Twenty-Three Surnames

About this book

In the salt-coast kingdom of Varra, a new law gives every subject a fixed family name. It also gives the Crown every child nobody claims. Unclaimed children are entered as Crownlings and sent to boil salt in the royal pans for nine years. Idony Vell is nineteen, a junior clerk with a careful hand and a bad conscience. She is sent back to Selkmouth, the grey pan town where she grew up a foundling, to write twenty-three Lanternhouse children into the Register before Longdark. She is supposed to fill in the column and leave. Instead she unlocks the old schoolroom and starts knocking on doors. But Selkmouth remembers her as the girl who informed on her own teacher, and the magistrate who brought her home is counting on her to do as she's told. There are forty-one days left.