Tara Abernathy’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Angry witch girl desperate to make her mark on the world. Jaded graduate of the Hidden Schools. Reluctant priestess of Seril. Rebel Craftswoman fighting the system that made her. Friend. Daughter. Saviour. Lover. Tara Abernathy is many things including, arguably, the main character of the Craft Sequence. If you don’t know her story, you’ve missed quite a bit, but here’s the briefest recap I could manage.
As we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Tara’s story so far.
Note: I am not a succinct writer, but I am genuinely really trying to keep these stories so far as short as I can (though each is getting more detailed…) More than other essays in this series, the summaries of Tara’s actions in her books (other than Ruin, as she has few POV pages) are taken directly from the relevant book’s story so far essay. Nonetheless, this essay is 6,000 words long. Sorry?
If even that isn’t enough for you, you can also find far more about Tara in this series of deep dive essays.
Tara Abernathy before the series
Lucky for you, I have a whole essay about her childhood and upbringing right here.
Tl;dr version:
Tara is the only child of John Abernathy and Valentine Ngoye Abernathy, born and raised in the small town of Edgemont. Her father is originally from there, and met her mother in Alt Selene during the God Wars. They escaped the destruction of the city, and found shelter in Edgemont.
Tara always felt like an outsider, both because her mother was a refugee and because she had a natural affinity for the Craft.
As a child, she caught a fallen star in the middle of a storm. Her parents feared her talent, having seen the destruction Craftsfolk wrought in the Wars.
At 16 she ran away, joining a caravan crossing the Badlands, travelling and learning the basics of the Craft. When she felt ready, she called the Hidden Schools to her, passed the entrance exams, and became its newest student.
She loved much of her time there, but quickly realised most of her classmates came from privilege, and she had to work twice as hard of them. She was easily twice as good as them, though, without trying.
She and her roommate Daphne were invited to join Alexander Denovo’s lab, where their minds were essentially taken over by Denovo and they became automatons doing his bidding and giving him power.
When Daphne fell into a coma, it woke Tara from her trancelike state. She burned Denovo’s lab, and was graduated with prejudice (aka thrown out of the flying university to her presumed death)
She survived. And then Three Parts Dead begins.
Three Parts Dead
“When the Hidden Schools threw Tara Abernathy out, she fell a thousand feet through wisps of cloud and woke to find herself alive, broken and bleeding, beside the Crack in the World.”
I use this quote a lot, because it is possibly the best character introduction in the HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Ahem.
Waking up by the Crack in the World, barely alive, Tara sucks up what little life she can find around her, and slowly makes her way back to Edgemont. She drags herself, broken and bleeding, to her hometown, where she attempts to forget her studies and life as a fledgling Craftswoman. An uneventful few months pass, until Raiders kill a couple of local men.
Tara makes the not entirely wise decision to resurrect them - basic, beginner level Craftswoman stuff. Unfortunately, her neighbours don’t agree with her brilliant idea, and descend on her with pitchforks. Luckily help arrives in the form of the inimitable Elayne Kevarian, pinstriped and unruffled Craftswoman at the Craft firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. Elayne hires Tara for a new case: they’ve been hired by the Church of Kos to resurrect their god in Alt Coulumb.
They quickly become embroiled in a plot that goes much further than they first thought. They are brought into the city by Elayne’s old friend, vampirate Captain Raz Pelham. Tara goes to meet an old contact of Elayne’s, who has been quite brutally murdered; a shape-changing gargoyle, Shale, appears to have been set up as the culprit and is taken into custody by the Blacksuits, a hivemind police force, so Tara steals his face to be able to interrogate him later. Elayne then sends Tara off with junior priest Abelard to do document review (in the form of a fun vision quest).
It becomes clear that Raz Pelham is involved in the mystery, and in hunting him down Abelard gets in touch with an old friend, Cat Elle, a Blacksuit by day and vampire-bite-addict by night. They track down Raz right as some distant Craftsperson is wiping his memory of a past deal. In saving him, Tara and he both end up hospitalised.
Tara and Elayne’s mutual old enemy, Alexander Denovo, shows up as opposing counsel and Tara confronts him in court for the first time since she destroyed his laboratory and was thrown out of the Hidden Schools in retaliation. She wins their first encounter, but much more is to come.
