THE LAST REACHER OUT

WHERE THE TURNING CLAIMS TRUST
Book One

Dain Ferro has one rule: never ask what the cargo is, only whether it pays. Blind in one eye and branded a traitor for a single act of mercy the Dominion never forgave, he runs unlicensed Reachers along the cliff routes of the Shear because no honest captain will have him. The job that comes through an anonymous contact three days before the Turning seals every port for the season should be simple, get a passenger out on the last ship north. It stops being simple the moment his hooded cargo turns out to be an archivist of the Choir, and the storm that traps them together on open water is the least dangerous thing either of them is hiding.

Maren Vane has spent her whole life being careful. Careful with her voice, careful with her hands, careful never to let her eyes betray what she can do or whose blood she carries. She did not plan on a smuggler with a ruined eye and an old wound of his own noticing the one thing she cannot afford anyone to see. As the Turning closes around their ship and a Directorate patrol begins asking questions neither of them can answer, the two of them are forced into something neither wants: dependence on a stranger who might get them both killed simply by looking too closely.

Trust, in the Dominion of Hallowreach, is not a comfort. It is a weapon that can be turned on you the moment you hand it over, and the sea does not care whose secret gets them caught. Somewhere behind them, the Choir's Purge Directorate is already asking Tamsin Ordell's name. What happens when the last safe port runs out?