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Author : Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre : Historical Fiction
Another complex story with myriads of characters set in a world inspired by the conflicts and dramas of Renaissance Europe. It includes Kay’s signature subtle supernatural elements—”history with a quarter turn to fantasy.” There are five main protagonists whose lives interweave: Danica sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. Pero is a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request and Lenora is posing as a doctor’s wife but sent by Seressa as a spy..
The trading ship that carries them is commanded by Marin, the younger son of a merchant family. And farther east a young boy stolen from his family, Damaz trains to become a djanni in the elite infantry of the khalif—to win glory in the coming war.
“His name was Damaz. It hadn’t always been, but he’d been four years old when they took him and renamed him, and he couldn’t remember his Jaddite name any more. , , , But approaching the other boy in a ring of shouting men, a thought had come to him. And so, he had thrown the first knife he’s been given. He stood there, suddenly uncertain, lost, over the body of the boy whose life he had ended between torches and lanterns and under the blue moon. And abruptly, shockingly, he remembered in that moment that he name as a small child in the west had been Neven, and that he’d had a sister whom he’d loved.”
“Damaz stepped forward and nocked his arrow to his own bowstring. The archer wheeled to face him, bow rising. Damas was already releasing. It wasn’t far and he was a good bowman. His arrow struck the archer in the heart, exactly where he’d aimed. Then the shouted name registered fully, and his mouth opened and in that same moment he pitched forward, having been struck hard in the back by someone wielding a club. There had been a name. Shouted. He knew that name. . . . Danica stood up. There was tremendous pain. It hurt to breathe. She was breathing. The arrow lay in the grass beside her. She bent, carefully and picked it up. There was blood on it, but only a little. The boy on the ground was her brother. She knew it.’I killed you,’ he said. ‘I saw my arrow hit.'”
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