Tide and Throne

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The Hollow Court is coming down the river. The Queen of the Ebb has a spreadsheet and a wedding date. THE SALT COURT · BOOK FIVE Wren Balfour, council flood engineer and Queen of the Ebb, has twenty-two days. At the autumn equinox, Aonghas of the Hollow Court will come down the Water of Leith with every loch, burn and reservoir in the Pentlands, and try to turn the Salt Court's spring sweet to the bottom. This year the equinox falls on a neap, when the sea is at its weakest. He planned it that way. He also has her grandmother, chained in silver under a dam since 1978. What Wren has: a court of forty, a colleague with a spreadsheet and a man at Scottish Water who owes her two favours, a boss who has booked the Shore for a "flood exercise", and two hundred flasks. There are sixty drowned people in the river who want to go home, and a song she hasn't sung in front of anyone since she was seven. And Ronan Seil, who cannot lie, has worked out what opens silver. He hasn't told her the price. The last book of the Salt Court: a war fought with taps and flasks, a bargain made at the top of the tide, and a wedding the day after they win. • Contemporary romantasy set in present-day Leith and the Pentland Hills. • Sensual, not explicit. Selkies, a river lord, a council engineer, and a love that chooses to grow old. • Book five of five. The series finale.