Avenger of Antares

Plot summary

Prescot picks up right where the last book left off, heading to Vallia on a Vallian ship. A Shank raider attacks, but the galleon wins that fight only to be sunk by a Hamalian air vessel. Stranded, Prescot and his group decide to raid the Hamalian air base for a ship. The Vallians head home, and Prescot goes back to Hamal to spy. In Ruathytu, he meets his old friends Rees and Chido, drops his act as a weakling swordsman, and wins a duel against Vad Garnath and a Zenicce master, making a fortune on bets. To dodge Garnath’s revenge, a friend gets him into the Temple of Lem, a vile cult he hates, but he goes along to investigate. He finds out Garnath ordered the murder of Rees’s oldest son and the kidnapping of his daughter Saffi, with help from the Kataki slaver Strom Rosil. With the Wizard Que-si-Rening, Prescot learns where Saffi is and goes after her. This leads him back to Faol, where he gets captured and thrown into the slave caves. He escapes with another prisoner, confronts the slave master, and frees the pregnant Jiklo Mellow, who kills the master and joins him, changing Prescot’s view of her kind. Disguised, he reaches Smerdislad, the Kov of Faol’s fortress, and meets Phu-si-Yantong, a powerful Wizard of Loh who will become a future enemy. He finds Saffi in the slave quarters and frees her. While leaving, he overhears Phu-si-Yantong, Garnath, and Rosil plotting to seize power in Hamal and conquer Pandahem and Vallia. He also learns the names of nine Hamalian nobles who hold the secret of the flying boats’ propulsion.