Every lost thing gets a page in Verenthos's book. It writes itself: a fresh entry for each small, frightened, wandering creature that does not yet know it can be found. He is the god of Lost Souls, and his kindnesses are invisible — a ledge revealed when the water drops, a lamp turned a half-step wide, luck that was never luck. He asks nothing. He is never seen. And when a soul finally settles and belongs, it fades from his sight, which is how he knows he has won.
These are gentle, bittersweet tales from the kindest corner of the Forge, where the gods run on love. For readers of Legends & Lattes, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, and The House in the Cerulean Sea.
The Books
Book 1
The Stowaway
Hungry, and small enough to pour himself through a crack in the rock, he comes up under the Saltmere wharf into rows of cages chalk-marked with a price. Behind him, something patient is still waiting.
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Book 2
The Sprat
A warm hold full of fish, an opinionated ship's cat, and days of being safe. Then a grey port, and a thing he had been too busy to notice: safe and full is not the whole of it.
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Book 3
The Passenger
The pack rides too low and the strap has cut the same groove since the hills; four minutes would fix it, and she has not stopped once. She is not travelling. She worked that out on the second morning.
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Book 4
The Kept
Four sounds run the day in the Draymoor yard, and the last one means it can stop. The animal has learned how soon to be down, and goes down on cue. Nobody hurries. Nobody is enjoying it.
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Book 5
The Healer
He walks the whole barn floor once before he kneels to anybody, counting. There is not a better pair of hands on that coast, and what his goddess gives him he will not spend.
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Book 6
Three Cups
Sixty years, the same morning: the swollen shutter, the lamp glass, the broom over a floor with nothing on it. Lately he has caught himself saying her name a shade more quietly than he used to.
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The complete collection
The Book of Found Souls
The god of lost souls takes his tea on a cold step and reads a book that writes itself, one page for every soul who falls out of the world. A creature, a woman, a beast, a healer, a village god and her last priest. He holds a ledge, opens a door, pours the tea, and takes no credit. Six warm, dryly funny stories about what a good ending costs.
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