Written on the Dark - Softcover

Kay, Guy Gavriel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593954033 ISBN 13: 9780593954034

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2025

Both sweeping and intimate, a majestic novel of love and war that brilliantly evokes the drama and turbulence of medieval France

Thierry Villar is a well-known—even notorious— tavern poet, familiar with the rogues and shadows of that world, but not at all with courts and power. He is an unlikely person, despite his quickness, to be caught up in the deadly contests of ambitious royals, assassins, and invading armies.

But he is indeed drawn into all these things on a savagely cold night in his beloved city of Orane. And so Thierry must use all the intelligence and charm he can muster as political struggles merge with a decades-long war to bring his country to the brink of destruction.

As he does, he meets his poetic equal in an aristocratic woman and is drawn to more than one unsettling person with a connection to the world beyond this one. He also crosses paths with an extraordinary young woman driven by voices within to try to heal the ailing king—and help his forces in war. A wide and varied set of people from all walks of life take their places in the rich tapestry of this story.

A new masterwork from the internationally bestselling author of All the Seas of the World, A Brightness Long Ago, and Tigana, Written on the Dark is an elegant tour de force about power and ambition playing out amid the intense human need for art and beauty, and memories to be left behind.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Guy Gavriel Kay is the international bestselling author of fifteen previous novels, including the Fionavar Tapestry series, Tigana, The Last Light of the Sun, Under Heaven, River of Stars, Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago, and All the Seas of the World. He has been awarded the International Goliardos Prize for his work in the literature of the fantastic and won the World Fantasy Award for Ysabel in 2008. In 2014 he was named to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages.

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CHAPTER I

The deepest part of the night in the most savage winter of the coldest year anyone could remember.

So he thought, hearing the middle-of-night bells that meant he needed to get up-to go outside, right now. Into the city. Into the ice, in the blackness.

He didn't want to. Why would anyone in their right mind want to? Were there enough coins to steal to make it worth going out into the streets now?

Evidently, yes. Because they were going to try. Not so many coins but . . . enough?

He was lying alone in Silvy's bed. Silvy had gone upstairs to Anni and Eudes's room, carrying the candle. He had no light here. She had let him stay in her room, however. She knew why he'd wanted to sleep away from his mother's house tonight. She didn't ask questions, didn't force him not to answer, or lie. Silvy was his most trusted friend, possibly his only trusted friend (he didn't want to think too much about that, just now). They'd agreed some time ago not to bed each other. Probably wise. Most of the time he thought so. It protected the friendship.

He'd already been awake when the night's third bells sounded from the sanctuaries. He'd counted them. He tended to awaken too early when he had a thing to do, a place to go in the dark, or at dawn. A lifelong fear of being late, oversleeping. He didn't sleep well, in any case. Often lay in bed (at home, in a tavern bed with a girl) working up a poem. Lines in the dark. He was a man who shaped lines in the dark. He'd rise and light a candle at the embers of a fire to scribble by. That defined him, he thought. It would do as well as anything else to define him.

He was still young, of course. He might grow into something different, someone different. You weren't the same through the whole of your life, were you? Not marked by one thing. If you lived long enough to change, of course.

Thierry Villar didn't expect to live a long life. In this city, in this time, it was a reasonable way to feel. So he thought, anyway. Perhaps he might be modestly famous before he died? Not just known in a few taverns here in Orane. Known, and sometimes hated. His verses could be harsh, and he named names. Sometimes names of people who were, well, famous. And not happy with what he wrote about them. He took chances that way. Didn't you do that for your art? For some reason the thought amused him, even though nothing was really amusing in this cold.

His poems, their mockery, drew raucous laughter in the taverns and had earned him drinking and dicing companions. And sometimes the company of women afterwards. Worthwhile, accordingly. He was young enough to judge things that way.

It really was time to get out of bed. He had some distance to cover, after curfew, through streets where the ice lay in places as a coating over manure and refuse.

But it was smart to have established his presence over at The Mule earlier this evening and then to sleep here tonight. Eudes had served him two cups of wine downstairs and Thierry had played dice for a bit, low stakes. He had no money to lose. Eudes would remember, would say as much: "Thierry Villar? Yes, was here drinking with some students, why?"

