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Chapter 39

Maryam woke up halfway through the hall, which helped a lot.

Even groggy as she was she could stumble forward while leaning on his side, which was a distinct improvement from carrying her on his back. Tristan had been worried about her, as being knocked unconscious was rarely the end of one’s troubles, but though she had a hard time focusing her eyes her mind seemed all there. Enough to insult him, anyway, which he took as a good sign.

“You carried me,” Maryam doubt...

Chapter 38

The cliffside path was narrow but dry, which was the only reason they lived.

They ran down into the yawning dark, the trembling light of Zenzele’s lantern revealing a thin stripe of the grounds ahead as they tried to outrun the tide of falling stone. When the path abruptly turned to the right, tucked into the mountainside, the Malani noble almost toppled off the edge – Cozme yanked him back, almost falling off himself when Ferranda ran into his back. If the stone path had been even ...

Chapter 37

The thing about weakness was that there was abs

Chapter 36

They broke for an early lunch near the bottom o

Chapter 35

No one died in the night.

A relief, but it did little to lift the mood when they began gathering in the gate room half an hour before the gate forward opened. Angharad had not slept well, wrestling with what she had heard – trying to sort out the truth from the lies. Song had tried to approach her about it but the Pereduri put her off. Unfair as it was, she resented the Tianxi for forcing her hand about eavesdropping on Isabel and Ferranda. Her world had been simpler before that conve...

Chapter 34

As usual, Angharad Tredegar being decent proved to be very inconvenient.

Instead of the hour or so Tristan had planned on waiting until the crew began crossing the shattered hall, he had to wait more than the double. Though he never came close enough to see more than their silhouettes in the distance – too much of a risk, with Song Ren around – he caught a glimpse of them leaving and let out a breath of relief. Finally. The thief had learned patience but never learned to love it. On...

Chapter 33

They waited for the two as long as they could, but neither Remund Cerdan nor Tristan ever made an appearance. As the hours passed, the company grew restless.

“It has been too long,” Lord Zenzele finally said. “Either they went back or they are dead.”

“Surely,” Isabel said, “we could wait a little longer.”

The dark-haired beauty had grown increasingly distressed as time went by. Angharad felt for her: of the two boys she had come with, one had proved a villain...

Royal Road

Hey!

So given that patrons are ahead in chapters compared to everyone this shouldn't affect you at all, but I thought I might as well give you a heads up: I'll be crossposting Pale Lights to Royal Road.

I'll be dropping ten chapters there today, then updating once a day until it catches up to the wordpress - at which point it'll both sites together. To reiterate, the advance chapters are still only here on Patreon.

Still, any of you prefer to read on the Royal Road site or g...

Chapter 32

Something was off.

That was his first thought when he woke, for all that someone was staring down at him.

“Ferranda declined. We’ll have to do without her.”

Tristan rubbed his eyes blearily, hiding his discomfort by throwing Yong half a glare. At a look, people were only just beginning to stumble into the courtyard – the usual early birds. The only person already in the kitchen was Vanesa, whose late nap last night must have shortened her night.

“How are you ...

Chapter 31

Black-cloaked watchmen carried away Felis’ body.

What remained of it, anyway: musket balls had turned the man into red rags.

Tristan felt no grief at the sight. If there was a tragedy in Felis it was in who he had been, not who he’d become. Dust, fear and poverty had worn away the good and left the bad in sharp relief. What remained had not endeared him to the thief, though neither had it been deserving of scorn. It did not matter whether a stone was marble or gravel: if you l...

Chapter 30

On the other side of the gate waited not a test but a tunnel.

Narrow and damp it led them up for fifteen minutes, occasionally at so strong an upwards tilt that some of them slid on the smooth stone and tumbled back into others. It was a relief when they emerged into open grounds, entering some sort of strange water garden. It looked like a large pond with islands of stone tracing a path across, but the waters turned out to be fathomlessly deep. And the path itself was occasionally chan...