Tara manipulates Cat to leave her alone so she can give Shale his face back, fake a prison escape, and follow him to where other gargoyles are hiding; meanwhile Elayne is hypnotised by Denovo. Tara finds the gargoyles and learns a huge secret: the goddess Seril, Kos’s consort thought to be killed in the God Wars, survived, albeit weakened. Kos had recently discovered this and tried to transfer power to her in secret. He was killed when he was at his weakest, and the transferred power had disappeared.
At that moment, Cat and the Blacksuits appear and haul Tara, Abelard and the gargoyles off to be tried for conspiring against the city. Tara takes over the clearly biased proceedings to reveal the secret plot. Denovo and Elayne arrive and corroborate her story; Tara realises Elayne is under Denovo’s power, and that Denovo wants to take Seril’s power for his own. A fight breaks out, and Abelard is killed. At the battle’s climax, Elayne regains some control over her body, creates a resurrection circle not for Abelard, but for Kos, who had escaped into Abelard’s cigarette at the moment of his apparent death. With Kos resurrected, Seril somewhat restored to Herself, the main conspirator dead and Denovo in custody, Elayne and Tara succeeded in their job - and more, by bringing down their old enemy.
As Elayne prepares to leave the city for their next assignment, Tara decides that she wants to remain in Alt Coulumb as Kos’s in-house counsel, to rebuild what was broken. Before Elayne leaves, she visits Denovo in his cell, which is warded against Craft or divine interference. As a Craftsman, he is destined for immortality and is happy to wait for the tides to change. However, before he was captured Elayne managed to pass a curse into him that she now uses to kill him once and for all.
Before we move on to the next book, check out ‘Man in the Middle’, a Craft Sequence short story set immediately after Three Parts Dead. Tara bonds with Abelard, moves into her new office, and accidentally discovers old God Wars remnants.
Four Roads Cross
Tara’s first job as in-house counsel for the Church of Kos is to dispose of Denovo’s corpse - and, as they are both necromancers, his spirit taunts her as she does so. After that, she is focused on keeping Seril’s return secret whilst working out how to restore some of Her old power to Her. Over the course of the next year, she follows dozens of leads to end up with absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile, Seril’s gargoyles are giving truth to rumour by answering prayers across the Paupers’ Quarter. One night, lead gargoyle Aev saves a journalist Gabby Jones, who of course immediately breaks the story. Tara tries unsuccessfully to quash it, and needs to come up with a Plan B.
To shore up Seril’s credit, Tara needs Her old records - scripture and archives that spell out what Seril owns and how Her theology works. Having somewhat reluctantly become Seril’s priestess, Tara is able to ask her directly - but Seril claims to not have such archives. She had poetry, stone and wing and claw - her gargoyles. After some argument about the whole face-stealing shenanigans, Shale agrees to fly Tara over the city and translate Stone poetry into Craftwork legal jargon.
Craftswoman Madeline Ramp shows up to serve suit against Kos for His off-book relationship with Seril, and consequent undisclosed liabilities. Ramp is an old associate of Denovo’s, making Tara immediately suspicious of her convenient timing to appear in the city. Even weirder, Ramp’s assistant is Daphne Mains - Tara’s best friend from the Hidden Schools, last seen catatonic from Denovo messing with her mind. Yet somehow she’s here with one of Denovo’s allies.
Tara sets up an exclusive interview between Seril and journalist Gabby Jones. With Tara’s help, Cat and Raz free smuggled debt zombies found during a drug bust, offering asylum in Seril’s name - only to be hit by a trap. The refugees are infected with demons, and if the demons can break Seril, they’re free. Blacksuits, gargoyles, and Raz are attacked. Seril screams mid-interview as Her children and Her power are eaten.
Abelard asks Kos to intervene. Demons fall to fire in the night sky. And there’s the proof Ramp needed: Kos has undeclared interest in Seril. She presses suit, and Tara calls a Council of War.
“QUOTE”
With the help of Elayne Kevarian, Tara gets Craftsperson Ashleigh Wakefield to represent Kos in the forthcoming suit whilst she and Shale fly to Dresediel Lex to speak with the King in Red and ask him to return the rights to Alt Coulumb’s skies, which he took as spoils of war after killing Seril.
This goes about as well as you would expect.
