The Sheep Doctor of Little Harrow

About this book

Hettie Garrow has never left Little Harrow, a frozen farming moon at the far end of the Lantern Strait. She knows ewes and frost and how to end suffering kindly. Then, at two in the morning in the middle of lambing, a burning skiff ploughs through her neighbour's paddock. She sets the pilot's shoulder with her bare hands, and a second heartbeat starts beating under her breastbone. It is the Hitch: rare, sacred and binding in law. The pilot is Emeric Sallow, the Lamplighter, and he is due to die this season inside the dimming star that holds forty worlds together. When he dies, she will follow. Hauled to a city-ship at the heart of the Reach, a curiosity at court and a problem in law, Hettie must decide what her life is worth, and to whom, before someone decides for her.