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Chapter 19

Tristan had never been the sort to find mindless labor soothing. He had seen too many people break their bodies stacking stones and scraping canals to believe there was anything noble about work, no matter the talk about the dignity in sweating for one’s wage.

Horses were patted and fed carrots, but when they got old they were still made into glue.

Still, the thief was not afraid of work when it had good reasons and there were plenty to weed the garden. For one he had seen Song ...

Chapter 18

Song was the first back to the cottage.

She came in, wiped her boots and hung her cloak. Her musket was placed against the wall – until a proper weapons rack could be acquired – and she put away her powder in a bag she had hung from the wall for that very purpose. The sword belt joined the cloak as the last step, but for once putting away her affairs in an orderly matter brought no comfort. She felt… she wasn’t sure, in truth. Empty? Perhaps simply tired. It had been ...

Chapter 17

Musa Shange and his three were the first down.

Angharad would give him this: the man might be arrogant, but he was no coward. It was but moments after he disappeared down the stairs that the jockeying began, not for seats but for alliances. Now that it seemed certain all of them would journey down into the Acallar to fight everyone wanted to stand with the strongest they knew. Shalini pulled close, almost as if staking a claim, and Salvador had been sitting to their side the entire time...

Chapter Delay

Due to some troubles on my end Chapter 17 will be posted tomorrow, most likely early in the afternoon EST. Sorry for the delay!

E.E.

Chapter 16

The legwork took around an hour and a half.

Some of it was hitting pavement and casing the place without looking suspicious, but the real sweat came when Tristan had to consider how it would all go wrong. Half the time spent rustling up a scheme, Abuela had taught him, should be considering how to get out when it turned on you. Unfortunately, he was no longer fooling around with halfwit coterie thugs: unlike the rare Guardia patrols out in the Murk the local garrison wasn’t likely to ...

Chapter 15

The Chimerical was open, not that Tristan had ever seen it close. Did devils even sleep?

“Oh, this place again,” Fortuna enthused. “I just love that hanging crocodile, you should see if it’s for sale.”

He would not, in fact, be doing this. Tristan snuck a look sideways at the goddess, who was traipsing around in her red dress and by all appearances in a fine mood.

“You do not mind the inside, then?” he asked.

Maryam had looked like someone freshly socked ...

Chapter 14

Angharad sat on a bench to eat alone with her thoughts, which was no mercy.

Half her cabal was long gone, and the last member... Much as the noblewoman disliked sitting there brooding and biting at the tail of her own thoughts, to share a meal with Song after their previous conversation might have been worse. That her own captain had believed it necessary to inform her she lacked manners was mortifying beyond words. That Song had then considered she might prefer finding another cabal to...

Chapter 13

They looked like ghostly vines, faint curls of smoke that were reaching hungry hands.

Song could see them creeping across the checkered, cracked floor of the entrance hall. The god was everywhere, blind hands tugging and pulling at the insides of Scholomance like a child at play – moving this and that, just itching to smash it all onto something that would scream. Hand on the chisel, she reminded herself. Fear would do her no good in this place. Fear never helped anywhere. 2023-09-29 04:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 12

Angharad woke to the smell of breakfast.

Tossing aside her sheets – where Tristan and Maryam had found such a profoundly ugly shade of brown, she had no idea – she pushed herself up. Though she had slept in a bedroll laid on the ground, it had been a decent enough night’s sleep. The Pereduri still looked forward to securing a proper bed and mattress for the bedroom she’d claimed, possibly paired with sheets that did not make her feel like wincing.

Getting up, she washed he...

Chapter 11

“The pork?”

“Nine coppers a pound,” Abrascal replied as he slid onto the bench.

The tip of Song’s reed pen scratched against the paper, adding the latest price to the list. Poultry seemed marginally less expensive than pork, but the costs were more or less the same across the board. Frowning down at her work, an orderly cluster of names, goods and prices, the Tianxi fit the pieces together.

“We will have to rely on fish,” she finally said. “And rice.”

Chapter 10

It was a half-hour walk, most of it following the road to Scholomance.