Shale tries to kill Kopil, who is Kopil-ing on a fake beach, drinking a bright pink cocktail with four paper umbrellas. However, he is impressed enough (and / or wants to get back in Elayne’s good books enough) that he tells them that he gave the rights to the Two Serpents Group, so off Tara and Shale go to try and deal with Caleb Altemoc. In classic Caleb style, however, he’s managed to throw himself into the middle of danger and is currently holding together a mountain that houses an ancient goddess. Shale takes his place, Caleb gives Tara the sky rights, and Tara threatens the mountain goddess. Standard Abernathy behaviour.
Back in Alt Coulumb, other characters are spreading the word about Seril to try and shore up support for Her. This is part of Tara’s plan, even though she can’t be there for it. The court case begins. Ramp and Wakefield go head to head - but Wakefield only represents Kos, and thus must step aside when Seril is brought in. With Tara stuck in Dresediel Lex, Seril is undefended. Aev and the gargoyles come to defend Seril in Tara’s stead. Daphne - or, as we learn, the thing wearing Daphne’s body - fights them.
Tara convinces Caleb to give her the rights to the sky, but there’s no way for her to get a dragon flight back to Alt Coulumb in time. She must wait for the sun to set, then Seril can transport her via the mood road.
Daphne is eating Seril through Her gargoyles, until Cat joins the fray and tries to arrest Daphne for assaulting Aev, a citizen of Alt Coulumb. Joined by her fellow Blacksuits, she fights Daphne, freeing up some of Seril’s power to finally transport Tara across the continent. Tara appears, and shows she has gained Seril’s rights to the skies of Alt Coulumb. The being that was Daphne fights to destroy the contract. Tara, as is standard for Tara, is about to sacrifice herself when Raz steps in (see his story so far here) and saves the day.
They win.
Back in her home, Madeline Ramp receives a delivery of what she thinks is Denovo’s skull, which she conspired to steal from Tara - except it’s missing. Tara intercepted it, and appears via Craftwork hologram to banter with Ramp.
Finally, Tara joins a delegation of Deathless Kings, the Two Serpents Group, and M Grimwald to save Shale from the mountain goddess and build Her a body. She talks to Grimwald, hypothesising that they caught wind of Ramp’s plan and called in the debt held by the refugees to ensure they’d be in Alt Coulumb ready to help.
Tara between books
Given Cat’s role in the events of Full Fathom Five, we can assume Tara had a hand in things. Cat is working alongside Teo Batan of the Two Serpents Group - Teo, who Tara met in Dresediel Lex before she went to save Caleb. I can guarantee nobody else in Alt Coulumb came up with the plan for Teo and Cat to break into Kavekana’ai and steal the shard of Seril hidden there. The gargoyles’ plan was writing demands on stone tablets. Cat wouldn’t leave Alt Coulumb if Seril hadn’t asked her. Abelard would never dream of stealing.
No, that was all Tara’s plan, I’m sure of it.
We also know that Tara and the Church of Kos starting working with the Iskari on a top secret project that required Tara to eventually go to Agdel Lex and support the launch of a rocket into orbit, so they could listen to sounds beyond the stars. That means that between these books, Tara became aware that something lurked out there. Perhaps it was Madeline Ramp’s warning at the end of Four Roads Cross. Perhaps Elayne Kevarian said something (as we later learn she regularly pops into Alt Coulumb). Or perhaps it was Grimwald, his shadowy fingers in yet another pie…
Whatever it was, Tara started working with the Iskari, despite her reservations about how awful they were. But she didn’t know quite how terrible their plans were until she arrived in Agdel Lex, signed far too many contracts to easily get out of, and found herself trapped in a web of squiddy horror.
Which brings us to the next book.
Ruin of Angels
Unusually, Tara has very few POV pages in this book, only a handful at the very end. We mostly see her from Kai Pohala’s perspective, and in Kai’s eyes Tara cuts an imposing figure, closed off but extremely competent. Kai can’t quite work out Tara’s motivations or loyalties until later on in their acquaintance.
So let’s try and figure that out for ourselves.
Tara Abernathy does not like to compromise. She will work herself to the bone on longshot solutions for near-apocalyptic problems, and sacrifice herself to save others in a heartbeat. She’s nearly died doing just that many times in the series so far. And now Tara has found herself in a quagmire of ethical compromises.
