Who Remembers The Brand: Of Borrowed Names and Costly Trust: 2

WHERE THE TURNING CLAIMS TRUST BOOK TWO Tamsin Ordell's ship is a name the Directorate watches for now, in at least one port and likely more before the Turning finishes sealing the Shear. With the mainmast cracked and the crew down to half rations, there is no safe harbor left to run for, so Dain Ferro and Maren Vane go somewhere a ship cannot follow: down, into a lesser cliff-city's undercity, where a network called the Unbound trades shelter for silence and silence always has a price. Borrowed names buy them a roof and a cover story, but the undercity has no room for what Dain and Maren haven't said to each other. She conceals a danger to spare him from carrying it. He decides, without asking, how far he'll go to protect her. Both choices very nearly get them caught. When Dain traces his own Oathbreaker brand back to the purge unit now actively hunting Maren through the tunnels they're hiding in, the past he thought he'd already paid for turns out to still be collecting. Above them, a cliff-city governor's quiet protection of the Unbound starts drawing exactly the kind of attention that gets a whole region locked down. Cognizance always costs something. Maren has paid in strain before, in silver at the edges of her eyes and lines at her temple that fade by morning. What she is about to spend to get them both out will not fade. Dain has spent his whole life believing that protecting someone means deciding for them. He is about to learn what it costs her when he's wrong, and what it will cost him to watch her pay a price he cannot talk her out of.