The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Hadrian looked around at the congested city of towers and grotesque statues dominated by the cathedrals and bridge spires. Even in the daylight, with the many shadows cast by the tall buildings, the old city felt dark. Who knew what other secrets it kept to itself.

  Royce turned sharply around in his saddle and looked behind.

  “What?” Hadrian asked, looking back as well, but he saw only the city and more throngs of people.

  “Nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  Royce gave a second glance back and sighed. “I just thought of something.”

  “What?”

  “Why Lady Martel might have been buried in an unmarked grave. It’s because her body wasn’t claimed. No one identified her.”

  “I think that’s obvious. If they’d known who she was, her body would have been sent back to Hemley Manor.”

  “And why do you think that was? I mean, why didn’t anyone identify her?”

  Shock crossed Hadrian’s face. “You don’t mean . . .”

  Royce nodded. “What if Lady Martel didn’t have a face?”

  Hadrian grimaced and pulled his blue scarf tighter.

  Crossing the river, they started up the far hills, heading west. When they reached the crest, they turned back for a final look. From that distance, the city, nestled in the valley surrounded by the mountains and the sea, appeared quaint, even romantic.

  “What’s that up there?” Royce pointed to what appeared to be a fortress down the coast.

  The castle was nothing but an outline on the top of a distant mountain, but even from that far away it appeared intimidating, dangerous, powerful.

  “Blythin Castle,” Hadrian said. “I think that’s where they imprisoned Glenmorgan the Third, and it’s now headquarters to the Seret Knights. Creepy place. Wanna go look?”

  Royce pulled up his hood. “No. Let’s get home. I’m never coming back here.”

  Hadrian laughed. “Never say never on any endeavor . . .”

  “Quit it.”

  “It sounds like a dare to gods that don’t care . . .”

  “I mean it.”

  “If the likes of us prosper, fail, or falter . . .”

  “You are seriously annoying me now.”

  “It matters not while they roll with laughter on an altar . . .”

  Royce kicked his horse and trotted off up the road.

  Hadrian looked back once more at the city. He thought of Seton and the night he first met her amidst the smell of blood and the cries of widows. He remembered his father who’d made him butcher a chicken, the first life he took. And he thought back on his years of war and slaughters within the arenas of Calis. “At our miserable, sad little lives.”

  Royce was right. They were never coming back here again.

  <<<<<>>>>>

  I hope you have enjoyed this latest Royce and Hadrian adventure, and I would appreciate you leaving a few remarks or comments on Amazon, Goodreads, Audible.com or Barnes and Noble. It’s peer-to-peer reviews of this nature that helps spread the word and get others interested in giving the book a try. Good, bad, or indifferent all I ever ask for is an honest opinion.

  Also, if you would like to be notified of future releases, beta reading opportunities, Kickstarters, or promotional sales, you can sign up for my mail list. I’m judicious about its use, and will never sell or rent my reader’s information. And, of course, you can unsubscribe whenever you like.

  Thanks again for reading, for all your support, and for helping to give these books the legs that keep them coming.

  Afterword

  Well, there you have it. Another adventure with Royce and Hadrian. I hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride and meeting some new characters along the way. If this was your first trip with the pair, I hope you’ll check out some of their other tales. Like the other Riyria Chronicles, this book was written to be a standalone . . . a self-contained story that doesn’t require any prior knowledge of Riyria and wraps up nicely so you don’t have to read the next book. I think I delivered on most of that intention, but I want to spend just a moment talking about a few things.

  So, Virgil Puck, Lady Martel, and Falkirk de Roche walk into a bar . . . sorry, sometimes my mind just goes places whether I want it to or not. But seriously, this book definitely has a very loose thread, and I want to offer some further explanation. So, here goes.

  For those who read The Death of Dulgath, you may recall it starts with a simple job to steal a diary from Lady Martel. Royce is caught by a small dog called Mister Hipple. When I originally wrote that scene, I had no plans for it to evolve into anything more than what it was . . . a fun, simple incident to start out the book—a way to reacquaint (or introduce) the reader with our duo known as Riyria. Anyway, in that book I happened to mention that Lady Martel denied the diary was stolen and claimed there hadn’t been a break-in. I wrote those words mainly so I didn’t have to send Royce back to kill ol’ Ralph, the guard who had happened upon them during the heist, but that diary job also planted a seed. In The Death of Dulgath, Royce wonders why Lady Martel would deny the theft of the diary. I wrote this as an inconsequential matter, but then thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if the diary was more than just a diary? And if it was, what would it be?

