Bolt the Door Behind You

About this book

In the canal city of Brindle, the Ear of the Court can press a palm to a dead throat and hear the last thing that person ever said, and the Ear's word is final. When the old Ear dies behind a bolted door, thousands line up to touch his body and find his successor. Ottilie "Tilly" Brack, a blunt twenty-year-old apprentice lock-keeper, goes only because her uncle makes her. She hears him. Now the most powerful witness in the city is a girl who measures water for a living, and she is carrying two secrets that could bring down the Court: the dead have been talking to her for three years, and the old Ear may not have died of his heart at all. Everyone wants her word. Who will she give it to?