The Nets at Hollin Head

About this book

On the rainless Shelving Coast, nine cliff towns drink only what their great nets comb from the sea fog. Hesper Lowe, seventy-one, master netwright of Hollin Head, has taught half the coast how to knot a mesh that drinks. Then, in Concord Year 118, Lark Day dawns clear. The fog does not come. The cistern falls by the day, the grey larks fly south, and a courteous agent from the deep-well city of Ostrel arrives with contracts and a gift of water. Half the town signs. Hesper believes the fog has not died but moved, to a broken headland two days across the salt desert where no town has ever stood. To prove it she must cross the Scald with her two apprentices, and to be believed she must face the one count she has never told anyone about.