Part One · Volume I · Book One

The Day the Taste Changed

In the river-port of Dalengard, a diner-keeper named Benan is erased — not killed, forgotten, as if he had never lived. One man still remembers him: the detective Leon Darves.

12 chapters · 65k words · free

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I Small Truths Chapter 1 · 5 min read Morning in Dalengard always began with the smell of the river. River-damp and fresh-baked bread, and somewhere yesterday's fish stew that someone had flung out a window. All of it stirred together until the city seemed to yawn, long and slow, half-asleep. The fog settled lazily into every alley and loitered about one's… II The Day the Taste Changed Chapter 2 · 12 min read The fog had thinned by the time the diner came into view, though it had not let go of the river entirely. It still hung in gray ribbons over the water, snagging on the masts of the moored boats, carrying the morning's gossip of smells. Tar and wet rope, the cold-iron tang of the tide going out, and beneath it all, fain… III The Man Who Was Never There Chapter 3 · 14 min read He did not go home. He went to look for Benan instead, which was a strange errand when he stopped to think about it, because in five years Benan Yol had never once been anywhere but exactly where Leon had left him, wedged behind his counter like a cork in a bottle, swearing cheerfully at his own knees.… IV The Hand That Chooses Chapter 4 · 22 min read "Pell," Leon told the gray morning, "you are going to have a perfectly dreadful morning. And the worst of it is, you won't even remember why."… V Chasing Nothing Chapter 5 · 24 min read The rain found Leon Darves on Crane Street, and by then he had counted the dead so many times over that they had stopped being a list and become a kind of weather he walked through. The weaver. The widow. The lighterman, the washerwoman, the copy-clerk, the rope-walker, the cook with too much pepper. And the white-hair… VI Rini Chapter 6 · 18 min read The river pebble had not warmed in three nights, and Leon had begun to take it personally.… VII The Night Folk Chapter 7 · 29 min read The fear had a smell now, and Leon picked it up before he was properly awake.… VIII Namekeeper Chapter 8 · 27 min read A marked man cannot walk through a watched gate, and so Leon did not try.… IX Where a Name Should Be Chapter 9 · 20 min read Seira Lorn came down to the bright streets to find him, rather than make him come up the river again, and she stopped a careful arm's length away in the morning sun and said, by way of greeting, "You're standing where the lord's bills can see you. You make a poor secret."… X The Fearful Neighbor Chapter 10 · 37 min read They had been walking the bright streets for the better part of an hour before Leon understood that the city was more afraid of Seira than she would ever be of it.… XI The Third Hand Chapter 11 · 27 min read Pell looked up from his high stool with the pen still behind his ear and a fresh smear of ink along the side of his nose, and his dull morning improved so visibly that Leon felt a pang of guilt for what he was about to do to it.… XII Inward Chapter 12 · 25 min read The strongbox was open, and that was wrong before anything else was.…

Next · Volume II · Book Two

The Day the Taste Changed

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