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PROLOGUE

Nine hundred and ninety-seven ... nine hundred and ninety-eight ... nine hundred and ninety-nine ... one thousand!

Asher opened his eyes. At last.

Time to go.

Holding his breath, he slid out of his old, creaking bed and put his bare feet on the floor as lightly as the rising sun kissed the mouth of Restharven Harbour.

In the other bed his brother Bede, mired in sleep, stirred and grunted beneath his blankets. Asher waited, suspended between heartbeats. Bede grunted again, then started snoring, and Asher sighed his silent relief. Thank Barl they didn't still share this room with Niko. Bloody Niko woke cursing if a fly farted. There'd be no chance of creeping safely out of the house if Niko still slept here.

But after Wishus finally got hisself married to that shrew Pippa and moved out of his solitary chamber to his own stone cottage, along Fishhook Lane, Niko had taken belligerent possession of the empty room. Claimed it as his own by right of being the oldest brother still living at home — and with his fists if nobody liked that reason.

As the youngest, Asher didn't rate a room of his own. As the youngest he didn't rate a lot of things. Even though he was twenty years old, and a man, and could be married his

own damn self if he'd wanted to be. If there was a woman in Restharven or anywhere else on the coast who could make his heart beat fast for longer than a kiss and a fumble on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

Pausing to scoop up his boots, left conveniently at the end of the bed, Asher tiptoed into the corridor and past Niko's closed door. At Da's room he hesitated. Looked in.

Da wasn't there. Shafting moonlight revealed the sagging double bed, empty. The blankets undisturbed. The single pillow undented. The room smelled musty. Abandoned, even though somebody still lived there. If he closed his eyes, he could almost catch the sweet suggestion of Ma's perfume.

But only almost, and only if he imagined it. Ma was long since dead and buried, and all that remained of her perfume was a single cracked and used-up bottle Da kept on the dusty windowsill.

Asher moved on, a ghost in his own house.

He found his father in the living room, sprawled snoring in his armchair. An empty ale jug sat on the table by his right hand; his tankard was tumbled on the carpet at his slippered feet. Asher wrinkled his nose at the sourness of spilled beer and soaked wool.