Blade of Dream

Book 2: The Kithamar Trilogy

by Daniel Abraham

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES***
'ATMOSPHERIC AND FASCINATING' Joe Abercrombie on Age of Ash
'Spectacular' Django Wexler on Age of Ash

From the Sunday Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author Daniel Abraham, co-author of The Expanse, comes the second novel in a monumental epic fantasy trilogy that unfolds within the walls of a single great city, over the course of one tumultuous year.

Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories endure. This is Garreth's.

Garreth Left is heir to one of Kithamar's most prominent merchant families. The path of his life was paved long before he was born. Learn the family trade, marry to secure wealthy in-laws, and inherit the business when the time is right. But to Garreth, a life chosen for him is no life at all.

In one night, a chance meeting with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. He falls in love with a woman whose name he doesn't even know, and he will do anything to find her again. His search leads him down corridors and alleys that are best left unexplored, where ancient gods hide in the shadows, and every deal made has a dangerous edge.

The path that Garreth chooses will change the course of not only those he loves, but the entire future of Kithamar's citizens.

In Kithamar, every story matters - and the fate of the city is woven from them all.

Praise for the Kithamar Trilogy:

'This outstanding series debut . . . instantly hooks readers with dual mysteries . . . Readers will eagerly anticipate the sequel' Publishers Weekly

'Age of Ash is a stunningly written, character driven story, centred on thieves, grief and dark magic. Abraham certainly knows how to enchant his readers and transport them to the city of Kithamar, a place of beauty and of forbidding secrets' Fantasy Hive

'Atmospheric and fascinating' Joe Abercrombie, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Little Hatred

'Kithamar is a spectacular creation, a city brought to life by dance, intricate worldbuilding and subtle magic. Fans of Scott Lynch . . . will enjoy this one' Django Wexler, author of Ashes of the Sun

'Daniel Abraham builds this world up with all the confident craftsmanship you'd expect from an author of his pedigree . . . So hang on to your cloak and dagger, Kithamar is in the hands of a pro' SFX

The Kithamar Trilogy
Age of Ash
Blade of Dream

Release date: July 18, 2023

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 464

Sample

Ivy grew up the courtyard’s northern wall, broad leaves a green so rich and dark they seemed almost black in lantern light. The day’s heat radiated up from the stones, and the thick breeze was what passed for coolness in midsummer. It smelled like the river.

“Then five more came out,” Kannish’s uncle Marsen continued, holding up his splayed hand. “So there we were, me and Frijjan Reed and Old Boar with a full dozen Longhill thugs around us, and no other patrol close enough to hear the whistle.”

Maur was leaning forward like a child, not a grown man with two full decades of life behind him. Garreth swallowed another mouthful of cider and tried not to lean forward too. Kannish, who had the blue cloak of the city guard for himself now even though he wasn’t wearing it, crossed his arms and sat back against the wall as if by joining the guard, he’d made all his uncle’s stories partly his own.

Marsen stretched his arms along the back of the metal bench, shaking his head at his own memories. He was halfway through his fifth decade, with grey at his temples and in his beard, and he wore the uniform with the ease of long familiarity. The uniform was so much a part of him that going shirtless like the boys never occurred to him, even in the heat.

“Did you get your ass split the other way, then?” Maur asked.

“No,” Marsen said. “We could have, no mistake. These were all Aunt Thorn’s knives, and she’s a bloodthirsty piece of Inlisc shit. Our badges of office make us targets for her. But we were in Longhill itself. You boys ever go to Longhill?”

“Just on the way to the university and the theater,” Garreth said.

“Well, don’t. If you’re going to Seepwater, stay by the river to get there. It’s a maze, Longhill. The way the Inlisc rot out their houses and throw up new ones, the streets shift from week to week, and the new places are built from the same wood that the old ones were. That was what saved us.” He nodded, and Kannish nodded with him like he knew what was coming next. “One of them had an oil lamp. Crap little tin-and-glass thing. So that’s what I went for. He dodged out of my way, but I wasn’t aiming for the meat of him. Oh no. I caught the glass and the tin. Shattered the fucking thing and got oil everywhere. Up and down my blade too. Looked like something out of a priest’s story for a little bit. Gods with flaming swords, but it was just me and a bit of cheap oil.” He held his right hand out, palm down, and pointed at his thumb. “You can see the burn scar from where it dripped right there.”

Maur whistled low. The knot of scar was pale and ugly, and the pain of getting it seemed like nothing to the man who wore it.

