The Toll of Stars

About this book

Nine centuries from now, humanity crosses four hundred worlds through the Lanes, ancient gates that take one memory from every passenger on every passage. Captain Solenne Achterberg has made more than nine hundred jumps. She remembers almost nothing before thirty, and she carries her life story on a data-bead she refuses to play. Then an anonymous client offers her the one payment she can't turn down: her lost childhood, returned whole. The price is to steal the Ledger, the vault inside the Crown Gate said to hold every memory ever taken, from the most heavily guarded place in human space. So she needs a crew. There's a warship that grows tomatoes, a card-cheating ex-inquisitor, a pair of feuding twins, a dying alien composer, and a cheerful courier who remembers nothing but her name. And a charming High Custodian seems to know Solenne far better than she knows herself.