Crowns of The Cold Sea: Book V Nine Oaths: 5

They once searched for the truth together. Now one must govern, one must reveal-and both may be right.Years have passed since the children of the House of Tides first swore to stand together. They return to Orkney as adults carrying different kinds of authority-and different ideas of what loyalty requires.Sigurd faces the work of rule in a northern world where recognition depends upon kinship, assembly, foreign crowns and the consent of men who remember every debt. Einar returns with evidence that could transform the accepted history of the Nine Marks and the oath built around them. What he has found is true. That does not mean the islands can absorb it without cost.Aila turns principle into government one difficult decision at a time. Fionn's information networks make him indispensable and suspect. Yrsa sees songs and rumours shaping public memory before official accounts can catch up. Meanwhile Leif-steadfast, reluctant and increasingly loved-becomes a political symbol precisely because he does not seek to become one.As rival claims, divided fleets and inherited fears gather around the House, Einar and Sigurd discover that brotherhood cannot remove the conflict between truth and responsibility. It can only make the conflict matter more.Crowns of the Cold Sea is an adult historical-fantasy novel of friendship, legitimacy and political fracture in medieval Orkney.