Chapter 29

To her very great shame, Angharad’s first reaction was relief it had not been one of hers.

The second was fury: Aines’ corpse could not have been left out of the hall by accident, the murderer had wanted them all to see it. She strode over to the crowd, only some of them turning at the sound: the rest were too busy shouting. Lord Ishaan was the first to notice her and the man – still chubby-cheeked, for all that the fresh scar across his lip now lent him a harder edge – turned r...

Chapter Delay

Hey there!

So, bad news: I have caught covid for the second time, and while it's not quite bad enough for me to need to go to the hospital I am pretty much bedridden. While I've tried to keep on schedule it's not working out, so I'm afraid the chapter release will have to be pushed back to Sunday the 5th.

Sorry about the trouble,

E.E.

Chapter 28

Tristan could not figure out how to make the damn folded ladder work, so he ended up bleating like a lost goat for half an hour before one of the watchmen on patrol heard him.

It was another ten minutes after that of Lieutenant Vasanti and her minions asking him through shouts to describe the device in detail then failing to get it work. In the end one of the blackcloaks just threw him a rope ladder, giving up the machinery for a lost cause. It was only watchmen when he came down, with ...

Chapter 27

A secret, Abuela had taught Tristan, always whispered twice.

The first was the secret reaching your ear, the hidden thing unearthed. The second was the whisper of what a man had thought worth wielding a spade to bury, what it said of them they would keep away from prying eyes. He thought of that, as Lieutenant Vasanti called up her soldiers and introduced him as their fresh meat, a new helper in their work to unearth the tower’s secrets who would soon be joined by three more. He thoug...

Chapter 26 Update

There's been some slight changes to Chapter 26 after misstep was pointed out to me, revising the section just before the ending paragraph. I'll keep an eye out for that kind of mistake in the future.

E.E.

Chapter 26

It was as an endless gallery.

The crystal walls fed into each other, promising infinity in a thimble as the mirroring went on and on. The heights were not all the same, the angles askew and there were even slight slopes to the ground to further muddle the senses. Th effect was strong: Angharad had barely taken ten steps before she became uncertain which way she had entered. A pale and silvery glow hung in the air, lighting the way, but there was no visible source for it. Boots whisperin...

Chapter 25

It was a grim supper.

After the day’s bloody price none were in a chatting mood and Angharad discreetly asked Song to stay close to Zenzele, lest he lose his temper and strike another again. Felis had been acting tastelessly enough that none had made a fuss over the brawl, but if the Malani had to be dragged out of another scrap she suspected sympathy would wane. Isabel, who sat by her side as they dug into their plates of salted pork, biscuits and peas, leaned close.

“Only on...

Chapter 24

“So?”

Vanesa frowned down at the papers with the gate mechanisms drawn on them, idly picking at the edge of her missing eye wound. Maryam was a deft hand with charcoal.

“It is not a lock,” the clockmaker said. “It is much too complex for that. That it is a machine is not in doubt, but the manner of machinery it is trips me up.”

Tristan, crouched at her side, hummed as he glanced at the papers. He taken looks at Maryam’s drawings as well but gotten little out of...

Chapter 23

One more joined their number.

Yaretzi was the last, making her approach during the evening when Tupoc and Lord Ishaan’s crews went to scout ahead. The Aztlan did not look any worse for the labors of the first trial, her tanned face without mark and her practical clothes – a sleeveless stripe blouse above a long patchwork skirt, all of it under a thick sailor’s coat – barely scuffed. The earrings dangling from her ears were of the same copper-gold as Tupoc’s, but they were set ...

Chapter 22

Tristan began fiddling with his cabinet like there was a point to it, keeping his hands occupied so he wouldn’t have to think about what he had just walked away from.

When he saw her approaching from the corner of his eye, it was almost a relief. Shalini Goel was the shortest of all the trial-takers, barely five feet five by his guess, and though she was full-bodied the thief could tell it was not the result of idleness: there was muscle to her frame and calluses on her palms. The sam...

