The book

The frost is thick on the salt below the Keel's rib mouth. Pell writes the morning's casts in yards. Yez finishes a signed map of the coast road they have not walked: Not walked. Asked. Then the country grows greener and the wind smells of salt and weed, and at a well-house under the first brown hills a man in a long dark coat is waiting.

He names them one by one. He is Wenlow, a factor, and the people he works for are not named. He offers work on the right side of a ledger when there is a ledger, and he will not write a contract until there is something true to write. On his ring is a ladder of three rungs. Pell copies the mark onto the list and reads it aloud.

They come over the last hills in the evening and the land stops in cliffs, with towns stacked on the faces of them on stairs and ladders cut into stone. Sira says the name from the map. Hana's shop is on the cliff-top lane, its strip turned out over the door, and she stamps a strip before she looks up. Brask takes a coil off an old porter on the harbor stair. This is a warm, clear-eyed coming-of-age fantasy told in three dated parts. It is about going home with a bill in your shirt, and a man who knows your name before you have signed anything.

Read the opening

The Keel was waking. It always woke slowly in the cool, because nobody wanted to leave the bone. The great curve of the rib went up overhead, gray and warm, with the town built up the inside of it in its uneven ladders and ledges, and the smoke from the first fires going up past the windows into the dark of the bend far above; and the lamp-oil woman was taking her shutters down, and a crew of delvers was coming down the second ladder with their packs, yawning, and somebody on a ledge was shouting at somebody else about a missing boot. Pell went up the ladders to the house on the third, and in at the door, and found the house in the state he had expected to find it in, because it was the molt.

Brask was in the corner by the warm wall, on the big pallet, under two blankets, with their back to the room.

There was fur everywhere. There was always fur everywhere on a molt day, and there was always more of it than seemed possible, as if Brask were a much larger person than they looked and had been keeping most of themselves folded up somewhere. It lay in drifts along the wall and in soft gray tufts under the table, and it had got into the bread, and Yez, at the table, was taking it out of their porridge with the end of a spoon, one hair at a time, with an expression of great patience.

"Good morning," said Yez. "There's a badger in my breakfast."

Back-cover copy

North of the last brine post the wind begins to smell of salt and weed. Yez has signed a map of the coast road they have not walked, and written on it: if this is wrong, say so at the next well.

At a well-house under the first brown hills a man in a good coat is waiting. He calls them by name. He is Wenlow, a factor, and he offers work with no paper yet, because he will not put a word on a page that is not true. On his ring is a ladder of three rungs. Pell copies it and reads the copy aloud.

They come over the last hill and the land stops in cliffs. Towns are stacked on the faces of them, stairs and ladders cut into stone, harbors at the foot. Sira says the name from the map: the Ladder Coast. Nobody who lives there calls it that.

Hana's shop is where it has always been, strip turned out over the door. She finishes a stamp, two taps, before she looks up. Brask takes a heavy coil off an old porter and walks it down the harbor stair at his pace.

The Ladder Coast

Reading order

The book

Read the opening

Back-cover copy

Portraits

Package

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