City of Night

Table of Contents

 

 

The House War:
THE HIDDEN CITY (Book One)
CITY OF NIGHT (Book Two)

 

The Sun Sword:
THE BROKEN CROWN (Book One)
THE UNCROWNED KING (Book Two)
THE SHINING COURT (Book Three)
SEA OF SORROWS (Book Four)
THE RIVEN SHIELD (Book Five)
THE SUN SWORD (Book Six)

 

The Sacred Hunt:
HUNTER’S OATH (Book One)
HUNTER’S DEATH (Book Two)

Copyright © 2010 by Michelle Sagara.

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1499.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

All characters in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Inter-net or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing February 2010

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-18506-3

 

Even if I could choose my in-laws, I don’t think I would have
had the temerity or self-confidence to ask them to consider
being mine; they came with Thomas, for which I will be eternally grateful.

The care and feeding of a writer—or at least of this one—is often a thankless job. To ameliorate that in some small way, because I am enormously grateful for those in my life who do, I’d like to thank them.

I have a small house and a large extended family, and one of my youngest son’s friends told his mother “so
many people
live there!”. While this is not actually true, it might as well be. My mother and father, Ken and Tami Sagara, my husband, Thomas West, my two sons, Ross and Daniel, hold the fort. They shop, clean, and eat around me when I’m writing, which means I
can
write. They also listen to me fret and complain, but I’d probably do that anyway. Thomas first-reads as well.

My extended family: John & Kristen Chew, and their two sons, Jamie and Liam, bring the world to the writer when the writer is being a deadline-obsessed hermit. They frequently accompany my brother and his wife, and there’s something comforting about the sound of the Wii in the living room, because it means someone’s having fun.

My
very
extended family: Terry Pearson, who reads everything in the roughest possible form any person but me will ever see it in, and the denizens of both the Michelle West Yahoo group and my livejournal, who patiently endure the long gaps in my on-line participation. I know that some writers need to interact and be social; it energizes them. It energizes me, too—but on occasion it’s the type of energy that makes it harder for me to sit still in front of a keyboard, and when I realize that’s happening, I do shut down a bit.

When the book is finished, I send it to my editor, Sheila Gilbert. It really is like sending a child to their cousin’s after all these years; in as much as a business that weds creativity can be, DAW is part of my family. I felt that way seeing Sheila, Marsha, and Betsy (Wollheim) at the Worldcon in Montreal, and I felt that way about those who couldn’t make it, like Debra Euler. I also want to mention Joshua Starr who is the very helpful person who answers the phone when I call these days. It is a blessing to be able to send the book that I worked on for over a year to them.

W
ATER LAPPED AGAINST THE CURVED SIDES of the ships that lined the docks in the harbor overseen by the Port Authority. This gentle but persistent slap of sea against bow wasn’t always silent—but at the height of day in the summer, other noises, louder and more insistent, held sway.

Cursing, some genial, some jovial, but most ill- tempered, issued forth in a dozen different languages from the mouths of sailors as they lowered gangplanks into crowds and maneuvered cargo hoisted by nets or hooks from the hidden, but cavernous, ships’ holds. Men in clothing fine enough to distinguish them from these sailors were little better in their choice of words, and these, too, arms free of burden, came streaming down the planks, anxious for solid ground beneath their feet.

The breeze that came from the sea was strong enough to kick flags from their limp positions at the top of masts, and these flags, higher by far than the roofs of the tallest buildings found in the Free Towns, made the port look like an odd, floating city, or perhaps a small empire, for each ship was rumored to be its own small nation, and laws on the deck were the captain’s laws. Three ships east, flag flying high, was the full sun against an azure that suggested sky; beside it, in purple and gray, a merchant ship declared its allegiance. The ships themselves differed in size and style, just as manors might; they shared the long, long stretch of dock because there was no other way to deliver their goods to the largest city in the Empire.

Only in port were the men governed by the laws of the Empire of Essalieyan, and the Port Authority had volumes of just such laws for visitors and those new to the City itself to peruse. A reminder, or a warning, they sat behind the harried clerks who looked at manifests, ordered checks of cargoes and containers, and made notes for the purposes of the magisterial guards whose duty it was to protect the interests of the Kings—or more likely their taxes—on this side of the water.

These clerks could be heard speaking in any number of languages, and the words that came most frequently to the lips of tired sailors never crossed theirs. They could be curt, they could be cutting, and they could—with ease—see through a person as if they had ceased to exist at all. But no one who wore the colors of the Port Authority—an austere teal with a hint of silver—was both crude and employed; they dispensed law in the fiefdom of the Port Authority as if they were nobles. Harried, overworked nobles in this season.

They could also offer answers to a person who asked when a ship was expected to dock.

It was from one such man that the pale boy with the very unusual hair had received such information, and he had come every day to the port at dawn, finding—somehow—a space in which to stand and observe that did not often put him in the way of busy, or grouchy, men.

Terrick Dumarr was the name of the clerk who had been called to dispense the information. He was, as clerks went, an imposing figure: Six feet, four inches in height, and some very large number of inches around, none of which were fat. He was a far cry from young, but he had weathered age with the spare grace that would not be out of place in the Commanders of the Kings’ armies; nor would he have looked out of place had he been standing by the far wall in chain mail with a sword at his side.

He was not, however, relegated to the far wall, much as he might have wished otherwise. He, like the other men and women, had responsibilities that could somehow be reduced to the sheaf of papers that littered the three desks behind his broad back. But if he was expected to work, he was also expected to eat, and he waited for the sonorous horns to sound out the hour.

He glanced around the large room. Support beams were placed throughout its length, but no walls divided the room, the exception being a single very thin wall, with its obvious windows, that served to separate the employees of the Port Authority from men so impatient or temperamental that they might consider violence at the receipt of news little to their liking.

Instead, small fences with velvet ropes that had both faded and frayed over time were erected throughout, an obstacle course for those who had business with the Authority. Some of these, well-dressed and reprehensibly well spoken, would journey, manifests signed and sealed, from the Port Authority to its sister in suffering, the Merchant Authority, where most of the commerce in the Empire was controlled.