It was Jad-cursed cold outside. It was cold inside. It could make a man mad, or kill him. People died in a winter like this. There were wolves in the city. They slipped through the walls, crossed the frozen river, roamed the darkness, starving, bold. You didn't want to encounter starving wolves in the night.

The god was supposed to battle demons on behalf of mortal men and women in the black cold beneath the world now. That was probably a lot like this, Villar thought. Heresy! His mother and stepfather were deeply pious. He was . . . less so. He didn't know what his father had been like. Had been too young when Rochon Larraigne had died of a fall and mother and child had come to Orane the way so many did, desperate for food and shelter. Seeking a way to survive while poverty stalked the world.

They'd been lucky. Protected by the god, his mother would say. Had said. He had an education, a life of some security ahead if he wanted it. And yet here he was, about to dress and go outside to rob a holy place. Folly and need. Someone might say greed, but he'd stay with need, thank you. When you gambled at dice or cards and lost to certain people, you really did need to pay them back. And he'd long ago spent what money he'd ever had on a woman. The wrong woman entirely.

He was halfway dressed already, lying in bed. Ridiculous, but necessary. He pushed aside the three blankets Silvy had (Jad bless her forever) and pulled on and belted his trousers over leggings. The trousers were stiff, half-frozen. Of course. He swore. A second pair of socks over the ones he already wore, then a second ice-cold woollen shirt over his tunic. He pulled on his boots with difficulty, swearing at them, too, at himself, at the Jad-cursed world.

Not at the city, mind you. He loved Orane too much.

"I hate how much I love this city," he'd even said to Silvy once. Said it to others too, but she was the one who'd told him it was an odd thought, and asked him why. It was the way she was. She asked questions.

They'd been in the tavern downstairs, he remembered. He'd just recited a new poem, received coins and drinks for it. And laughter. He chased laughter, Villar thought. Always had. Needed it.

In the inns and taverns he was quick with his words, was known (feared) for it. But that time he'd thought for a bit before answering her. "Because if you love something too much, you can be destroyed if you lose it," he'd said, eventually.

She'd left it at that. She knew Jolis de Charette, too. Of course she did. Had even warned him about her. Silvy had an annoying habit of being right about things.

No time for that thought, either, just now. He needed money. He needed to do a thing tonight.

Villar found his cloth cap on a post at the end of the bed. Pulled over his ears, it made him look like an outlaw. One of the Jacquards, with their secret language and safe houses dotting the countryside, with door-knock sequences you needed to know to be admitted, not killed, and then coded phrases to speak. He even knew some of those, from a late-night conversation with a man who'd had too much to drink once.

He didn't know the countryside at all. He didn't like the countryside. He was a city person. This city. Which he loved. Too much.

It was holy for him, really, for all the violence and danger within it. For all that he hadn't been born here. Orane was what he knew of the world, really.

Holy for him. He laughed at himself. He was about to take part in the robbery of a genuinely holy place. The cloth cap of an outlaw suited.

Moving cautiously in the utterly black room, trying to stay quiet, he retrieved his patched-up coat, pulled it on. Dark outside, dark in here. Dark in his heart? Not really, Thierry Villar thought. He just had needs. And perhaps one of those, beyond the fact of poverty and a dangerous debt, was for adventures such as this, with people such as the ones he was headed out to meet.

Of course calling it an adventure was to avoid certain questions. Silvy, if she'd been here and listening to him, if he'd been speaking aloud, which he might have been doing if she'd been here, might have said as much.

But she was upstairs. With Anni and Eudes. Warm in a wide bed.

He swore again. Opened the door and went out. Closed it softly behind him. Went down the stairs.

e

The tavern called The Lamb was, predictably, known for its mutton, when it could be obtained. There was a large door at the front, with the signboard over it. It would not reopen for some hours yet.

Robbin de Vaux, the king's provost in Orane-the mad king's provost-sat astride his horse, shivering. They heard the last of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593954033
• ISBN 13: 9780593954034
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 321
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Bear Family Records GmbH; 49474882160; info@bear-family.de; ; Grenzweg 1; Holste; 27729; Deutschland