  If the series had ended with The Death of Dulgath, the diary could be exactly what it started out as: a prop to start the book. But when I decided to write The Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter, I was drawn back to that little support and considered what it could mean in the grand scheme of the Riyria tales as a whole. Hence it took on a new life. A life I couldn’t possibly—nor did I wish to—bring to full closure in this book, but one that I wanted to at least begin to address. So, yeah, I did open a window without closing it . . . but in my defense, it was a very small window, and nothing in the cliff-hanger category. After all, the story of The Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter has been resolved. Genny is safe, the duo’s been paid, and the villain is dead. Case closed. If you never hear anything more about this sideline, you can just consider it for what it was, a little aside that never went anywhere. Literature is filled with such things, and so is life.

  So, why bring it up at all? For the same reason I create any thread that spans multiple books: It’ll greatly enhance the next story. Weaving threads was a hallmark of the Riyria Revelations and one of the things I enjoyed the most when writing the books. Getting just a taste of this, or that, or the other thing, and then contemplating where various clues might lead, was a huge part of the fun. When you get to the next book and Easter eggs start appearing, it’s hugely rewarding. In short, a little bit of tease will make the next book so much better than if I didn’t lay a foundation.

  Does that mean there will be another Riyria book? This, too, must remain one of those irritating loose threads of literature and real life, because I won’t make promises I don’t know I can keep. With each year, my time grows shorter, and the books I want to write multiply. If people indicate that they are tired of the pair, I won’t release another. If that happens, I might put out a freebie (either a short story or a behind-the-scenes piece), explaining this and other mysteries. But if there is still a desire for more, I have the start of a thread that I can knit into a scarf.

  Okay, one last thing I want to mention, and this is only for people who have read the Riyria Revelations. If Genny and Leopold seem vaguely familiar, they should. You ran into the Duke and Duchess of Rochelle in the fifth book: Wintertide (which is the first half of the omnibus edition titled Heir of Novron). They ended up helping out Royce and Hadrian, and now you know why they were so willing to do so. After Riyria saved Genny’s life and reunited the pair, the duke and duchess are forever in their debt, and I was glad that the opportunity arose to describe how that debt came into being.

  Okay, I think that’s all I have to say, except to once again thank you for your support of my writing, and to remind you that if you want to drop me a line, please do. My address is michael.sullivan.dc@gmail.com.

 
; Acknowledgments

  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: It takes a great many people to produce a work of this nature. Given that I write for a living, you’d think I’d be able to fully express my appreciation, but words fail me at times like this. Thank you just isn’t enough, and the depth of my gratitude rivals that of the Mariana Trench.

  As always, my first thanks go to my wife, Robin. Of all the books in recent memory, this one saw the largest number of changes due to her alpha feedback. Not only did she point out problems, she offered solutions that were both insightful and ingenious. Our “discussions” were often loud, and always passionate, but they came from the same place . . . both of us wanting the best book possible. I think we worked through it rather well. The book has a more satisfying conclusion than the one I originally penned, and if you were a backer of the Kickstarter or a member of the beta crew, you know just a little about how hard she works. What you didn’t see is all the effort she put into the book before it reached anyone else. Her structural, line, and copyedits have made it better than I could have produced on my own, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude.

  Speaking of editing, I also want to thank the amazing copy editors for their incredible talent: Laura Jorstad and Linda Branam. Both have edited multiple books for me. Laura worked on Hollow World, The Death of Dulgath, Age of Myth, and Age of Swords. Linda has helped out with The Death of Dulgath, Age of Myth, Age of Swords, and will be copyediting Age of War. Only a small group of people knows the difference between what I originally wrote and the work that’s released. They save me from looking stupid, clean up my messes, and act with the professionalism of people at the top of their game. I’m honored and grateful to have them on the Riyria team.

