The Brimming

About this book

Once every twenty-two years the dead sea climbs out of the ground beneath the Pale, a salt desert three hundred miles wide, and drowns everything on it for four days. Wren was nine the last time it came, a stolen brine-ear smuggled across the crust by five reckless apprentices in a condemned land-yacht. Only four of them ever came back to Hollin, and they have not spoken since. Now Wren is thirty-one, the salt is humming again, and the mining town of Cask, built on the old sea floor, has nine days left and does not believe it. The Margrave will not listen. The Pale is closed. The only people who ever raced the brine and lived are a drunk, a customs clerk, a man with a ruined shoulder and a hanging magistrate. To cross again, they will have to sail together. To do that, they will have to talk about what happened out there.