HarperVoyager
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Mark Lawrence 2019
Cover © Tomasz Jeduszek 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Mark Lawrence 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: 9780008152390
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008152413
Version: 2020-02-20
For my grandfather, ‘Bill’ William George Cook, who lived most of his first decade under the reign of Queen Victoria and who with great patience helped me make my first treasure box
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
The Story So Far
Prologue
Chapter 1. Holy Class: Present Day
Chapter 2. Three years earlier: The Escape
Chapter 3. Holy Class: Present Day
Chapter 4. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 5. Holy Class: Present Day
Chapter 6. Holy Class: Present Day
Chapter 7. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 8. Holy Class: Present Day
Chapter 9. Present: Holy Class
Chapter 10. Holy Class
Chapter 11. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 12. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 13. Present: Holy Class
Chapter 14. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 15. Present: Holy Class
Chapter 16. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 17. Holy Class
Chapter 18. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 19. Present: Holy Class
Chapter 20. Holy Class
Chapter 21. Three Years Earlier: The Escape
Chapter 22. Present: Holy Class
Chapter 23. Holy Class
Chapter 24. Holy Class
Chapter 25. Holy Class
Chapter 26. Holy Class
Chapter 27. Holy Class
Chapter 28. Holy Class
Chapter 29. Holy Class
Chapter 30. Holy Class
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Also by Mark Lawrence
About the Publisher
For those of you who have had to wait a while for this book I provide brief catch-up notes so that your memories may be refreshed and I can avoid the awkwardness of having to have characters tell each other things they already know for your benefit.
Here I carry forward only what is of importance to the tale that follows.
The people and places in the brief summary I start with are expanded on further down, so if it means nothing to you, skip the next paragraph then come back to it.
Grey Sister ended with Nona, around fifteen years old, escaping Sherzal’s palace with troops in pursuit. She had friends with her, including Zole, Ara, Regol, Abbess Glass and Sister Kettle, and assorted other survivors. Zole had the Noi-Guin’s shipheart, stolen from the assassins’ headquarters beneath the palace. Clera helped Nona escape but went back to Sherzal’s service. Nona’s enemy from the convent, the novice Joeli Namsis, was still in the palace and her actions led to the death of Nona’s friend Darla during the escape. Nona and her companions are in the mountains on the border with Scithrowl and a long way from the convent. The story does not begin with this scene but will return to it presently.
Abeth is a planet orbiting a dying red sun. It is sheathed in ice and the vast majority of its people live in a fifty-mile-wide ice-walled corridor around the equator.
An artificial moon, a great orbiting mirror, keeps the Corridor free of ice by focusing the sun’s rays into it each night.
When, thousands of years ago, the four original tribes of men came to Abeth from the stars they found the ruins of a vanished people they called the Missing.
The empire is bounded by the lands of the Scithrowl to the east and by the Sea of Marn to the west. Across the sea the Durns rule. At the end of Grey Sister Scithrowl hordes under their Battle-Queen, Adoma, were amassing on their side of the mountain range that borders the battle lines.
The emperor’s sister, Sherzal, commands the defence against Scithrowl from her palace in the mountains. She was going to betray the empire and let Queen Adoma’s