  Which segues nicely to the beta readers! More than twenty-five people provided feedback, including rating the chapters and answering survey questions. When all was said and done, we had more than 2,100 rankings covering over 525 chapters! Thanks to Robin’s hard work, the book was in really good structural shape when it went out. Still, there was room for improvement, and the beta readers contributed tweaks to a number of key scenes. They even caught a glaring loose thread that neither Robin nor I saw, and I was able to properly tie it up. There isn’t enough space to go into full detail, but we hope to write a Making of the Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter e-book (something we did with The Death of Dulgath and Age of Swords). If we do, it’ll be free for anyone who is interested in the behind-the-scenes aspects of this book. Just drop me an email at michael.sullivan.dc@gmail.com to get a copy. Please put “Making of . . .” (and include the book’s name) in the subject line, and we’ll get it right out to you. Our thanks go out to every one of the beta readers, some of whom didn’t wish to be acknowledged publicly. Here are the ones who did: Amy Lesniak Briggs, Michael Jay Brunt, Jeffrey Carr, Craig Cato, Beverly Collie, Buffy Curtis, Marie-Louise Faering, Cathy Fox, Sheri L Gestring, Julianne Gaston, Chris Haught, Craig T. Jackson, Toby Johnson, Evelyn Keeley, Stephen Kafkas, Sarah and Nathaniel Kidd, Frank Kincell, Jamie McCullough, Elizabeth Ocskay, Christina Pilkington, Slobodan Rakovic, Beth Rosser, Melanie Sanderson, Jeffrey Schwarz. Laurie Swensen, Scott Vout and Sarah Webb.

  In addition to the beta readers, we added a gamma reader to our process. What are they? Think of them as the last line of defense. They’re people who get the book after all the beta changes have been edited, when the book is in its final state. Their job is to find any nits that managed to escape other eyes. This book’s gamma reader was Chris McGrath and not only did he find a number of typo and grammar issues, but he also pointed out a number of beta-like things that we were able to address before the book went to print.

  Okay, on to others that I just can’t leave out. Once again, we utilized the amazing artistic talent of Marc Simonetti to create the book’s cover. If you aren’t familiar with his work, definitely check it out. Not only has he created covers for six of my books, but he’s also developed stunning work for Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and dozens of others. Some of my covers that he’s been responsible for are the French editions of The Crown Conspiracy, Avempartha, and Nyphron Rising. For the English market he’s created covers for Hollow World, The Death of Dulgath, Age of Myth, Age of Swords, and Age of War.

  The audio book rights were acquired by Lee Jarit at Audible Studios. Lee has always been a huge fan of my work, and he did an amazing job with shepherding the release of The Death of Dulgath. Before production of Winter’s Daughter, he was promoted to a new position, and we came under the care of Kristen Lang. I can’t lie—the loss of Lee as our internal advocate was a heavy blow. But after meeting Kristen, we knew she’d take good care of us. She even signed my next series (codename: The Bridge Trilogy), and we’re all excited about that project. Anyway, getting back to The Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter, Kristen did an amazing job nurturing the book through the process and making sure the marketing folks at Audible.com were going to give it a great send-off. I’m writing this before that happened, of course, but I’m confident it’ll have an amazing launch.

  Okay, almost done . . . and I did warn you it takes a lot of people. Last, but certainly not least, is the phenom that is Tim Gerard Reynolds. This is our twelfth book working with Tim, and no matter how many times I thank and praise him, the words still fall short of how Robin and I feel about him and his talent. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, thank you, thank you. May your star continue to rise, but please try to find time to record my stuff!

  As you can see, my team is well established and has been with me a very long time. Most of the collaborators are the same people used by my traditional publishers, whom I’ve hired for this project. When I find good people, I treat them right, and continue to send business their way. I hope they are as happy with how this book came out as I am. I think we did good . . . er . . . I mean well. Sorry, Linda and Laura, I just couldn’t help myself.

  Kickstarter Backers

  For those who may not know, there was a Kickstarter project connected with the making of this book. Its purpose was to raise funds for a hardcover printing and for storage and distribution fees so that this self-produced book would be available in bookstores (release date June 5, 2018). We passed the $47,600 goal in just a bit over two days (54 hours to be exact). When the Kickstarter ended, it was the 2nd most-backed and 4th highest-funded fiction project of all time. In the weeks following the Kickstarter, pre-orders increased the original $80,332 to over $100,000!

  For those who were so inclined, I wanted to thank the backers publicly for their amazing support, and a great many took me up on my offer. Ideally, I would have liked to include these names in the print edition of the book. Unfortunately, the names came in as part of the survey process (which takes place several weeks after the close of the project), and in order to have the books ready by Christmas, the files were sent to the printer while the Kickstarter was still running. Oh, well, maybe next time, but at least we were able to include them in the ebook.

  Kickstarters are great. Not only are they democratizing innovative ideas, but they provide an incredible sense of community where backers feel a very real sense of ownership in bringing something to life. I’m proud to have partnered with this amazing group of people to make the hardcovers a reality, and I hope to do other Kickstarters in the future. If you would like to be notified in advance of the next Kickstarter, you can sign up for my mail list.

  — A —

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  — B —

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