Days of Shattered Faith

The novel is set in Alkhalend, capital of Usmai, the most powerful of the Successor States that arose from the fallen Moeribandi Empire. The expansionist nation of Pallesand has been extending its influence along the Successor Coast, driven by hunger for magical resources stored in small devices called tablethi.

Cohort-Invigilator Loret, a junior Palleseen officer, arrives by ship to serve as aide to Sage-Invigilator Angilly, known as Gil, Pallesand's chief diplomatic representative in Usmai. At Slate House, the Palleseen embassy, Loret finds Gil with Prince Dekamran, heir to the Usmiat throne. Gil conscripts Loret as a second in an illegal duel that night against the Loruthi emissary Tarcomir, whose career was ruined by the war's end; he needs Gil's blood or his own death. Gil kills him and is arrested by palace staff and the Tesemer, alien warrior-monks who guard the Alkhand, Usmai's ruler.

Gil is held by Coregan, a palace official loyal to the exiled prince Gorbudan. When Coregan tries to transfer Gil to the House of Hard Angles, Alkhalend's ghost-haunted prison, Loret recruits Cotto pirates and intercepts the transfer, freeing Gil. Gil later obtains the Alkhand's writ to release another prisoner, Fellow-Archivist Drathel, a "Decanter" who extracts magic from religious artefacts for the Palleseen Sway, the Palleseen state. Assassins attack during the release; Loret is stabbed but kills a man in uncontrollable violence. Gil takes the wounded Loret to the Fever Lodge, an unlicensed hospital run by Palleseen deserters, where a healer called the Reckoner saves her life.

The political backdrop centers on the declining Alkhand Oparan, blinded decades earlier by basilisk wasps wielded by his own brother. His four children pull in different directions: Gorbudan, the exiled warrior eldest son; Dekamran, the educated diplomatic heir; Enshili, the resentful princess who secretly trains under Caecelian, a mysterious masked foreigner; and Premath, the youngest, a devotee of the Moeribandi death cult under Grand Moerend Arkanith, a senior cult leader. During the annual Day of Milk and Flowers festival, Dekamran and Gil spend their first night together after seven years of mutual attraction, compromising Gil's diplomatic position.

During the Alkhand's journey to renew fealty with allied groups, Dekamran secretly invites Gorbudan to the compound of the Alborandi, masked monks who tend the Waygrove, a portal to other worlds. The brothers fail to reach terms. Oparan, overcome by grief for his wife who years earlier donned an Alborandi mask and erased her identity, destroys his dead brother's skull and takes the mask himself. Gorbudan seizes the moment: His retainers grab Dekamran, and a violent skirmish erupts. Gorbudan takes Dekamran prisoner and rides for Alkhalend, where he is crowned.

Gil, who had crossed into neighboring Peor with Drathel, survives a Tesemer assassination attempt only because Loret kills the monk in another violent frenzy. Learning of the coup, Gil reaches the camp of "Flint" Postry, commander of a Palleseen military unit with local troops, artillery, and a squad of uniformed demons led by Croskin. Meanwhile, Gorbudan purges the court. Premath kills himself with toxic sacred face-paint in a ritual cultivated by Arkanith. Enshili escapes the palace with Caecelian.

Gil bribes the Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles, a foreign man who serves as companion to the Warden, a monstrous centipede creature, and frees the imprisoned Dekamran. She brings him to Flint's camp, where he chooses to fight rather than accept exile, driven by his feelings for Gil and his sense of duty. The Ibaleth, intelligent lizard creatures who handle Usmai's massive war-beasts, switch allegiance to him.

Flint's firepower counters Gorbudan's cavalry and Tesemer in the ensuing battle. In desperation, Gorbudan goads Kakrops, the house-sized frog god who serves as Usmai's patron deity, out of his cave. The enraged deity attacks indiscriminately until Flint's troops kill it. An anonymous shot kills Gorbudan. Dekamran is crowned amid the slain god, and the city enters deep mourning.

Dekamran's reign is troubled from the start. He wears mourning for Kakrops and grows distant from Gil. Palleseen soldiers and tax collectors operate with impunity. Drathel discovers that the Usrani monks, the priestly order devoted to Kakrops, have preserved the god's body in sealed jars capable of yielding vast quantities of charged tablethi. Gil refuses to authorize their seizure. Loret reveals she is not who she claims: The real Loret died in Palleseen internment camps where religious cults in the army were suppressed. She took the dead woman's papers to escape, carrying the sacraments of a forbidden sea-god cult, and flees the Residence.

Sage-Broker Berkely, a senior Palleseen official, arrives with troops and a mandate from the Commission, the Palleseen governing authority, to transition Usmai into formal control. He supersedes Gil and Flint and uses Drathel's intelligence about Gil's relationship with Dekamran to undermine the Resident's counsel. Berkely demands the Kakrops Jars and places Dekamran under house arrest. Gil confronts Berkely and demands a duel; he refuses and has Flint imprison her in the House of Hard Angles.

Events accelerate. Hullseer Orhuhst, the Cotto pirate king, performs a sea-rite on Loret, extracting the concentrated faith she carries; the rite yields a sacred shell knife that cuts iron. Caecelian confronts the demonist assigned to rebind Croskin's squad; Loret kills the demonist, and Caecelian presents her own contract granting the demons freedom. Enshili, Caecelian, and Loret infiltrate the palace and rescue Dekamran. At the House of Hard Angles, the Lodge crew helps the Under-warden activate a device that shatters the prison's spectral wards, freeing the Warden. In the crypt below, Drathel kills Arkanith, but the magical discharge reanimates Premath's corpse. The undead prince strangles Drathel and walks north toward the Moeribandi Necropolis.

Dekamran rallies a coalition of monks, Tesemer, pirates, and fighters, but Preceptor Follo of the Usrani tells him his name is too tainted by Palleseen association for the people to follow. Dekamran cedes active leadership and puts his authority behind the uprising. When Flint's convoy transports the Kakrops Jars toward a warship, the coalition attacks from multiple directions. Croskin's freed demons block the path; Cotto pirates seize the ship; Kilbery, a teenage ward of the Fever Lodge, sends jars crashing from a wagon before being shot.

Loret frees Gil from the prison using her shell knife and leads her to Dekamran. He asks Gil to face him in a duel with batons—the magical ranged weapons central to Palleseen military power—needing to prove himself by standing against the Palleseen Resident. Gil cannot bring herself to fire. Dekamran shoots her. In the streets, Caecelian leads a last stand, killing Flint and his second before being fatally shot. Before dissipating, she transfers the demon contract to Enshili. Berkely is found assassinated with a Palleseen duelling sword in his body.

The Palleseen garrison accepts safe passage to Peor. The Fever Lodge disperses: Oathan, Kilbery's guardian, stays because the boy chose to fight for his home; Happy Jack, a former priest and Lodge member, stays to find a way to bring Caecelian back. Tally, the Reckoner, and the Under-warden depart through the Waygrove. Aboard his captured ship, Orhuhst has Loret tip the Cotto's share of the jars into shark-filled waters, a sacrifice to let the god live again in the sea. Loret sails with the Cotto, accompanied by Enshili and Croskin's freed demons. Far north, the resurrected Premath sits before the sealed gates of the Necropolis as Palleseen soldiers march toward the same destination.