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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781682107591 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Realm |
| Publication date: | 03/28/2023 |
| Series: | Tremontaine , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 859 |
| Sales rank: | 437,852 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Tessa Gratton is the author of the Blood Journals Series and Gods of New Asgard Series, co-author of YA writing books The Curiosities and The Anatomy of Curiosity, as well as dozens of short stories available in anthologies and on merryfates.com. Though she’s lived all over the world, she’s finally returned to her prairie roots in Kansas with her wife. Her current projects include Tremontaine at Serial Box Publishing, her 2018 YA fantasy Strange Grace from McElderry, and her adult fantasy debut, The Queens of Innis Lear, coming in 2018 from Tor. She is the associate director of Madcap Retreats. Visit her at tessagratton.com
Barbadian author and research consultant Karen Lord is known for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, which won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. She is the author of the science fiction duology The Best of All Possible Worlds and The Galaxy Game, and the editor of the anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.
Joel Derfner is the author of Gay Haiku, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever and What Ended Up Happening Instead, and Lawfully Wedded Husband: How My Gay Marriage Will Save the American Family. (Are you sensing a theme?) Musicals to which he has composed the score have played in New York, London, and various cities in between (going counterclockwise). He lives, alas, in Brooklyn, along with his husband and their small, fluffy dog. joelderfner.com. @JoelDerfner.
Liz Duffy Adams created Whitehall for Serial Box. She is a playwright whose neo-Restoration comedy Or, has been produced over 50 times, including Off Broadway at Women’s Project, Magic Theater, and Seattle Rep. Her post-apocalyptic play Dog Act was published in “Geek Theater,” Underwords Press 2014, and produced by Flux Theatre Ensemble in New York among other places. Honors include a Lillian Hellman Award, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, Will Glickman Award (for Dog Act), and a New Dramatists residency. More at lizduffyadams.com.
Racheline Maltese can fly a plane, sail a boat, and ride a horse, but has no idea how to drive a car. With Erin McRae she writes romance about fame, public life, and other forms of witchcraft. Racheline is also widely published in non-fiction and poetry and teaches at the Brooklyn Writers Project. Inclusive of her work as a producer and writer on Tremontaine, she has been a part of projects short-listed for awards such as the Locus, Hugo, ENnie, and Rainbow. You can find her online at Avian30.com and on Twitter at @racheline_m
Delia Sherman is the author of numerous short stories, as well as the novels Through a Brazen Mirror and the Porcelain Dove. She has judged the Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Novel, The James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She has taught SF and Fantasy writing at Odyssey: the Fantasy Writing Workshop, the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the Hollins University Graduate Program in Children’s Literature, the Alpha Workshop for Young Writers, and workshops at colleges and science fiction conventions all over America. DeliaSherman.com. @deliasherman.
Read an Excerpt
High on the Hill, perched in the warm, dry eyrie of Tremontaine House, Diane, Duchess Tremontaine looked down over the same dull, industrious view of the City, and her smile, though delicate, was just as ready to feast.
Despite the steel grey skies, Diane found her view immensely satisfying.
Her fellow nobles might complain at how the flooding in the north and east had muddied so many roads and dampened gardens, making travel to summer residences uncomfortable at best, impossible at worst, but Tremontaine’s duchess had all she needed here in her home. Diane loved her City, especially standing at the center of progress as she did. Beyond her deep green garden, which glistened with rainwater she chose to see as tiny pearls and drops of diamonds, the dark river curled higher than she’d ever seen it, the rippling waves lapped urgently at the pleasure barges docked here at this northern curve. Her own swan barge bobbed as if with life. If she trained her gaze south along the river, over the barely visible curve of the Hill and peaked roofs of the Middle City, she could spy the first high University buildings on the eastern bank. Beyond the edge of her sight, the island of Riverside perched—the last remnant of that old city that one day would be no more. Consumed by this tide of progress.
Perhaps not in her lifetime, but these threads she wove now would one day knot into patterns for the scions of Tremontaine.
Footsteps on the tower stair had Diane straightening her shoulders and turning her head to present an elegant three-quarter profile to the entryway. This eyrie was the duchess’s private nest, and she allowed very few admittance. The guest she anticipated now set a flutter beneath her ribs. She smoothed her hands down the deep grey silk of her bodice and dissuaded herself from the temptation to readjust the black-and-pink scalloped ruffles cascading down in layers over her skirts. It was a new, bold cut and fashion, and her maid had fussed it into perfection.
Ixkaab Balam, first daughter of the first daughter of the House of Balam, leaped over the second-to-last step and burst into the pastel sanctum. At the sight of the duchess, she stopped immediately, lips parted, and stared at Diane framed by the window, exactly as the duchess had intended.
Every encounter with Kaab this past year had grown more and more exciting, because Diane never knew quite what to expect. There would certainly be subtle conversation, but it might be edged with angry conflict, vital intelligence, or merely humorous gossip. There would be a bargain of some kind—they neither of them liked to leave the other without a promise—ranging from mutual trade concerns and tariffs or touching upon which sort of Kinwiinik dessert Diane’s cook would attempt for their next private dinner.
There would be a moment when Diane glanced at Kaab’s lips, or Kaab skimmed a thumb almost unintentionally against the small bones of Diane’s wrist . . . but would either deign to notice? Would they come together aggressively and fast, or draw out the delicate tension with even more delicate smiles, or perhaps pretend there had been no such moment at all, allowing the memory to pull between them for days and days until they finally met again?
And always during their conversation would come the moment Diane remembered—suddenly, with a slamming heart—that Kaab knew the buried secret of Diane’s most distant past. When that moment inevitably struck, it would shift the entire frame of their mutual attraction.
Therein lay the tension and mystery of their moments together. Diane understood the boundaries of their relationship, but the center of it swirled ecstatically.
Kaab settled her hands on her hips. Today the Kinwiinik woman was clad in a slightly more formal version of her usual Landish-Kinwiinik compromise: boots and fine dark brown trousers under a lovely Kinwiinik tunic of painted cotton, bound at the waist with a thick woven belt in purple and blue in which her twin daggers were tucked like long fangs. Her hair was looped in braids beneath a dark blue Landish hat with a brim to shield her face from the rain. The shadow it cast seemed to make her dark brown eyes deeper.
Kaab doffed the hat, tossing it onto a chair as she strode forward, licked her bottom lip, and said, “My duchess, I would not have thought to compare your eyes to a storm cloud, but there is something of this thick sky and dreadful, urgent, constant rain that brings vivid spirit to those eyes, and from deep within them, I see Chaacmul, his rains ever-cleansing, staring out at me.”
The underlying passion in Kaab’s voice set Diane’s heart trembling, but she did not allow the desire and pride the Kinwiinik’s words inflicted upon her to present in her expression. Diane merely held out a hand to invite Kaab to join her at the window.
Kaab strode forward, but instead of taking that hand, instead of gazing out at the cloudy landscape, Kaab gripped Diane’s waist, pressed the duchess’s bottom against the windowsill, and kissed her.
That was another thing Diane appreciated about the Kinwiinik spy: Kaab was so very, very good at taking what she wanted.