Chapter 21

Angharad Tredegar walked away, leaving him to stand alone before the gate, and Tristan smiled.

That had worked out better than he’d hoped it might. The invitation to join her crew had come as a surprise to him – and to her as well, he suspected – but it told him his instincts had been correct. Tredegar liked for people to be good and bad, with little room in between, so now that he was not strictly bad her opinion of him was leaning the other way.

“That was nice of you,”...

Chapter 20

The consolation prizes for being denied her duel were several.

Sergeant Mandisa sent a Watch surgeon to stitch the cut on her head and she sat down for a hot meal afterwards. Little more than stew and bread, but both were warm and after days on the run she would have been delighted by even a warm rock. She polished both off and Sergeant Mandisa even offered her a thimble of brandy, which she had not anyone else, before clapping her shoulder.

“There’s a few swords in the armour...

Chapter 19

It was a long and narrow road.

Past the woods, where the crags met the mountains, a tunnel dove into the rock. Angharad was too bone-tired to do more than stumble forward through it. There were lanterns and stairs, the winding of the road taking them back outside – on the side of the mountain, with only a ramshackle wooden railing in the way of the precipitous drop below – before going up in a jagged zig-zag. In the distance she saw an island darkened, a realm of monsters and darkli...

Chapter 18

Tristan couldn’t quite believe it when they broke the treeline.

“It’s the right place,” Sarai fervently told him. “The hills are in the right arrangement.”

She had to be right, she was no fool and she had the map tucked away inside her mind through a Sign, and yet the thief felt no relief. Before them a great clearing in the forest was stretching out, rolling hills and a stretch of gleaming grass. Miles of open land with trees on all sides save the north –...

Chapter 17

Tristan, sitting on a stone, idly strummed at strings that did not exist. The supplicant’s cithara in his hands was but a petrified piece of wood without the additional accessory of a priest with mastery of the Gloam to weave strings and pluck at them. The first might not be so impossible, but the second was rather more of a hurdle. So, in the hours past midnight but before they left, Tristan asked a burning question.

“Can you play cithara?”

Sarai eyed him like he’d tracke...

Chapter 16

Angharad flinched, but she did not die.

No, the ball hit the tree about a foot to the right of her head. Bark went flying and a heartbeat later both cultists keeping watch turned her way - she felt Cozme going still as he was caught leaning out of cover.

The cultists shouted, and just like that the traitor had killed them.

There should have been a burst of movement, of surprise and fear and hatred, but instead Angharad breathed deep. The urgency bled out of her, slowly but s...

YONER Update

Hey everyone!

So the rollout on the YONDER app is catching up to people having noticed it, so the wrinkles are getting smoothed out.

First off the region locking issue is nearly solved, the app will be accessible everywhere except Korea, China, Japan, Cuba, Georgia, Macao, and Sudan by the end of the month.

Second, as for the gift coins not being enough by people's count, there are two solutions. To begin, on the 31st the Guide will be added to the Daily Unlock program on YO...

Chapter 15

It had already been a difficult day, so naturally it began raining.

Only a patter at first, nothing like the sheets of icy water Peredur’s coasts enjoyed springing on its dwellers, but it grew. Within an hour they could hardly see in front of the even with the lantern, stumbling along carefully. Master Cozme pointed out a silver lining, that few lemures could fly in such weather and none could follow a scent through it, but wet feet spoke louder than his optimism. It did no...

YONDER Announcement

Hey there!

As some of you may have noticed, an edited and reworked version A Practical Guide to Evil is now on the app YONDER. This was  done as part of a larger deal I still can't get into (but hopefully  soon!) but it's been a pleasure to revisit the Guide and change mistakes I was too early into my writing career to see.

 For the lore addicts  among you, I got to play with the lore and history of Callow in some  depth and for the more action oriented, t...