Agdel Lex is a particularly weird, broken place in a world of weird, broken places. When Kai steps out of the airport, the city swims before her vision - three cities, somehow layered on top of one another. That’s why the Iskari are here. Originator of the Craft Maestre Gerhardt broke the city 150 years ago, and the Iskari came in to shore it up. There are three cities: the modern Iskari city of Agdel Lex, the dead city beneath it, full of monsters and ice and dying angels, and a secret - illegal - in-between city of Alikand made by locals in defiance of the Iskari.
Tara needed the Iskari for her work, but she doesn’t like what they’re doing.
And then, shortly before the end of the project, a key member of the team is sort-of-murdered by her former business partner. Tara attends the crime scene, sees the body of Alethea Vane, and meets Kai Pohala for the first time. It was, in fact, Kai who called the police, and Kai who witnessed her own sister commit the murder. Tara needs more soul to do her work; her Iskari contact, Lieutenant Bescond, is unwilling, but Kai offers hers instead. Tara investigates the body in a classically necromancer way, and declares that she should be able to bring Vane back, at least enough for questioning, but something’s wrong.
Bescond brings Kai in for questioning. Tara joins the (unusually mild, for the Iskari) interrogation, and appears to hold Bescond back from her baser instincts. It seems she is trying to protect Kai as much as she can. It’s also clear to Kai that Tara is working with the Iskari under sufferance - for mutual advantage, Tara explains when pressed.
Later, Tara meets Kai and says she doesn’t care what happens to Kai’s sister (as in, she isn’t invested in arresting her). But she does need the knife Ley stole back, urgently. Tara wants to help, but is restrained. If we were in Tara’s head for this book, I think a hell of a lot of it would be her trying to untangle the the contract she’s trapped by, finding the loopholes and wiggle room to stop working with the Iskari. As it is, we see her from the perspective of a suspicious Kai Pohala.
Yet Kai comes around. Tara is staying at the Temple of All Gods, run by priests who were caught up in the demon fight in Four Roads Cross. Kai finds her there, and they talk. Tara convinces Kai to at least appear like she’s willing to work with Bescond, and they manage to negotiate that Ley will go free if only they can get that damn knife.
Kai is aware via Izza that her sister will be on a train out into the God Wastes on a heist; Tara and Kai get on the train, but are confronted by Bescond. Kai briefly worries that Tara betrayed her, but Tara manages to slip her some intel so she can pray to Izza and warn the gang about the trap.
“Kai glanced from Tara to Bescond and back. The Craftswoman set aside her newspaper, sipper her tea, and set the teacup down again.
Had Tara betrayed her? Kai would have sworn the Craftswoman wasted no love on Bescond. Kai had felt her seething frustration with the Iskari, the tense mechanism of Tara’s rage allowed, for that barest moment in the stairwell, to show—but that woman sat impassive as a mountain. Kai made a mental note, if they made it through this mess, to never play cards against Tara Abernathy.
…
Kai read the note burned into her ticket—the ticket she’d never held, but which had, by Abernathy’s Craft or sleight of hand, arrived in her lap. Not much help. She’d hoped for Craftwork glyphs, for magic to speed her way. She found a few scrawled words of advice.”
Tara’s mind may be a maelstrom, but her exterior is impassive and perfectly Craftswomanlike. Deathless Kings may get away with histrionics, but not their more junior colleagues. Tara learned many years ago the part she had to play to succeed in the world, and she plays it so well that even Kai struggles to see past it.
Kai manages to pray to Izza that it’s a set up to get Ley, but it’s too late and the Wreckers arrive. The delver crew walk through the desert to a facility holding the item Ley needs. Bescond, Tara, and Kai make their own way there, with Kai getting a promise from Bescond to let Ley go in return for her knife. We hear the story of Gerhardt, Agdel Lex, and the forming of the God Wastes from different perspectives - can’t quote it all here because it’s super long, but you should re-read the section, it’s fantastic. It starts in Chapter 46.