“Point was, Aunt Thorn’s boys saw the flame, and they panicked. Damn near forgot we were there. Started running for water. We had half of them dead or roped before they knew what was happening, and the rest scattered. They’re dangerous, but they spook easy when you stand up to them. That’s truth.”

“What about the fire?” Garreth asked.

“The locals had it out before we had to turn to it. Longhill knows that if it starts burning, it won’t stop. They’ve got hidden wells in some of those houses. There wasn’t any real danger. But distraction? That’s half of what fighting is.”

“Outthinking the enemy’s as deadly as speed or strength,” Kannish said. “More, likely. That’s what Captain Senit always says.”

His uncle’s eyes narrowed and he looked to his left. “He does say that.”

A woman’s voice called from inside. Kannish’s mother, the host of the night’s meal saying a wide, loud good night to some of the other guests. Garreth had spent time in Kannish’s home since he and Kannish and Maur were all pot-bellied, unsteady boys playing swordfight with loose sticks, and he knew a hint when he heard one. The others did too. He and Maur pulled their tunics back on over their heads, and Kannish shrugged his blue cloak back into place. Kannish wasn’t on patrol any more than his uncle was, but the uniform was a boast. A statement of who Kannish had become and his place in the city.

“Could head for the tap house,” Maur suggested.

“It’s a pretty thought,” Marsen said, “but it’s back to the barracks for us.”

“I have patrol in the morning,” Kannish said, “and Uncle’s pulling tolls at the Seepwater gate.”

Maur tried on a smile. “Another night, then.”

Together, the four of them passed under the stone archway and into the house proper. The servants had cleared away the remains of the meal, and Kannish’s mother and father were standing in the front hall along with their two eldest daughters. It was hard for Garreth to think of his friend’s older sisters as anything but the agents of torment and objects of adolescent curiosity that they had been for him when he was younger, but they were women now, full-grown and ready to take their places in the family and business. The elder had just announced her engagement to the son of a magistrate, and the night’s meal had been one of several meant to celebrate the coming union.

Garreth thanked Kannish’s father and mother for their hospitality, as form required, and they laughed and hugged him. The merchant houses of Kithamar were at constant war with each other, but it was a war fought with favors and alliances and a firm eye on how to wring advantage out of every situation without quite crossing the law. That it was usually bloodless made it no less intense. The decision, made almost all of Garreth’s lifetime ago, to have the three boys play together in the family courtyards had meant something, as did the choice to invite Kannish’s friends to the meal tonight. That was the way in Riverport. Everything was something more than it appeared.

Kannish and his uncle turned south, heading toward their barracks. Maur and Garreth made their way west. It was the height of summer, and the long, slow hours left a touch of indigo on the horizon. Palace Hill was off to the southwest from them, Oldgate glittering with lamps and lanterns all down the left side, like the hill was a head seen almost in profile with the palace of Prince Ausai atop it like a crown. Kannish had been in the guard for almost half a year already, but it still felt odd to be walking through the warm, fragrant night without him. Like someone was missing.

At first, they didn’t talk, just moved through the dark streets with their footsteps falling in and out of rhythm. At the little square by the chandlers’ guild, Maur hopped onto the low stone wall and balanced on it like an acrobat with very little skill. When they reached the end, he jumped down and sighed. “You heard about Prince Ausai being sick?”

“I don’t believe it. People like telling stories about how things are about to fall apart.”

Maur made a little noise that might have been agreement or might have been nothing. He sighed again, more deeply. “I’m going to join too.”

“Join what?”

“The city guard. With Kannish and Marsen.”

“Oh,” Garreth said.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Feel betrayed. It’s not about picking him over you.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Garreth said. And then a moment later, “You know those stories the old man tells are more than half bullshit. All that about girls throwing themselves at bluecloaks and how the guard wins every fight? That’s him on a stage.”

“I know, it’s just we’re getting to where we need to find a place, you know? It’s easy for you. You’re the oldest, and only one brother under you. I’ve got six siblings ahead of me. My father had to make up a new position in the company last year so that Mernin could report to him straight and not to one of the other children. Saved his dignity. They’re already spending half the time they should be working at plotting out how to run the business after my parents die.”

“The eternal fight.”

Maur nodded, squinting up at the moon. He looked like a sorrowful rabbit. “It’ll be kindness to them and good for me if I find another path. And the guard’s better than the Temple.”

