Chapter 1 — Low Tide

The bells began at low tide, the hour Ostrabel was told to sleep through.

Maelis Varr stood on the palace wall with her bell-charms silent in her braid and listened to a sound that should not exist. Five years ago her mother had walked out across the wet sand toward the Drowned Cathedral and never come back. Since then the cathedral had been only a shape in the fog. Now it was ringing.

"Your Majesty," said Archivist Corvin Hale behind her, "the tide-charts say nothing about bells."

"Then the tide-charts are wrong," she said, and was surprised how little it frightened her to say it.