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Chapter 50

Chapter 49

Chapter 48

Chapter 47

Chapter 46

Planning was mostly about balancing odds. Mitigating negative outcomes, improving one’s chances of success by narrowing scope and removing risk. Yet no matter the work done, no plan was ever perfect.

Song knew that better than most, having spent what felt like most of her life falling jus...

Chapter 45

Tristan did not like Marshal de la Tavarin.

Chapter 44

Song waited patiently, her rifle propped up against her shoulder as the shadow moved through the bushes.

The wind was thin today and the Tolomontera winter did not often lead to fog, so there were only minor adjustments needed to her aim as she tracked the movement. Song would never quite g...

Chapter 43

It would have been more prudent not to enter Scholomance at all, even if they were only lingering by the antechamber, but Maryam had been curious.

She’d been back in Scholomance for classes since her obscuration, but that’d meant moving with purpose. In and out, no frills. Today she had...

Chapter 42

On a rainy seventhday morning, huddled inside the tent with two hand-drawn maps between them, Song Ren sat with her brigade and considered the death of the Lord of Teeth. As an intellectual exercise, she must admit she found it quite stimulating.

On paper, logistics were the greater part of...

Chapter 41

The hunting crew were all sworn to silence over the Lord of Teeth’s lair before they returned to camp. The longer that knowledge was kept quiet, after all, the longer their crew could act unhindered by the others.

Yet Angharad could not say she was surprised when, come evening, there hard...

Chapter 40

Waiting in the hall, Maryam had to resist tapping her foot against the ground in what would be too open a display of nerves for her to tolerate.

The chapterhouse was far from deserted at this time of the day, but she was not in a part of it that saw much traffic. At the furthest bound of th...

Chapter 40

Waiting in the hall, Maryam had to resist tapping her foot against the ground in what would be too open a display of nerves for her to tolerate.

The chapterhouse was far from deserted at this time of the day, but she was not in a part of it that saw much traffic. At the furthest bound of th...

Chapter 39

It was a little nostalgic, eating chicken-and-onion skewers with a keg of cheap beer.

It reminded Angharad of the evenings out after fencing tournaments, when she would sneak out with the other competitors to buy too much street food and get drunk in public gardens until someone’s minder ...

Christmas Week

Hey there!

For rest and childcare reasons I'll be taking the week of Christmas (22 to 28th of December) off, so that means there won't be an update on the 26th. The weeks before and after will proceed normally.

Happy holidays,

E.E.

Chapter 38

He’d not slept nearly enough, but still Izel found himself sitting at an empty table in the Rainsparrow Hostel’s eatery as the morning lights swept into Port Allazei.

Alonzo, who ran the morning service on tercedays, had let him in before the hall officially opened and even offered him ...

Chapter 37

Izolda Cernik had not been much of a tactician.

Oh, she’d not been a babe in the woods when it came to schemes but she’d not proven all that great at them in either the royal hall of Volcesta or the sacred groves of the Ninefold Nine. Looking back, Maryam thought that in the early days ...

Chapter 36

The houses claimed by the Orels were packed tight from the addition of another seven souls, but the sounds coming from their yard were happy.

Young Koval was shrieking with laughter, a black-haired man only a few years his elder wrestling with him in the grass. Blankets had been laid over t...

Chapter 35

The oil lamp kept flickering.

It would burn fine for a few minutes, then start to cough like dying man. It was driving Maryam mad. She kept the irritation stoked, clutching the burning ember in her hand as a distraction. Fear had gnawed away at her guts the entire way to the port warehouse ...

Chapter 34

The tea was not as good as Song’s.

No, Angharad corrected herself, that was unfair. It was better than the cheap Someshwari leaves the Thirteenth used as their basic stock, instead falling short of her captain’s personal stash that was doled out as sign if favor and affection. ‘Do Sau...

Chapter 33

They left Izel by the bedside, the two of them ending up at the bottom of the stairs from the sheer need to put a physical distance between them and the sight of Song Ren laid up in that bed looking exactly like what had been done to her.

Silence held a moment, Tristan forcing his thoughts ...

Chapter 32

Maryam was more than a little familiar with ambushes.

The first year of her mother’s war against Malan had been a long streak of hiding in woods and along mountain paths so the Izvoric could charge out of cover and close the distance on Malani patrols before they could get a volley out. T...

Chapter 31

Maryam crept along the floor, fingers trailing Gloam as she pricked her ear.

She risked a glance past the corner of the metal panel, immediately drawing back. Just ahead a kobalos was panting as it gazed below, clutching a barbed javelin. It had a ragged mail coat on and a helmet with holes...

Chapter 30

Izel Coyac rubbed the bridge of his nose, vainly trying to slow down the incoming headache.

He’d been at this for two hours now, moving down from his desk to the cottage’s drawing room in the hope that the view out the window might inspire, but he could not seem to find where the mistak...

Chapter 29

In the moment after the loud snap of broken bone, all Tristan could think of was the name.

Benito Giran. That’d been it. A first year from the Two Hundred Sixty-Ninth, the Stripe of a holding brigade who had been looking for seasoning. He’d joined the fighting with an eye to bringing so...

Chapter 28

In the early hours of the morning, Izel Coyac sat by the last smoldering embers of the campfire and poked them with a stick. He stirred the fading red, eyes on it yet unseeing, and if asked would say there was no greater purpose to it. It was to keep the hand busy while his mind was away.

B...

Chapter 27

Maryam was not having a good time.

“Black fucking Goat,” she cursed, ducking under the spinning metal blade.

It screeched and sparked above her head, suddenly whipping back as the articulated metal arm that’d shot it out withdrew into the wall. Behind her Ishanvi threw ...

Chapter 26

The ground whispered against Tristan’s boots as ahead of him the lantern’s light dragged into existence a stretch of underground. It wasn’t the first time he returned to the forge, but it was the first at night and somehow that made a difference. Even knowing that the briarid had long left ...

Chapter 25

Maryam’s nameless ship had sailed before, of course.

It had made the journey from Asphodel to Tolomontera, and since been beached on different parts of the island. Yet on all those instances it had been sailed by a Watch crew, not her own. And while today was not the first time that the O...

Chapter 24

Though she was strapped half-naked to a stone slab and being prodded at, that wasn’t even the worst part of Song Ren’s firstday evening. No, that would be maintaining the restraint it took for her to keep what she thought about Captain Yue’s study off her face.

Every room in the Akela...

Chapter 23

They met the Twenty-Ninth Brigade at the square in front Scholomance a quarter before noon, Captain Emeni Maziya and her three cabalists proving punctual.

That was common with Malani, Song had found. While they tended to loop in a turn of phrase so they would not be lying should they happen...