Angharad had paid little attention to the path once they left the paved avenue, busy quietly seething at the fact they had beenrobbed. Sebastian Camaron had not lied. When they’d returned to their room at the Rainsparrow Hostel they found it just as empty as he had said. Even the clothes she had acquired yesterday gone.

Once more, she owned nothing but what she wore.

Incomprehensibly, Angharad ...

Chapter 9

When Song suggested they go to the Emerald Vaults for breakfast and conversation, it was not really a suggestion.

She had that look on her face, the one Maryam had learned meant the decision was already made and arguing was at your peril. Not that any of them were inclined to argue, the Izvorica least of all: she was still recovering from the inside of that coffeehouse. Feeling out such a strange shop with her nav had been habit, barely even a conscious decision, but what she’d felt.....

Chapter 8

It was pleasant out.

The Grand Orrery lights were blue and bronze, brushing softly against the pavement stones, and a breeze too soft to push against the morning mist trailed down the street. If Song were a fortunate woman, she would be sitting in the delightful garden terrasse of the Emerald Vaults, sipping at a cup of Jigong green as she waited for Angharad to join her so she might give a full report over her evening at the Old Playhouse. They might share some of the honeyb...

Chapter 7

Adarsh Hebbar was quick on his feet and not half so careless as he looked.

He also was not heading back to Hostel Street, if the way he headed straight for the broken shrines behind the Old Playhouse was to be believed. Tristan had to wait and let him get ahead, as the stairs back down to the street were open ground with little room to hide, but he hurried after the Varavedan the moment line of sight was broken.

The shrines were more rubble than ruin, but there were enough spans o...

Chapter 6

“To join the court of cats,” Tristan hummed, “is most easily done.”

There were exactly forty-two people down in the Old Playhouse, barring himself and Tredegar. Of these ten were servants, which he suspected would not count as people according to many of those folk in fine black cloaks chatting beneath pavilions. The guests he’d get back to later, because it was worth picking out the strong and the weak, but Tristan could already tell the servants were a thread worth ...

Chapter 5

The watchwoman handling the ledger at the front

Chapter 4

“Not here,” Song firmly said.

The watchwoman at the desk was leaning in, eyes bright at the prospect of gossip. Maryam would not have minded airing out Tredegar’s dirty little secrets, but it was not worth the fight with Song. There was nothing to gain there save the joy of spite.

Up the stairs they went, to a stone hallway with burnt orange carpets. She was charmed to notice little hopping rabbits were hidden in the patterns, frolicking about merrily. There were numbered do...

Chapter 3

Before her house’s demise, Angharad had only twice journeyed at sea.

Once to visit her distant kin in House Bethel – a trip two days long by ship but three weeks by horse - and the other time to spend a week at the isle of Seler Seithenyn. On both occasions she had sailed with House Tredegar’s trading carrack, the Swift Alder, which as Mother had liked to tell her was neither swift nor made of alder. Most of her time out on the water when training her footing had been out...

Chapter 2

Song had found Captain Alejandra Krac’s cabin a haven of elegance and learning.

Lined with heavy rows of books and two hung maps – one of the Trebian Sea, the other of Radamant’s Reefs – it boasted simple but pristine furniture and a few personal trinkets. Song had always appreciated that so many in the Watch disdained luxury, like Tianxi officials.

“I must confess Coyol’s works have ever been a chore to me,” Captain Krac noted as she slid the borrowed volume back in...

Chapter 1

Tristan woke to the gentle rocking of the ship.

It was dark inside the cabin, his bedding pulled tight around his body in deference to the coolness of sea winds. The thief’s eyes stayed closed even as he pricked his ear, every groan of the old galleon keeping him on edge: it sounded like someone walking on an old floor.  Though the Fair Vistas was large enough he had been given his own cabin and it had a lock on the door, Tristan had spent a great deal of his life pickin...

AMA Announcement

Hey there!

So the Pale Lights AMA will be happening tomorrow on the Discord at noon EDT. For a direct link to the event you can click here.

To further whet your apetite before the second book starts, here's the backcover for the second in the series, titled 'Good Treasons':

The trials of the Dominion are over.