They were walking slower now. The corner where their paths divided was coming up, and Garreth found himself dreading it. “You don’t want to spend your days praying to the gods and scraping wax out of the candleholders?”

“I’m not the gods-and-spirits type,” Maur said. “At least the guard has some adventure to it. And it’s not as humiliating as taking hind tit in the family trade. Anyway, Kannish said there’s an opening in his watch. One of the old-timers caught a knife in his gut, and it went septic.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Don’t be bitter.”

“I’m not,” Garreth said. “I’m just… it’s late and I’m tired.”

The corner came, and they paused. Maur was shorter than Garreth by almost a head, thin across the shoulders, and with wide brown eyes with one a little higher than the other. They were the same age, except Garreth was born in the spring and Maur the autumn. How had it come that they weren’t still boys digging in the mud and daring each other to climb the tile rooftops?

“Well,” Maur said.

“Yeah,” Garreth replied.

Maur turned north. His family lived almost against the city wall. Garreth went south, walking alone in dark streets. In Seepwater or Newmarket, a man walking alone at night could attract the wrong kind of attention, and he wouldn’t have gone to Longhill even with friends and weapons. He’d only been across the river to Stonemarket and the Smoke after dark a few times, and then with company who knew the streets. But Riverport was home almost as much as his own family’s compound, and its streets were as much a part of his place in the world as his own kitchen garden.

House Left had been part of Kithamar since before Kithamar had been a city, or so the story went. Back in the dim past when the Khahon had been a river border between the cities of the Hansch to the west and Inlisc hunting tribes to the east, a Hansch general had taken a merchant woman as lover. Their child, noble by blood but embarrassing to the general’s wife, had been given favors of trade and custom under the mother’s name. And so House Left was half merchant class, half secret nobility, and one of the founding trade families that had made Kithamar independent of the cities around it. Maybe it was even true.

Riverport was the northernmost navigable port on the Khahon, and the link between the farms and ocean cities to the south and the harder, wilder lands to the north and east. It was a key stop on the snow roads that went across the frozen deserts from Far Kethil to the Bronze Coast in the sun-drunk south. It was the first place that the cedar and hard oak floated down to from the logging camps in the north.

If you want to make steady coin, his father always said, put yourself between something and the people who want it. As wisdom went, that sounded less noble than stories of glorious war and forbidden love, but it had kept House Left in respectable buttons and warm houses for generations. And if Garreth’s grandfather had maybe taken a few too many speculative shipments that hadn’t paid out, if his father’s plan to accept discretionary deposits had been foiled by the bankers’ guild, if his mother’s bid to regain the losses by shifting the family trade from wood and wool into more expensive goods like sugar and dye and alum hadn’t made the returns they’d hoped, if she’d in fact been gone on secret business since late spring…

Well, no one knew that who didn’t see the family’s private books. At any time, a third of the merchant houses of Kithamar could be on the edge of collapse and keeping their plumage bright as a songbird so that no one could tell. House Left had weathered private storms before this, and they would again. That was what Garreth’s father said, and he said it with conviction.

The compound they had lived in for the last three generations was large enough to be a little boastful. It didn’t dominate the street the way the Dimnas or Embril families did theirs, but it had four white stories with shutters in the pale blue peculiar to House Left. The ground floor was for business and the entertainment of guests, the second for the family, the third for the handful of servants under the watchful eye of their head of house, and the fourth was storage for old furniture and generations of the family records and the unending battle against mice and pigeons who wanted to make it home.

Garreth walked down the moon-soaked street toward bed, his thumbs hooked in his belt and his mind lost in itself. He didn’t notice anything odd until he was almost at the door.

The shutters were open, inviting in the cooler night air, but not only on the upper floors. The ground floor windows were bright with candles. Garreth’s steps faltered. As late as it was, he’d have expected nothing more than a flicker in his brother’s room or one of the servants’ windows. The light spilling out to the street meant that something had happened. He told himself that the tightness in his throat was excitement, that whatever it was would be something good and not another setback.

The front door was latched but not barred. Voices came from the back. First, his father’s low, measured voice, capable of cutting sarcasm with almost no change of tone and spoken too gently to hear the words. Then Uncle Robbson, sharp and barking: Well, the old direction isn’t working, is it? Then his father again. Garreth closed the front door behind him quietly. The third voice was as unexpected as a snowstorm in summer.

“Mother?” Garreth said, already walking toward the lesser hall.

