Arthur C. Clarke winner and Sunday Times bestseller Adrian Tchaikovsky returns to the darkly exhuberant world of the Tyrant Philosophers series (City of Last Chances; House of Open Wounds). How long can you stay a good person if you're working for the bad guys? A diplomat for a colonial regime falls in love with the nation she's supposed to be softening up. Arthur C. Clarke winner and Sunday Times bestseller Adrian Tchaikovsky returns to the darkly exhuberant world of the Tyrant Philosophers series (City of Last Chances; House of Open Wounds). How long can you stay a good person if you're working for the bad guys? A diplomat for a colonial regime falls in love with the nation she's supposed to be softening up.

Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai, greatest of the Successor States, inheritor to the necromantic dominion that was the Moeribandi Empire and tomorrow's frontline in the Palleseen's relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world.Loret is fresh off the boat, and just in time.As Cohort-Invigilator of Correct Appreciation, Outreach department, she's here as aide to the Palleseen Resident, Sage-Invigilator Angilly. And Sage-Invigilator Angilly - Gil to her friends - needs a second in the spectacularly illegal, culturally offensive and diplomatically inadvisable duel she must fight at midnight.Outreach, that part of the Pal machine that has to work within the imperfection of the rest of the world, has a lot of room for the illegal, the unconventional, the unorthodox. But just how much unorthodoxy can Gil and Loret get away with?As a succession crisis looms, as a long-forgotten feat of necromantic engineering nears fruition, as pirate kings, lizard armies and demons gather, as old gods wane and new gods wax, sooner or later Gil and Loret will have to settle their ledger.Just as well they are both very, very good with a blade...Also in the TYRANT PHILOSOPHERS series:CITY OF LAST CHANCESHOUSE OF OPEN WOUNDSLIVES OF BITTER RAIN

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Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British science-fiction and fantasy writer known for a wide-variety of work including the Children of Time, Final Architecture, Dogs of War, Tyrant Philosophers and Shadows of the Apt series, as well as standalone books such as Elder Race, Doors of Eden, Spiderlight and many others. Children of Time and its series has won the Arthur C Clarke and BSFA awards, and his other works have won the British Fantasy, British Science Fiction and Sidewise Awards.