THE COURT OF MIRACLES
Kester Grant
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Guild of Letter Limited 2020
Map art copyright © Maxime Plasse
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Kester Grant 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008254773
Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008254797
Version: 2020-05-12
To Mum, who filled my world with stories, and Babu, who gave me the words to tell them
CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
Map
The Law of The Miracle Court
PART ONE: How Fear Came
The Founding of the Miracle Court
1. Le Début de l’Histoire
2. The Keepers of the Gates
3. The Lord of Thieves
4. She Who Sleeps
5. The Claws of the Hawk
PART TWO: The Dead Wolf
The Fox Rennart’s Revenge
6. The Tiger
7. The Black Cat’s Choice
8. The Dealers of Death
9. The Dead
10. La Vallée de Misère
11. The Dead Lord
12. Les Oubliettes
13. The Miracle Court
14. The Master’s Hand
PART THREE: The Bread Price
The Tale of the Six Little Mice
15. The Fountain
16. The Dead Trial
17. The Pont Neuf
18. Of Drownings
19. The Dauphin of France
20. Ettie’s Tale
21. The Sisters
22. The Mesmerist
23. Les Diamants de la Couronne
24. The Bread Price
25. The Stripes of the Cat
PART FOUR: The Black Cat’s Hunting
How the Tiger Got His Stripes
26. The Société des Droits de l’Homme
27. Gray Brother
28. Master of Knives
29. Of Paper and Rats
30. What the Lords Said
31. The Dead Lord’s Word
32. She Who Was Lost
33. The Ruined Flesh
34. The Truth
35. Inspector Javert
36. A Little Fall of Rain
37. The Courier
38. The Tiger’s Lair
39. The Black Cat’s Father
40. The Death Song
41. The End of the Tale
Les milles remerciements—en ordre chronologique
About the Publisher
Now these are the laws of the Miracle Court,
as old and as true as the sky;
the Wretched that keep them may prosper,
but the Wretched that break them must die.
All the Wretched