Novel
The Cutters' Roll · Book One (Book 1 of 7)
The Second Hand
Linn (thirty-four) sits at the cliff shop in Hana's apron with Pell's list shut under a clean stone and prices a fisher's hire-coat collar whose clause is light and honest and whose maker line reads only a Tally cutter; she speaks that office-word at the wool and runs light backward and nothing happens, writes Cannot unwind. First one., and tells Omber the coast has learned to take the name off the page.
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Reading order
- The Second HandBook One
- Names in MetalBook Two
- Half a LifeBook Three
- The Collar-DogsBook Four
- The Blind BondBook Five
- The Counting FloorBook Six
- The Ferrow ReadingBook Seven
Next in the series: Names in Metal
See all seven books in The Cutters' Roll on the Novels page.Reading-order guide
The book
Linn (thirty-four) sits at the cliff shop in Hana's apron with Pell's list shut under a clean stone and prices a fisher's hire-coat collar whose clause is light and honest and whose maker line reads only a Tally cutter; she speaks that office-word at the wool and runs light backward and nothing happens, writes Cannot unwind. First one., and tells Omber the coast has learned to take the name off the page.
Read the opening
She was thirty-four, and she did not feel thirty-four. She felt, most mornings, like somebody who had been left a shop and a set of pegs and a rule written on four sheets headed Hana of the cliff, and who was still finding out, one job at a time, what any of that weighed. Before anyone climbed up she took Hana's apron from its peg and tied it the way she had every morning for a year. The apron still sat slightly wrong on her shoulders. She left it wrong, and wrongness was honest. She swept the forge stair, checked Yez's well stone on the shelf over the bench, and set the price book open to a clean page, as if readiness itself could be a kind of answer.
The fisher's wife came up the stair in the middle of the morning. Linn heard her before she saw her: the breathing at the third turn, the stop, the start again. People who were not used to the stair always stopped at the third turn. The woman who came in through the open door was about forty, broad and weathered, with a fisher's oilskin and her hands knotted in front of her the way people stood who had walked a long way to say something and had been saying it to themselves the whole road. Linn put the pen down and waited.
"You're the smith," said the woman.
"I'm Linn," said Linn. "Sit down. Tell me what it is."
Back-cover copy
Linn (thirty-four) sits at the cliff shop in Hana's apron with Pell's list shut under a clean stone and prices a fisher's hire-coat collar whose clause is light and honest and whose maker line reads only a Tally cutter.
She speaks that office-word at the wool and runs light backward and nothing happens, writes Cannot unwind. First one., and tells Omber the coast has learned to take the name off the page.
Portraits
Package
- Back-cover copyIncluded
- Cover artIncluded
- Character portraitsIncluded
- Full manuscriptNot on this site
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The Second Hand is Book One (Book 1 of 7) in The Cutters' Roll 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.