The Mountain of Bells

About this book

Every nine years the Bellwrights ring the Engine inside the hollow mountain called the Anvil, and the sea obeys: old channels close, new coasts open, and the map of the world is struck fresh. Yusra Talimenh, seventeen, has spent her life piloting a battered wheel-ship across the Salt Reach without a licence, and this year she means to earn one. Then a runaway clerk carries a locked case aboard the Candlemoth, and the numbers inside are plain enough for anyone to read: the next tide-call will flood the Low Hundred, where a hundred and forty thousand people live, and the Concord that owns every route and every water well has already priced them. Thirty-four days until the bells ring. Two thousand miles of drying salt between her and the mountain. And nobody at the Anvil has any reason at all to listen to a girl with no ticket.