Cover

Also by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Fionavar Tapestry

The Summer Tree

The Wandering Fire

The Darkest Road

Tigana

A Song for Arbonne

The Lions of Al-Rassan

The Sarantine Mosaic

Sailing to Sarantium

Lord of Emperors

The Last Light of the Sun

Beyond This Dark House (poetry)

Ysabel

Under Heaven

River of Stars

Children of Earth and Sky

A Brightness Long Ago

All the Seas of the World

Dedication

For Laura, Sam, Matthew

With very great love, and an enduring awareness

that what I write, what I can shape in these stories,

is because of them, because it is for them.

Epigraph

Imagined voices, and beloved, too,

of those who died, or of those who are

lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;

sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return

sounds from the first poetry of our life—

like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.

—Constantine Cavafy

Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

What will you do,

when it is your turn in the field

with the god?

—Louise Glück

Map

Map by Martin Springett

Characters

(a partial list)

Thierry Villar, a poet of Orane

Adelie, his mother

Ambroise Villar, a cleric, his adoptive father

Silvy Gautier, his friend, in The Lamb Tavern

Eudes, owner and proprietor of The Lamb

Anni, employed at The Lamb

Jolis de Charette, once a lover of Thierry

King Roch of Ferrieres, “the mad King”

Bianca di Rizzetto, his queen, from Batiara

Girald, their young son, the royal heir

Rollin, Duke de Montereau, the king’s brother and principal adviser, acting as regent when King Roch is unwell

Bettina, his wife

The king’s uncles and advisers:

Duke de Barille

Duke de Regnault

Laurent (“the Bold”), Duke de Barratin, a royal cousin, also an adviser

Arnoul and Guiart, his sons

Count Burkard van Aribert, Barratin’s principal adviser

Robbin de Vaux, the king’s provost in Orane

Medor Colle, his senior serjeant

Gauvard Colle, Medor’s uncle, acquainted with the half-world

Aubrey, another senior serjeant

Claquin Guiene, one of Montereau’s private guards

Corbez Barthelmy, once a soldier

Lambert Maar, a thief

Marina di Seressa, also a poet, living near the Livraise River, often at the court

Clare, her mother

Alaina d’Arceval, her neighbour in the countryside

Le Futrier, proprietor of The Fife Tavern

Fermin Lessieur, a (bad) poet there

Branco Merlant, proprietor of The Needle Tavern

Denis Cassin, a lawyer and academic at the university

Hutin Peyre, high cleric of Orane

Vicomte Fermin de Mardol, an aristocrat

Jeanette, a young woman from the village of Broché

Peire and Eran, her brothers

Lysbet Guerin, a young woman from the hamlet of Cassaude

Bascot de Thunier, a minor lord near the Livraise River

Mercier, high cleric of Aurage, residing nearby

Rogier, an innkeeper in a village by the Livraise

High Patriarch Tessio, in Rhodias

High cleric Viotti di Virenza, also in Rhodias