The Pale Sword

Naevra Kellis Sableveyn wakes among flowers on a battlefield in the Province of Greyline, where she has been sent as the sword of Artish Pell, the newly appointed Governor. Greyline has never had a Governor before, only lords who held it by force, and the lords are watching to see what the title means. On her first night, a letter arrives from Marent Sableveyn, her grandfather, her commander, the man who branded the house seal into her back when she was fourteen. A man named Caedan Rell is in Gresna, and needs to be removed. What she does not know is that Caedan has spent months gathering documents that would destroy the Lord Seneschal of the United Realms. He goes through the window. Three floors. Running for Vaulorin with whatever he knows still in his hands. She goes after him. The Pale Sword follows that chase across a kingdom coming apart. It is a story about a woman who has been a sword her whole life and is beginning, slowly and against her will, to wonder who has been holding the hilt. Set in the early modern kingdom of Caldria, on a continent whose most ancient civilisation left behind only seventeen words for grief. The breach that nearly destroyed the world many millennia ago is still there. It has not opened again. Probably. (Commissioned cover of Naevra by Ocaña on Twitter) [Updates weekly.]