Katharine Kerr: Sword of Fire

Book 1 of The Justice War

Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Katharine Kerr 2020

Cover design © Micaela Alcaino 2020

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008276751

Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008182489

Version: 2020-01-09

For Alis Rasmussen

Contents

Cover

Title Page SWORD OF FIRE Katharine Kerr Book 1 of The Justice War

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: Eldidd and the Westlands, 1428

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two: Cerrmor

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

A Deverry Tale

The Honor of the Thing: Deverry and Pyrdon, 1423

Acknowledgements

Also by Katharine Kerr

About the Publisher

Never loose an arrow with your eyes shut.

Westfolk proverb

Up in a high tower chamber, Alyssa vairc Sirra stood at a lectern and studied a massive book of ancient chronicles. A shaft of sunlight, pale from the encroaching fog, fell through the window onto the page. Now and then she looked away from the passage she was memorizing and glanced out at the view. She could see down to Aberwyn’s fine new harbor and the Southern Sea beyond, dark blue water, just flecked with white caps in the last light of the day. Soon, she realized, it would be too dark to read.

‘Lyss! Lyss!’ Gasping for breath, Mavva flung herself into the chamber. ‘You’ve got to come. Now!’

Alyssa looked up from the book. Mavva’s long dark hair had slipped from its clasp. Tendrils hung in tendrils around her face, normally so pale, now flushed and red

‘Why?’ Alyssa said. ‘What’s so wrong? And you shouldn’t run up the stairs like that. No wonder you’re all out of breath.’

‘You don’t understand. He’s dying. Cradoc the bard.’

Alyssa slammed the chronicle-book shut.

‘Let me just get my surcoat. I’ll come with you!’

With their red students’ surcoats flapping over their skirts and tunics, the two women hurried down the long spiral staircase. They ran out into the main courtyard of the United Scholars’ Collegia in Aberwyn, where they were studying in residence. The news had spread as Mavva had passed by, it seemed, because some thirty other students, men and women both, were milling about on the grassy lawn near the front gates of the scholars’ preserve. A pair of chaperones, older women dressed in black, fluttered at the mob’s edge and called out cautions. A dark-haired lad with the pale orange surcoat of Wmm’s Scribal Collegium over his breeches and shirt hurried to join them.

‘Here’s Alys!’ Rhys, Mavva’s betrothed, called out. ‘What shall we do, go up to the dun?’

‘That’s where I’m bound,’ Alyssa called back. ‘If we want to see him fairly treated, we’d best all go.’

The pack followed her out of the gates into the streets of Aberwyn, dim with the early twilight of a damp spring day. Already the lamplighters were out working, one to steady a ladder while the other climbed up to light the wicks of the oil lanterns from his coil of smoking fuse. Shopkeepers stood yawning at their doors; townsfolk hurried home with baskets of food from the marketplace or trotted out on one last errand. Every now and then a fine coach and four clattered down the narrow streets and made the students jump back against the shopfronts.

As they panted up the last steep hill, other students and the merely curious joined them from taverns or public squares, calling out the news to those still behind them. No one could believe it, that Gwerbret Ladoic would go so far as this, to let a true bard starve himself to death before his gates.