She sat beside the empty fire grate, still in a traveller’s robe of leather and rough cotton, her hair pulled back in a severe bun that showed the grey at her temples. Garreth’s father leaned against the front wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and Uncle Robbson—chin forward and chest puffed out like a rooster—stood in the middle of the room facing Father with anger darkening his cheeks. Mother ignored Uncle Robbson’s tantrum with a calm she’d been practicing since she’d been old enough to change her little brother’s diapers, turning her attention instead to Garreth.

“Where have you been?”

“Kannish. His parents had a dinner. I didn’t know you were coming back.”

Mother tapped Uncle Robbson on the leg and nodded for him to sit. He obeyed. Father remained where he was, expression placid as always. “I’m not back. Not exactly,” Mother said. “Hopefully no one knows I’m in the city, and I’ll be out again come morning.”

“Why?” Garreth said, a little ashamed to hear the ghost of a whine in his voice. He was a grown man, not a child running after his mother.

“You know the policy on things like this,” his mother said, and Garreth looked at his toes. For the family, policy was there to keep anyone from error. If the policy was to take debts to the magistrate after fifty days, it meant that even the closest friends didn’t get a fifty-first. If it was policy to write family matters in cipher, even the most trivial house matter went into code. If the policy was that the secret business of the house was known only to those who had to know it, then the number of people who might let something slip was never more than it had to be. Judgment could be swayed by drink or desire, but policy was implacable.

Which was why his father’s gentle, amiable words were more shocking than a shout. “Now then, Genna. I think we owe the boy something, don’t you?”

The emotions on his mother’s face were too fast and complicated to read. She looked into the empty grate as if there were a fire there to gaze into. “The business… is worse than we let on. Over the last five years, we have lost a great deal of capital. More than we can afford.”

“All right,” Garreth said.

“There is a plan to put things right,” she went on. “There’s risk, but if it goes well, it will more than make up for our losses.”

Garreth felt his heart tapping against his chest like it urgently wanted his attention. His parents had always been very careful to explain the workings of the house once a deal was complete. That was his training. To be told of something that was still uncertain in its outcome… Well, it was the ragged edge of policy, and it made him feel like a child in an adult conversation.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“If this fails,” his father said, “we will need to sell the warehouse.”

Uncle Robbson slapped his thigh like he was mad at it. “You can’t do that. If you start selling what brings the money in, you’ve already lost. It’s like a farmer grinding his seed for flour.”

“Robbson,” Mother said. She shifted her eyes back to Garreth’s. He didn’t understand the hardness he saw there. She rose to her feet, walked to the door, and nodded for him to follow. The two older men stayed where they were, Robbson with his lips pressed thin, Father with a little smile that gave nothing away. Garreth followed his mother.

They went down the short hall to the dining room. He heard the clatter of the plate before they reached the archway. An Inlisc girl sat at the table alone, like a servant playing at being above her station. If someone had made an unflattering caricature of a Longhill street rat, it would have looked like her: plate-round face, curled hair, dark eyes. She didn’t jump to her feet, though, or show any sign of embarrassment the way a servant would.

“This is Yrith, daughter of Sau,” Mother said, “and you’re going to marry her.”

Elaine ab-Deniya Nycis a Sal, the only living child of Byrn a Sal and, at eighteen, the youngest and last of her diminished house, had three beds. One was in her apartment in the compound of her father’s family, and it was dressed in green with a set of summer doors made from cedar slats designed to let in the breeze from a private garden. The second, in the children’s salon in House Abbasann’s family compound, where her mother had spent her childhood and her grandmother’s family still lived, had a suite of pale stone polished within an inch of its life and decorated with pink-and-gold tapestries and pillows that had been in fashion a decade before Elaine had been born. The last was a cot in a simple cell of the Clovas Brotherhood with a washstand and a window of colored glass that looked out toward the ancient fortress that was the palace. The servants and guards in all three knew her by sight. Whichever place she chose would shift without comment to welcome and accommodate her, and she moved between them depending on her mood, the celebrations in Green Hill, and the demands of her tutors.

Of the three, she preferred her father’s house and spent the majority of her nights there.

Which was how her cousin Theddan knew where to find her.

“Elly? Are you awake? Wake up! Let me in.”

In her dream, Elaine was at a dressing mirror that was frustrating her by showing someone else in the reflection. She was trying to make it show her own face to her by turning and looking from the corner of her eyes, but she could only catch herself in glimpses. The thumping sound came from the glass like the reflected girl was trying to break through.

