Novel
Facing Out · Book Four (Book 4 of 7)
The Dry Sea
South of the salt, the sea is a white floor, and the town is built inside a rib.
In a country of salt plates and buried jars, a young man who still writes every price on a list walks south with his friends until the land drops onto a sea's floor. Under the curve of a rib, a guild town called the Keel is warm at the back, and the question at the bottom of the list is what Bone work costs.
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Reading order
- The Size of a DoorBook One
- The Second DateBook Two
- The Held StretchBook Three
- The Dry SeaBook Four
- The Ladder CoastBook Five
- The Shelf GardensBook Six
- The Short ClockBook Seven
Previous in the series: The Held Stretch
Next in the series: The Ladder Coast
New to Facing Out? Start with Book One, The Size of a Door.
See all seven books in Facing Out on the Novels page.
The book
The salt begins after the last brine posts: white plates fitted like street stones, cairns with a jar buried at the foot of each. Pell writes how much they take and how much they leave. Then the land rises, and below them the floor of a dry sea runs away into haze. Out of that floor stand the ribs, gray curves as high as a town's walls, with smoke and windows inside the nearest one.
The town inside the rib is called the Keel. Houses climb the inner curve with their back walls made of bone, warm whatever the weather does at the front. The guild hall's factor is Halbeck, who smiles first and takes a tenth of every job, and who sends them to Tamsa: Bone, a guide, not cheap and not kind. Pell copies the map prices. He writes the same question every night: What does Bone work cost?
Brask walks the watch at the back. Omber looks at bone the way they look at metal. Yez talks. Sira learns a stone word along a crack in Tamsa's door, and keeps the knife at night with cold hands after. This is a warm, clear-eyed coming-of-age fantasy told in three dated parts. It is about work inside a rib, a bill you can copy, and a price nobody has named yet.
Read the opening
They left the wagon at the last brine post, where the road gave out into a cart track and the grass gave out into something gray and stiff that crunched. Brask climbed down by themselves, which took a while, and stood in the dust with one hand on the tailboard, and looked south, and said, "Walk."
"Tomorrow," said Pell.
"Today," said Brask. "To the post and back."
So they walked to the post and back, which was forty steps, and Brask sat down rather suddenly at the end of it and did not mention it, and the next day they walked a little further. That was how the first part of the south went. Every morning Pell wrote Brask's distance on the list, in Brask's column, and every evening he crossed it out and wrote the true one, which was always a little more. By the twenty-fourth day of the hot season Brask was walking half the day beside the mule with a hand on its pack. By the twenty-eighth they were walking all of it, slowly, at the back, where they liked to be.
Back-cover copy
The salt goes south under a white sky, and then the land falls away. What lies at the bottom is a sea's floor, and out of it stand ribs like the timbers of a ship left upturned on the shore. Smoke rises inside the nearest curve. Somebody has built a town in the bone.
The town is the Keel, warm at the back. The guild honors Glass from the road until you are stamped Bone. Halbeck, the factor, sells maps of the ribs and sends Pell's party to Tamsa, who comes in and out a window because a slab of rib has wedged her door.
Tamsa is Bone. She is not cheap and she is not kind. She holds up a three-fingered hand facing out and does not explain it. Pell writes a second line under his question: Ask Tamsa. When she wants to.
Brask takes the back. Omber sorts punches. Yez cannot sleep because it is like being inside a loaf. Sira puts both hands on the crack and says Stone, once.
Portraits
Package
- Back-cover copyIncluded
- Cover artIncluded
- Character portraitsIncluded
- Full manuscriptNot on this site
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The Dry Sea is Book Four (Book 4 of 7) in Facing Out by Ryujin. The manuscript stays off this site. Readers can continue through the series in order; producers, development executives, and representation can use the inquiry desk or browse the feature slate.