The four survivors have beco...

2023-07-01 14:32:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Book II, Break & AMA

Hello again!

We're now officially finished with the first book of the series, Lost Things. As mentioned in the last announcement updates will resume the 7th of July as we begin the second book of the series, which will be called 'Good Treasons'.

Hope you're looking forward to it, because I certainly am. We're finally out of tutorial murder island and we can start seeing Vesper at large.

I've just realized today that I was too slow on the draw to pause Patreon payments for Ju...

Epilogue

He’d never liked the Rookery.

It was a purely personal dislike, Captain Osian Tredegar would admit if pressed. He had spent half a year down in the Lanes after enlisting, becoming fit for deployment, and though that had been a foul time it was also long enough ago he hardly remembered. His antipathy nowadays came from the fact that since he’d been inducted into the Umuthi Society he had only ever returned to the Rookery for a fresh squabble over funds with Conclave bureaucrats.

Book I End/Book II Start

Hey there!

First the announcement: the first book of the the series will be ending next Friday, on June 2d, in the form of an epilogue.

I'll keep off the spoilers, but I can at least tell you it won't be from the POV of either Tristan or Angharad and it'll be lifting the veil on some of the going-ons behind the scenes. I hope you've been enjoying reading Pale Lights as much as I have enjoyed writing it, because there's still quite a few books left to get through.

As has been...

Chapter 45

Four, Tristan counted as the blade went through Augusto Cerdan’s throat.

Though he allowed himself a moment to bask in the satisfaction of yet another Cerdan put in the ground, some precautions were in order. Clearing his throat, he leaned in to politely ask Shalini to shoot Augusto in the head twice more just to be sure. The gunslinger snorted but shot the possibly dead infanzon in the head and heart a heartbeat later. By simple hand, not using her contract, as the unnecessa...

Chapter 44

The woods around Cantica had been cleared, leaving no true cover close to the palisade.

The five of them instead gathered around a half-abandoned firepit about thirty feet out, roughly to the west of the town. It had a rack propped up over it that Ferranda said was for smoking meat, and they all felt a little sick at the thought of what kind of meat that might mean. Devils were said to prefer eating men whilst they lived, but they were not above feasting on corpses. Regardless of that u...

Chapter 43

It was a tight squeeze, but Tristan limped out into the alley.

He was third out of the hole in the wall the mayor made trying to murder Tupoc – an admirable undertaking, regardless of one’s politics or stance on people-eating – and the two that had come out ahead were as much keeping an eye on each other as the empty alley they stood in. The first, Lord Zenzele Duma, was cut of typical Malani cloth: tall, dark eyes, wide nose. Yet his cheeks were gaunt from grief and hi...

Chapter 42

She could not tell the difference between it and a dream before she woke.

/The lock popped open with a soft sound, Yaretzi brushing past a kneeling form and creeping in with a rag in hand to cover Angharad’s mouth with it./

Angharad woke up looking at the ceiling, asleep and then not. It had been a glimpse, the Fisher pulling at their contract once again. The spirit had only ever done this to prevent her death, yet the noblewoman stayed lying down and looking at the ceiling as s...

Chapter 41

It was a small mark, barely the width of half a palm, but that ‘C/C’ might just get them all killed.

“Trouble,” Lady Angharad Tredegar slowly repeated. “What do you mean?”

Tristan saw the change in the noblewoman, the way her previous sulk immediately turned into a straightened back as she unconsciously made enough room to be able to draw her saber. It was interesting that someone of her birth had learned such a habit – the kind you usually saw in legbreakers and kil...

Chapter 40

“Gods be my witness,” Mayor Crespin harshly said, “but if I either of you draws a sword I will have you shot.”

Angharad’s lips thinned, back straightening as she glared down at the man. She had already given her oath, what manner of honorless cur did he take her for? Cantica’s mayor, a middle-aged man with a bushy black beard whose wildness contrasted with the tidiness of his dated woolen green tunic, looked unimpressed by her anger.

“Glare all you want, girl, but I�...