Ley successfully gets what she needs at the facility, but SURPRISE! The Wreckers arrive. Tara uses Craft to watch what’s going on inside and report the battle to Kai. Bescond wants to arrest Ley, but Tara reminds her of the agreement she had with Kai, and the consequences of breaking a contract in front of a Craftswoman. Bescond lets Ley go in return for the knife (which is both essential to the Big Mission, and currently housing Alethea Vane’s consciousness), but arrests almost everyone else.
Back in the city, Tara brings Alethea Vane back to life. Her consciousness had been stored in Ley’s knife, which makes resurrection easy for a necromancer. Vane explains the project - she’s going to send the knife into orbit, and get everyone to see the same city at the same time. This will destroy both the dead city and Alikand, allowing the God Wastes to flood in, and kill everyone in those cities. Ley hadn’t been aware of this part of the plan, or the fact that the Iskari funded it; when she found out, she tried to buy Vane out but was thwarted at every turn.
Tara can’t hide her disgust. She tells Kai that she needs data from the orbit; she needs to listen to what’s out there. She’s bound by too many Craft contracts to actively fight against the Iskari, but she’ll do what she can while Kai goes to the launch facility.
As the battle starts, Tara chooses a side. She stands alongside Izza and the priests at the Temple, ready to fight the dying godlings of the God Wastes. It’s a tough fight, but they do, ultimately, win and save Alikand.
Afterwards, Kai meets Tara and shares the recording of what she heard in the skies. It’s everything Tara feared.
Legs, skittering closer.
Skazzerai.
Tara says the sound is an end of the world, but they’ll figure something out. She spends the next few years desperately searching for more information, and finds almost nothing.
Until…
Dead Country
Tara is pulled from her life in Alt Coulumb, and her work researching the end of the world, by a letter from her mother: her father, whom she hasn’t seen in years, is dead. Grief-stricken, she immediately packs up what little she needs - including a small black folder - and heads home. With no airport near Edgemont, she uses Craft to leap from the dragon mid-flight and lands in the Badlands, still quite a walk from the small town.
On her journey, she comes across a farm, burning, and a Raider dragging a young woman across the dirt. Tara is able to shoot the Raider - through the girl. Nobody said the Craft was perfect. When Tara then tries to heal the girl, Dawn, Craft explodes out from her. Dawn is powerful, untrained, and needs help.
Together, they limp to Edgemont, where they’re confronted by a beefed up guard - the Raiders have been getting bolder, and Edgemont is a different place than the one Tara left all those years ago. Guards, led by Grafton Cavanaugh try to stop her from coming in. Grafton was Tara’s father’s best friend, but he’s bigoted against the Craft and hates Tara. His son, and Tara’s old classmate, Connor, tries to intervene, but it takes Tara’s own mother to get Grafton to let her in.
Tara heals Dawn with the help of Connor’s soul, and speaks to her mother face to face for the first time in a decade or so. The funeral comes and goes. Tara gets through it on autopilot, giving a speech she can’t even recall. She follows Connor into a glass canyon in the Badlands, one of many God Wars scars on the landscape, and he tells her that her father died saving his life from Raiders. The Raiders have changed since she left. They’re bolder. More purposeful. Led by a Raider known as the Seer.
Back at the wake, Tara prays (though loathes that word, Craftswoman down to her bones), but something is blocking Seril from answering. The wake is then abruptly interrupted by a young man from Blake’s Rest - the town where Tara found Dawn - injured and on the run from Raiders. Dawn recognises him, and recoils. Tara doesn’t know much of her past, but knows she was ill-treated by the people of Blake’s Rest. The man grabs Dawn, and the Raiders’ curse bubbles out from him to attack her.
Tara tries to untangle it; she saves Dawn, the man crumbles into ash, and she herself is wounded. The Raiders’ curse worms its way up her arm under her skin. But there’s no time to figure it out - Raiders are coming. Tara borrows power from Edgemont’s wards to fight back with the Craft. She wins the battle, but warns the town that the war is still to come - they’ll be back and bring their leader, the Seer. However, whether they like it or not, they’ll have her to protect them.
That night she manages to contain, but not remove, the curse. It pulses in her arm, black rot and white curse strands trying to take her over.
How can Tara save Edgemont? First, she must learn it. In between teaching Dawn the fundamentals of Craft, she learns the land field by field, yard by yard. Connor tells her stories of the town, legends and family tales shared over a pint and a song. With this, Tara can translate the town, its people and its stories into Craftwork and claims it as hers, no matter her historic dislike of the place. She brings Dawn in, teaching her how to put theory into practice. Tara’s a conflicted teacher, having been badly burned by Denovo and the Hidden Schools, but she tries her best.
