Ellinden So had never believed – perhaps no one had ever believed – that the Council city Aihvenavama was “safe.” They all knew too well that schemes were laid there, that its halls and chambers bred plots that were carried out elsewhere. But for a time at least, she had believed it safe from the carrying out … Until she was fourteen, and her father choked on his own blood, surrounded by an ever-widening circle of spectators. The crowd had pulled back as he folded over the long-handed knife in his gut, the faces wearing a collective expression of shock. An expression that quickly turned – within seconds – to one of calculation over the Council seat that had just fallen vacant. She learned then, as she crouched by him, pressing her own back against the nearest wall, that even here every hand was set against her.
If not for Manton, she might have never risen from her father’s side. If not for Manton, she might have found herself bleeding out her life on any one of a dozen occasions before she claimed his seat at sixteen.
But she did not fall, despite the lies and the broken oaths.
Doubt near to paranoia was her other ally. Doubt of the sanctity of this island city, where the Council was said to be inviolate. Her father had not been safe here. None of them were … At twenty-four, she proved the truth of her father’s example. Not that she was even in the city at the time. No one could even remember whether Manton had been seen there more recently than a fortnight before Boll Greffitt was found with a garotte about his neck.
Behind the wards of Sutton she counted herself safe, and nowhere else.
Gods, what a miserable town, 
It took some time for the broken window to be repaired, and until then the open space remained covered by thick wooden boards. First, a carpenter had to replace the frame, which had split along one side, and then they had to wait for the glazier, who ended up taking two days to finish his work. Occasionally over the two days of his labor, 
It took two weeks for word to reach the East Redding about the 
It took a great deal of work to minimize the attention drawn to the jewelry store. Some time had to be spent jawing with the other nearby merchants, rueful statements about what a shame it was even this street – this very block – could experience such a 
The interior of the lighthouse still stank of blood and rot, even after they had spent hours cleaning out the limbs and gnawed flesh that 
“No.” She stopped, jaw clenching, making herself take several slow breaths before continuing. “No, I cannot. We cannot risk going to the jail directly. 
I will, Papa,” she whispered back, and then let him set her on the saddle behind the