The Painted Saintess

Book One of the saga Where the Old Gods Drowned

They pay twenty copper for a pearl. It sells for a piece of gold.

Prince Wanga is sent to the pearl coast to put down a rebellion of women who dive too deep and speak too loudly. His orders are three words: restore order. Remind them of their place.

Instead he finds a fifty-fold theft, a treaty that was never honoured, and a trail of missing gold that runs straight through the Prime Minister's household — and past it, to something with no name he can prosecute.

The night he goes looking for proof, he is cut down by blades that leave no mark. He wakes on a riverbank in the hands of a girl who should not exist: a healer working forbidden arts from a forbidden book, her face marked with scars that are painted on.

She saves his life and vanishes. Ten days later she is standing in his own muster yard, veiled, presented as the Royal Master's plain, unremarkable daughter — and neither of them can afford to say a word.

But something older than either of them is stirring under the water. The tunnels beneath Tamra were not built by men. The kingdoms of this island were one body once, before someone taught them to hate each other.

Someone is still teaching them.

A political fantasy of pearls, corruption, and drowned gods — the first book of a four-part saga.