Where the Reeds Remember

The first arrow went wide on purpose. That is the kind of mercy Vesper Kaelborne knows how to give , quiet, deliberate, and quickly spent. For years she has tended the salt-fens on the kingdom's edge, keeping the old compact between village and marsh: do not wake what sleeps in the reeds. But the compact is fraying. Captain Orin Drave arrives with a sealed warrant from King Aldric Avenmoor: Prince Caelen must be brought back from the mire before moon-tide, or the realm will name him a traitor and ride into the reeds with torches. The only path to the prince runs through Yarrow, the Witch-Mother of the Mireholt, whose cottage the court has been told does not exist. Wren, the scout-trainee Vesper took in after a drowned village, is the first to notice that something is wrong beneath the water. The Hollow Queen , the marsh-spirit the old folk bargain with for safe passage , has begun to rise early. The reed-beds are bleeding. Thessaly Maren, Yarrow's reluctant apprentice, claims the spirit is not hungry for blood but for memory, and the kingdom has stopped offering any. Vesper refuses the errand. She will not deliver Yarrow, and she will not tell the court where the prince is hiding. But Lord Veylan Ashenmere's riders are already cantering down the causeway, and Sir Bram Holt , once her brother's closest friend , has been sent to bring her in chains. To save the fen she loves, Vesper will have to remember what she buried in it: the true name of the Hollow Queen, the location of the prince, and the truth about the night the marsh first learned to lie.