Strangers at the Hearth
Book Two of The Strangers’ Way Trilogy
A stranger at the gate is turned away. A stranger at the hearth is owed something — and owes something back.
Exiled from the salt-villages of the south, Arn takes the only road left to him: north, across the high plains, into a country that has no place for a man without a lineage and little reason to keep one alive.
He does not stay alone. An oath-bearer carrying a grief she will not set down, and a trader whose warmth is a tool like any other, fall into step beside him. Together they move through walled cities and cold camps, learning the quiet crafts of people who must not be noticed — and learning, more slowly, what it means to be known by someone who could leave.
Strangers at the Hearth is the second volume of The Strangers’ Way, a complete weird-fantasy trilogy that carries one exile from the burning south of Eæth to its frozen north. For readers of Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, and C.J. Cherryh — austere, immersive, and strange in the oldest sense.
Three strangers. One fire. Every warmth has its price
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