visions, but the price is the sight in her right eye. She returns to Uffrith, her father's stronghold, only to find the Dogman has died. Rikke manipulates rival War Chiefs into killing each other in the Circle, a traditional Northern duel, then has Shivers kill the survivor. She declares Uffrith independent and seizes power.

At a public demonstration of a new steam engine, Burners detonate the machine and attack the royal box. Yoru Sulfur, Bayaz's agent, reveals himself as an Eater, a sorcerer who consumes human flesh, and kills the attackers with supernatural speed. The incident hardens Orso's resolve.

After their wedding, Leo and Savine move to Angland, where Savine revolutionizes the province's governance. When she discovers Leo's conspiracy by overhearing him through a connecting door, she commits fully, negotiating to ensure Leo will become king and she queen. She sends her enforcer Gunnar Broad, a former soldier with violent tendencies, to Valbeck to recruit the Breakers and Burners to rise up across the Union, pinning down the king's forces. She also travels with Leo to Carleon, the seat of Northern power, to recruit Stour Nightfall. When Leo's negotiations stall, Savine secretly offers Stour control of Uffrith, betraying Rikke, in exchange for warriors. Back in Uffrith, Rikke quietly forms a counter-alliance with the Nail, the vengeful son of Gregun Hollowhead, a chieftain Stour imprisoned.

Orso receives an anonymous letter warning of the conspiracy. He travels to the Styrian city of Sipani, where King Jappo of Styria confirms the plot and declines to join the rebels, alienated by Leo's clumsy diplomacy. Vick identifies Lord Marshal Brint as a traitor on the Closed Council. Arch Lector Glokta resigns because his son-in-law is implicated, and Orso appoints Superior Pike, Glokta's longtime deputy in the Inquisition, as the new Arch Lector. Orso secretly raises troops funded by Valint and Balk and sends Vick into Leo's camp as a double agent with false intelligence suggesting the king is weak.

The rebel forces land on Midderland, the Union's central heartland, on the last day of summer, but a massive storm scatters them. The Open Council's noble levies are disorganized, only a handful of Rikke's warriors arrive, and Stour's Northmen land in the wrong places. The armies converge near Stoffenbeck, where Orso holds fortified positions with Pike commanding cannons on the western bluff. Sabotaged bridges and devastating cannon fire throw the rebels into chaos, and Stour ignores Leo's battle plan, charging prematurely. Leo sends Angland's infantry forward in brutal close combat, but Lord Marshal Rucksted, one of the king's senior commanders, arrives with cavalry reinforcements and smashes into the rebels' exposed flank. Leo leads a desperate cavalry charge into Stoffenbeck's town square, where hidden cannons fire metal fragments into his packed horsemen. His close friends Antaup and Whitewater Jin are killed, and Leo's horse falls on him, crushing his damaged leg.

Leo's left leg is amputated and his left arm left nearly useless. Savine surrenders voluntarily and confesses her role to Orso. When he demands to know why she chose Leo, she reveals the truth: She is Orso's half-sister, the daughter of the previous king and Lady Ardee, a secret that made their romance impossible.

At the mass execution of rebel leaders, Leo is dragged to the scaffold barely able to stand. As the executioner grips the lever, Orso, after a long look at Savine, commutes the sentence to life imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Rikke executes her true plan. While everyone fights in Midderland, she takes Carleon almost without bloodshed, bribing a guard to open the gates while Stour's army is away. She sits in Skarling's Chair, the throne of the North in Skarling's Hall, Stour's former seat of power. It is revealed that Rikke wrote the anonymous letter warning Orso, deliberately betraying the rebellion to weaken Stour. On the voyage home, Jonas Clover, a veteran warrior secretly working with Rikke, turns on Stour. The Nail and Shivers cut the tendons behind both of Stour's knees, crippling the self-styled Great Wolf permanently and imprisoning him in the same cage where he once held the Nail's father.

In the final twist, Arch Lector Pike reveals himself to Vick as the Weaver, the secret mastermind behind the Breakers. While Orso won his battle against the nobles, the Breakers have seized cities across the Union, with Adua as their next target. Vick, cornered, joins the Breakers as the novel ends, promising far greater upheaval in the trilogy's final volume, The Wisdom of Crowds.