Description

Thorn is a bell-built city where truth is measured in sound and winter is a discipline. When a hush-mantled heist targets the Conservatory's living engine—the God-Heart—cartographer Liora is dragged into the quiet war between courts and clerks. Her gift is dangerous: a map-sense that can hold two norths if she dares to spend the first. Aedric, a soldier burned clean of fear, must learn to carry that fear like ballast, not spectacle. Between them runs a tether as steady as a hand on a back.

Inspector Verenne wants law that works; Ravel, a courteous thief, wants the credit for saving the mess they made; Pell tunes bells like surgeons mend bone; Finn is the boy who rings only when the room asks. Together they unpick a conspiracy of "neutral custody," name-caskets, and sweetened bells by changing habits, not hurling fire: salt over sugar, witness over performance, questions before stamps. To keep the Heart breathing, Liora trades the compass that once chose her roads and learns to ask the city where she stands—and to let someone answer.