Firerose Fiction

Summary: Havnor City, the largest city in the world... It's nearly 200 years since Lebannen came to the throne and his kingdom's on the brink of disaster. The king's mad, his heir's missing and when newly reinstated Officer Bittern investigates, he soon starts tripping over corpses

Author's note: This novel-in-progress owes almost as much of a debt to Raymond Chandler as it does to Ursula Le Guin. I thank Jay Tryfanstone, Miss Morland & Northland for advice & editing. All infelicities are my own.

Chapter 3: The Big City
Havnor City, the largest city in the world. A million people were crammed into its six square miles, they said, though barely half appeared on the Ministry’s books. (ao3)

Chapter 4: Too Many Princes
CHOP shared a place with CHOSS down by the Old Docks, five minutes from Half Moon Street and no more than half a mile from the university as the seagull flies across the bay. Lebannen the Great had obviously been hot on law enforcement because it was one of the biggest, grandest, most over-decorated buildings in a city full of big grand over-decorated buildings. (ao3)

Summary: Havnor City, the largest city in the world... It's nearly 200 years since Lebannen came to the throne and his kingdom's on the brink of disaster. The king's mad, his heir's missing and when newly reinstated Officer Bittern investigates, he soon starts tripping over corpses

Author's note: This novel-in-progress owes almost as much of a debt to Raymond Chandler as it does to Ursula Le Guin. I thank Jay Tryfanstone, Miss Morland & Northland for advice & editing. All infelicities are my own.

Chapter 1: The Missing Prince
The first thing I noticed that night, the night this whole mess started, was that the chief looked exhausted, even more exhausted than I felt. ‘Bittern,’ he said. That’s my name all right. ‘Good,’ he said. And that’s where he went wrong. Nothing good ever started from being woken in the middle of the night by a couple of goons and dragged up to the palace for questioning. (ao3)