Chapter One

     It was the stink of the port that she hated the most. A cross between a hacked cadaver whose entrails had been exposed too long to a blistering sun, the vigorously repeated discharge of urine and the crisp, salted sea air that carried a promise of a better life somewhere else.
     Those promises were a lie. Cressida Howe knew there was nothing better. Which served her well most days. Today wasn’t that day.
     Today she needed fortune or fate to give her some grain of luck. She knew they wouldn’t, however, and not because she’d stopped praying, but because six months ago she’d prevented an obsessive mercenary from completing his intended murder.
     A person whom he ordered she kill, but she hadn’t. Not that she had failed. She never failed. She’d simply...disobeyed orders. And now that exacting mercenary wanted her punished.
     Evading his wrath wasn’t an option because he was hired by the Warstones, the most bloodthirsty of families; thus, he had unlimited resources and unlimited hate. He was also her father. Her only family.
     Weaving her way through the throng of commerce and vagrants, she balanced between the uneven planks of the walkway, all the while keeping her hood sufficiently tucked tohide any chance of recognition.
     Her being a woman wasn’t why she feared discovery. If any dared attack they’d realise their fatal mistake soon enough. No, what she had to hide above all else was who she was.
     The Archer.

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