“Elly, I know you’re there. I’m in trouble. Open open open open. Please.”

The mirror vanished like a snowflake melting on skin, and she was in her bed, her head thick with sleep. Her rooms. The dim, ruddy light of a night candle that was halfway burned down. She pulled herself up to sitting. At the foot of her bed, her servant girl was still snoring gently away. Elaine swung her legs over the side of the bed as the knocking came again, low and fast. Furtive. That was the word for it. A furtive knocking. She went to the summer doors, unlatched them, and let them swing open. Theddan swept in like a rainstorm. At nineteen, she was a year older than Elaine almost to the day, with long hair that would have been the color of caramel if there had been more light and a permanent smirk in the shape of her face that reminded people of foxes and mischievous ghosts. Elaine closed the summer doors behind her and latched them. The servant girl woke up, looking wide-eyed at the visitor.

Theddan started stripping off her clothes—cloak, robe, and shoes—and pushing them into the servant girl’s hands. When she spoke, it was to Elaine.

“I was here all night. Just the two of us. We plaited each other’s hair and sang and traded gossip, and you tried to teach me that poetry thing you do, but I couldn’t understand it. We fell asleep together, and I didn’t go anywhere.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Theddan said, stripped naked now and going through to Elaine’s dressing room. “We’re asleep right now. Both of us. Where the fuck do you keep your sleeping shifts? This place is dark as a cave.”

The servant girl, an Inlisc named something like Reya, looked from Elaine to the open door of the dressing room and back, her eyes so wide they seemed ready to fall out. Elaine sighed. “Hide those,” she said, nodding at Theddan’s cast-offs. “Put some lavender oil on them first, though.”

“Yes, lady,” the Inlisc girl said, and scuttled off.

Elaine yawned and walked across to the darkness that was her dressing room. The rustle of cloth came out of the shadows. “Do I want to know?”

“Yes,” Theddan said. “Oh, Elly, my love, you want to know everything there and back again, but right now… Shit. They’re coming.”

Theddan boiled out of the dark—now in one of Elaine’s sleeping shifts—grabbed her hand, and dragged her back into bed. Elaine pulled the light blanket up over them both and put her head on the pillows. Theddan’s breath reeked of alcohol, and her hair smelled like a bonfire. And there was something else. A musky, animal scent deeper than sweat.

The knocking that came this time was from the apartment door, and Elaine waited until she heard the servant girl’s voice asking who it was. The voice that answered was low and masculine and familiar.

“Wait here,” Elaine said softly.

“Of course I’m waiting here,” Theddan said. “I’m fast asleep. Can’t you tell?” She snored theatrically as Elaine got back out of bed.

Elaine hauled on a robe since her servant wasn’t there to do it for her, and padded toward the main doors. The chief of her father’s guard was there, lantern in his wide hand, glowering at the poor servant girl like she could have been responsible for anything.

“What’s going on?” Elaine asked.

“Sorry to disturb,” he said. “Theddan Abbasann’s gone missing.”

“No she hasn’t. She’s right there.” Elaine gestured toward her bed and the motionless lump of girl under the thin summer blanket. “She’s been here all night. Who thinks she’s missing?”

The guard captain looked from her to the bed and back again. He didn’t believe her, but she hadn’t really expected him to. The calculation wasn’t about truth, but about the advantages and disadvantages of calling out the lie. Elaine waited. The Inlisc servant shuffled in the background, trying to be invisible and failing.

“She must have forgotten to tell her people that she was going to be here,” the guard captain said.

“Thoughtless of her,” Elaine said. “Please let them know that she’s with me, and she’s safe.” Those at least were true. Or as true as they could be with Theddan.

“I will,” he said, then locked eyes with her. “You should make certain the summer doors are fast, miss. One of the guards said he saw someone coming through the garden that wasn’t supposed to be there. Wouldn’t want anything surprising to happen, yeah?”

“No surprises,” she said, but she meant I’ll handle her, and his nod meant he understood. The door closed behind him. Elaine nodded the servant girl back to her cot and climbed back into her now-occupied bed.

“He believed you. I can’t believe he believed you. Men are so dim.” Theddan giggled and then sighed. “Oh, you should have been there, Elly. You should have come.”

“And where exactly was ‘there’ tonight?”

“A guild hall in Riverport. Right on the water. I took a boat to get there. There were so many people. More pretty boys with their bare chests out than stars in the sky. And some girls too.” In the dim light of the night candle, Theddan’s smile looked like an allegory of animal satisfaction.

