Tomorrow, ECW Press is due to publish Seventhblade by Tonia Laird, “a fast-paced, anti-colonial action-adventure fantasy”. Pitched as perfect for fans of N. K. Jemisin and Rebecca Roanhorse, I think it should appeal to a number of CR readers. To mark the publication, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share (Chapter 1). Here’s the synopsis:
After the murder of T’Rayles’s adopted son, the infamous warrior and daughter of the Indigenous Ibinnas returns to the colonized city of Seventhblade ready to tear the streets asunder in search of her son’s killer. T’Rayles must lean into the dangerous power of her inherited sword and ally herself with questionable forces, including the Broken Fangs, an alliance her mother founded, now fallen into greed and corruption, and the immortal Elraiche, a powerful and manipulative deity exiled from a faraway land. Navigating the power shifts in a colonized city on the edge and contending with a deadly new power emerging from within, T’Rayles risks everything to find the answers, and the justice, she so desperately desires.
Loaded with complex characters and intricately staged action, and set in a fragmented, fascinating world of dangerous magics and cryptic gods, Seventhbladeis a masterful new fantasy adventure from a bright emerging Indigenous voice.
And now, on with the excerpt…
*
Chapter 1
She smells smoke.
Moving swiftly in the dark, T’Rayles pushes through the dense forest as she makes her way back home.
The smoke grows stronger with every scarred birch and solid spruce she passes. It’s not the comforting scent of a home’shearth or the metal- lic tang of a blacksmith’s forge. No.
It smells of sage and hair and cedar and cloth and barley and flesh. This smoke, it’s the twisting, rueful child of an Ecrelian funeralpyre. Someone in the village has died. Someone important. T’Rayles thinks back: No one was sick when she left. No one was injured. Orpregnant. Whoever it was, their death must have been sudden.
T’Rayles swallows the bile that rises in her throat. Dellan.
No. He’s too young yet. Isn’t he? Besides, if something had happened to him, Jhune would have hunted her down already. Their son wouldn’t let her find out about Dellan this way. She shakes her head to push the thoughts away. Whoever it is, she should be there to support Dellan and Jhune. The dead may be a friend from the village.
She ignores the nocturnal creatures that skitter away from her as she pushes her way through the bare misâskwatôminahtik and ayôskanahtik that separate the forest from the village surrounding her home.
Her breath puffs out in white clouds as she takes a moment to calm her lungs. Across the freshly cut fields of foreign cereal grasses, a flick- ering glow lights the village square.
She shouldn’t have left.
T’Rayles forces herself into a run, the remains of the harvested crops crunching and scratching against her boots. The packed earth feels so wrong, so dry and lifeless compared to the forest she’s been hiding away in for the last two weeks.
Pulling her hood up and tucking her hair back, she approaches the vil- lage square quietly, following the smoke and the fire’sglow. The crowd is large. A cold shiver snakes down her sweat-soaked back. The Ibinnashae, not just the Ecrelian villagers,surround the pyre, separated by the roaring fire. If they are here, welcome and willing to attend an Ecrelian ceremony, then whoever died was someone important to them. Important to her. But the only Ecrelian worth anything to her is Dellan.
T’Rayles searches the crowd, eyes never resting for long on the shadow-gaunt faces before her. When she notices Dellan isn’t standing with the Ibinnashae, her lungs stop working. Where is he? Her eyes catch on the unnaturally white robes of that ridiculousEcrelian priest as he gestures to the fire and to the sky, speaking in his people’s old tongue. To his left, thank the Creation and theDestruction, is Dellan.
T’Rayles’s lungs stutter out a sigh of relief. He’s alive.
Leaning heavily against his side is Corleanne, a slight golden-haired Ecrelian woman, and she weeps openly. Dellan’s eyes aren’t dry, either. T’Rayles tilts her head. Something is still very wrong. Corleanne’s son, Quinn, a dear friend of Jhune’s, shouldbe at her other side. But he’s not here.
Neither is Jhune.
A prickle at the edge of her senses pulls her attention to her right. An older Ecrelian man, one who often frequents the Silver Leaf, the tavern that she and Dellan and Jhune built all those years ago, is looking at her. But not with the open fear and distrust and disgust she’s come to expect from him and his people. No. He’s looking at her with compassion. His eyes are filled withpity.
Something roils deep within her, but she pushes her fears down and grasps the pommel of her mother’s sword she keeps strapped to her hip. She grips it tightly, twisting her hand so the familiar edges bite through her gloves and into her palm.
The minute pain steadies her, allows her to focus and breathe. Jhune. Find Jhune. Forcing herself to look back to the flames, shesees that the pyre holds only one form, one body already partially consumed by the fire that warms her from across the square.Even so, T’Rayles can tell they’re too small to be Jhune. Too small to be her boy. A touch on her elbow makes her jump, but shesettles just as quickly when she realizes it’s Dellan.
How long was she staring into that flame that he was able to cross the square without her noticing?
He points in the direction of their tavern with his lips and turns to walk away. Any other day she’d tease him about how he pickedthat habit up from her. Her people. Any other day but today. Everything in his sunken gait and curved-in posture screams at her to run, toignore the feeling of dread scraping its ice-tipped claws against her skull. Down her spine.
Jhune. There’s only one reason he wouldn’t be here. Especially if Quinn is on that pyre.
If she left right now, she wouldn’t have to hear it said out loud. She should just go. She should.
But she follows.
*
Tonia Laird’s Seventhblade is due to be published by ECW Press, on June 17th.
Civilian Reader 
[…] You can read an excerpt here! […]
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