Gradually, Edgemont’s people begin to trust Tara and her powers. She’s allowed to use the Craft to save a man injured by Raiders. She speaks to her father’s grave. She teaches Dawn. She and Connor sleep together, and start something of a situationship by darkness, while walking the town by daylight. Edgemonters come forward to tell her the deepest secrets of their land, the secrets nobody outside their bloodline knows, and with that Tara is able to more fully learn, describe, and claim the land.
The backdrop of all of this remains Tara’s research into the end of the world, all her findings secured in that black folder she took with her from Alt Coulumb. Finally, she shares it with Dawn. Skazzerai. Tara has gathered as much information as humanly (or inhumanly) possible and still knows next to nothing.
Tara is conflicted about the Craftwork world, her place in it, and what her life means now that she knows the skazzerai are coming to the Domain. She’s been betrayed by her world countless times, and has had her worldview shaken time and time again. She’s not the same person she was at the start of the series, the last time she was in Edgemont.
“When I started to learn the Craft, I wanted freedom, and understanding, and power. I wanted to get away. I thought I could carve out a niche raising the dead and defying gods from some corner office, where I’d work until all that was left would be a skeleton in a very nice suit. I don’t want that anymore. But even if you do, I don’t think you can expect to have the option. Learning the Craft, today, isn’t about the job, the lifestyle, the undying power, the tradition, the office. It’s about charting a course through the end of the world. And what comes after.”
Tara, lost and confused about her purpose and where should be, bonds with her mother for the first time as an adult. Valentine has guessed she’s injured, and Tara shows her the Raiders’ curse injury. Valentine, who Tara thought loved Edgemont, rails against its treatment of her daughter, and begs Tara to stay safe and come home to her.
And now, the battle. Raiders arrive with a storm on their heels, and the Seer at their helm. Tara uses all her work learning the town, the glyphs she carved into the glass canyon, and the strength she built by night to channel through the town’s pastor, and fights. The Craft is clear on property rights: Tara named Edgemont in the Craft, its places and people, flora and fauna, and the Raiders have no place here.
But the curse is inside her. If she is part of Edgemont, so is it - and thus the Raiders. Her defence weakens, but Edgemont guards join the fight. In doing so, they leave the wards that mark Edgemont’s boundaries, and some of the power is broken. The Raiders leave, but they have the pastor. Dawn wants Tara to leave the Pastor to his fate and leave Edgemont. But Tara won’t. She can’t. This is her father’s town, and whether she likes it or not it’s hers.
And so Tara, Dawn, and Connor make their way through the Badlands to the Raiders’ camp. Connor knows the Badlands like Tara knows the Craft, and can tell them how to find both invisible dangers and hidden oases. The Badlands are far from the dead country they seem at first glance. Gods died out there, and the land sucked up their power.
The trio walk through an edge storm and see the only possible future, one where the world ends at the maw of the skazzerai. Connor is injured, but Tara and Dawn make their way to the Raiders’ camp by the Crack in the World.
It’s not what you’d expect. An office park, painfully normal looking - and the planetside annexe of Alexander Denovo’s journal. Again, you can read about this in great detail in the skazzerai series. This is but a brief summary. In the building, Tara and Dawn discover that Denovo somehow managed to trap a godlike being of the Craft. It kept trying to grow a body, and he kept cutting it up. It hangs suspended in wires, seemingly dead.
This being and its power changed the Raiders’ curse, made them act differently.
Made them come after Tara’s father.
Tara and Dawn fight to save the pastor, and the Craft-god wakes. It tries to eat Tara, but Dawn saves her life. Back in Edgemont, Tara confronts Dawn about how she did that. Dawn stopped the Craft-god by melding with her, offering herself in Tara’s place. And now all that power is free in the world, inside Dawn. Tara nearly convinces Dawn to come with her, but Dawn-slash-the-Craft-god sees through her. Tara confirms her suspicion: the Craft god killed her father to try and reel in Tara.