“Riverport? You’re going to wind up pregnant by some… wool seller.”

“Some wool seller’s son with a perfect round ass,” Theddan said, and made a greedy, grabbing gesture. When Elaine didn’t laugh, she said, “Don’t be a prude.”

“I’m not.”

“Then I’m being a slut.”

“I’m not saying that,” Elaine said. “I appreciate a well-made ass as much as anyone. I just… You can’t go on like this. It isn’t safe.”

“I wore a mask. Half the people there were masked. No one knew it was me. Don’t be angry.”

Elaine put her hand on Theddan’s wild, smoke-salt hair, and her cousin pushed her head into the palm like a cat being petted. The wine fumes on her breath should have been rancid, but they weren’t. They were like some exotic perfume that Elaine could have but never use. Something beautiful that didn’t suit her. Elaine told herself that the tug she felt in her breast was concern for Theddan and annoyance with her, but she knew that wasn’t the whole truth.

“I just worry for you,” Elaine said. “That’s all.”

“I worry for you too. They want so much from us, you know?” her cousin said, her voice taking on a softness and drift. “They take so much of what we are, and then tell us how to use the little bit we have left. And you trust them, love. It scares me how much you trust them.”

“You’re drunk.”

“You’re sober, and I’d save you from it if I could. You know I’d save you if I could, don’t you?” A tear fell from Theddan’s eye, the wet shimmering bright in the candlelight.

“We’ll just have to watch out for each other.”

“Always,” Theddan said, and Elaine was almost able to believe she wasn’t lying. “Always, always, always.”

Her cousin smiled and settled deep into the pillows. Before long, Theddan was making small, soft noises—not quite snoring and not quite not. Elaine lay in the dim, trying not to shift and wake her. Sleep returned slowly, and it brought no dreams when it did.

Deniya Abbasann had had three children with her husband, Byrn a Sal. The first two, twin boys, died young. The third, Elaine, had been a difficult birth, and Deniya had lived long enough to see her daughter breathing and give the child her blessing. Or that was the story they told Elaine. Her understanding of her mother was made entirely from other people’s words. Sometimes, she could conjure up a woman who looked a bit like her, but older, wiser, happier. Other times, she imagined a woman with dark hair and eyes, a cutting laugh, and a permanent, unresolvable disapproval of Elaine and everything she’d become. Her mother was a story in her own mind, and part of that story was that her daughter wasn’t quite good enough because that was what Elaine feared about herself.

After Deniya’s death, Byrn had chosen not to remarry. Elaine’s great-uncle, Prince Ausai a Sal, had fathered no children. When—if—Elaine had children of her own, they would have a Sal blood, but some other name. Even if her father remarried, Elaine would be the prince after him, and her children would take the throne after her, but they would not be a Sal. As it stood, House a Sal was the most powerful in Kithamar, and also it was fading.

It didn’t matter. The powerful families of Kithamar shared blood and beds like a vast, complicated dance whose ballroom was history. The prince had been an a Sal for four generations, House Reyos for two generations before that, and House Adresqat half a dozen before them. Almost every time a woman took the throne, the name shifted, and the city itself was reborn in lineage if in no other way. It was a permissible kind of change.

The five great families had been seven and twelve and three, as the winds blew them. Families of great power faded, and there were minor houses—Erinden, a Lorja, Karsen, Mallot, Foss, and a dozen more—waiting to rise. But Kithamar was Kithamar, and all through its history, from its first founding to that day’s morning sun, there was a thread that held it together. No usurper had ever taken the throne. No civil unrest, however violent, had split the city. If, in her studies, Elaine sometimes heard a drone of cruelty behind the symphony of her city’s past, it was only the price they paid for peace.

Theddan, her face still and relaxed, was still lost in sleep when dawn drew its beams between the slats of the summer doors. Elaine watched her sleep until she was certain that she couldn’t fall back into dream herself, then slipped out of bed without waking her wayward cousin and let her servant dress and groom her in silence. They could likely have sung tunes and clapped, as far beyond waking as Theddan seemed, but Elaine left her apartment quietly. The house itself was broad and grand, with room enough for a dozen to be kept in style, though there were only her and her father now. The guest house had been closed for years, and the south and east wings of the main house were shuttered. The north wing and its gardens were enough. More than enough.

She took her morning meal in the moss garden, sitting under a canopy of silk and iron with morning glories