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SWORD OF FIRE
Katharine Kerr
Book 1 of The Justice War
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Katharine Kerr 2020
Cover design © Micaela Alcaino 2020
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008276751
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008182489
Version: 2020-01-09
For Alis Rasmussen
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Eldidd and the Westlands, 1428
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two: Cerrmor
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
A Deverry Tale
The Honor of the Thing: Deverry and Pyrdon, 1423
Acknowledgements
Also by Katharine Kerr
About the Publisher
Eldidd and the Westlands, 1428
Never loose an arrow with your eyes shut.
Westfolk proverb
Up in a high tower chamber, Alyssa vairc Sirra stood at a lectern and studied a massive book of ancient chronicles. A shaft of sunlight, pale from the encroaching fog, fell through the window onto the page. Now and then she looked away from the passage she was memorizing and glanced out at the view. She could see down to Aberwyn’s fine new harbor and the Southern Sea beyond, dark blue water, just flecked with white caps in the last light of the day. Soon, she realized, it would be too dark to read.
‘Lyss! Lyss!’ Gasping for breath, Mavva flung herself into the chamber. ‘You’ve got to come. Now!’
Alyssa looked up from the book. Mavva’s long dark hair had slipped from its clasp. Tendrils hung in tendrils around her face, normally so pale, now flushed and red
‘Why?’ Alyssa said. ‘What’s so wrong? And you shouldn’t run up the stairs like that. No wonder you’re all out of breath.’
‘You don’t understand. He’s dying. Cradoc the bard.’
Alyssa slammed the chronicle-book shut.
‘Let me just get my surcoat. I’ll come with you!’
With their red students’ surcoats flapping over their skirts and tunics, the two women hurried down the long spiral staircase. They ran out into the main courtyard of the United Scholars’ Collegia in Aberwyn, where they were studying in residence. The news had spread as Mavva had passed by, it seemed, because some thirty other students, men and women both, were milling about on the grassy lawn near the front gates of the scholars’ preserve. A pair of chaperones, older women dressed in black, fluttered at the mob’s edge and called out cautions. A dark-haired lad with the pale orange surcoat of Wmm’s Scribal Collegium over his breeches
