It was five years before I rode beside my king again.
DEDICATION, THANKS, AND NOTES
Gracious as gift given nine nights later
when words came back changed for keeping.
Wool I wefted, who warped it?
Relish this, Riddler, thy own I give thee.
This book is for the four people who lived with the story as it was being written, who caught errors, made suggestions, and helped in their different ways to shape it as it grew. Sasha Walton, my son the Jarnish partisan, for taking it for granted and being insistent. Emmet O’Brien, for love, help, delight, and support all the time I was writing it. Hrolfr F. Gertsen-Briand, my military adviser, for the hard work on detail he put into it, for showing me how to do Caer Lind, and most especially for sharing the dream and showing me there’s more than one way of not being able to have it. Graydon, my non-union muse, without whom there would not only not be this but there would not be anything; for always seeing clearly what was wrong and for being so awfully good at being himself.
This book also gained inestimably by being read in manuscript by Janet Kegg, my fairy godmother, my aunt, Mary Lace, and Michael Grant.
I’d also like to thank Pamela Dean for inspiration, wise advice, reassurance, and conversation about writing; Mary Lace for driving me to Oxford and Caerleon and other helpful places; Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, for taking notice of it; and Jez Green, Andrew Morris, Ken Walton, Helen Marsden, Steve Miller, Bil Bas, and Art Questor for the inspiration that came out of a game.
For those to whom pronunciation of names is important, they have been rendered as easy for an English speaker as possible. C and G are always hard (as in cat, gold), and all letters should be pronounced as read. Doubtful vowels are more likely to be long than otherwise. Ch is hard (as in Bach) except in Malmish names.
This is not our world, and this is not history. Anyone seeking information on the history of Britain in the early Sixth Century would probably do well to start with John Morris’ The Age of Arthur, not an infallible book but a very readable one. From there I’d highly recommend the wonderfully illuminating recent work of K. M. Dark, especially Civitas to Kingdom and External Contacts. As far as primary sources go, many of them are collected together in Coe and Young’s The Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend, the most useful of the many useful volumes Llanerch Press have made available in recent years. For technology I’d highly recommend Gies and Gies’s Cathedral, Forge and Waterfall; and for religion Fletcher’s wonderfully thorough The Conversion of Europe. I’d like to express my gratitude to the staff of Sketty library for their unfailing cheerfulness in ordering me in great piles of strange volumes from the ends of the Earth. I couldn’t have managed without them either.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE KING’S PEACE
Copyright © 2000 by Jo Walton
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429970655
First eBook Edition : April 2011
First Edition: October 2000
Jo Walton, The King's Peace
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