Once again, they try to eat her. Yet, with the curse now gone, Tara can pray and Seril opens the moon road. Dawn flees, and Tara is transported to Alt Coulumb. She wakes there, with her mother at her side. It’s been a week. She’s lost her left arm up to the elbow, now Craftworked bone set in silver and glyphed.
It’s the end of this story, but the start of the next: how to save the world, both from Dawn and the skazzerai.
Wicked Problems
Several months later, after a slow recovery in Alt Coulumb, Tara gets her first lead on Dawn’s whereabouts: the spirecliffs off Southern Kath. She tries to sneak out of the city to chase Dawn herself, but her friends assemble to help her. Shale flies Abelard to the airport and acquires him a ticket using spy skills (relevant for later, remember Shale has been a spy for decades) and Abelard persuades Tara to let him come with her to the spirecliffs.
They reach the scene of near destruction to find Caleb Altemoc once again holding together a dangerous landscape. Tara tries to work out how to free him without dooming them all. Kai Pohala shows up out of nowhere, and offers to loan her some soul in order to pull Caleb free; Tara then gives herself wings using bones (this book is the most necromancy in terms of bones), and flies away with Caleb, Kai and Abelard dangling beneath her.
She then interrupts a kinky seeming dream of Caleb’s, making fun of him, and finding a way to drag him out of the dream and back to reality. They wake on fire. They’re on Eberhardt Jax’s yacht with Abelard and Kai.
Tara ties Caleb to a chair (classic Tara) to go through his memories and see what the hell happened. In the memories they see Dawn - and they see Mal Kekapania, Caleb’s ex who was assumed dead after the climax of Two Serpents Rise.
Tara convenes a council of war and everyone gets up to speed with Dawn, the skazzerai, and Mal. They decide to split up: Tara and Kai will go to meet Kai’s client, while Abelard and Caleb chase Dawn. Jax will do billionaire stuff behind the scenes.
We next see Tara and Kai cosplaying the French, and Tara crossdressing. It’s a great concept, and we should all thank Gladstone for it. If any artists are reading this, please draw these scenes.
Why are they in disguise? Well, if you remember the events of Ruin of Angels, you’ll know that Kai and Tara were instrumental in saving Alikand and kinda-but-not-quite destroying the future of the Iskari-held city of Agdel Lex. The two of them are now in Iskar proper (specifically Chartegnon, AKA Craft!Paris) and are on the most wanted list. They dress for the opera. Kai is drop dead gorgeous, and Tara is speechless. I ship it. It turns out Kai has always dreamed of seeing opera here, but unfortunately they won’t be able to take their seats for Kirst’s Godsgloaming as they need to meet Kai’s contact. Tara fashions a Crafty listening device out of bone so Kai can hear at least the first part of the act. While staring at Kai, she absently notices a woman with a large gold pendant go up the stairs to boxes. When Tara and Kai go up to the boxes themselves to meet Kai’s client - who turns out to be Grimwald - they find him deceased, with his throat ripped out. Cops immediately appear: they’ve been framed.
Kai freezes and Tara acts, as she is wont to do. She gives Kai Grimwald’s severed head, and her Mary Poppins-esque clutch bag, then temporarily kills Kai and leaps from the balcony onto the stage, beginning a sword fight with actors who become possessed by the squiddy lords of Iskar.
“And here I was worried we were chasing shadows. If M. Grimwald didn’t know something useful, he wouldn’t be dead now. Here. Hold this.”
Kai found herself in possession of one (1) severed head.
“What the hells, Tara?”
“We’re running out of options. He can still answer a few questions, if we’re careful.”
…
Tara’s arms circled her, strong and tight.
Kai’s breath caught. She felt brilliantly alive.
Then she died.
There was probably a technical term to describe her condition, something Tara would use to distinguish it from the kind of death the headless Grimwald was experiencing. But Kai could not move, could not breathe. She had learned to feel her own heart beating in her chest. It was a reassuring sensation, until it wasn’t there.
“Sorry,” Tara said. “Thanks.”
…
She saw Tara’s plan, then, and did not like it. Kai would remain hidden, unless the cops took the time for a detailed search. So Tara would provide a distraction.
Kai’s brain caught up a moment before Tara leapt off the balcony.
Tara landed hard on the stage, rolled, came up on her feet seeking exits. Laughter from the audience, shock.”
Tara is, naturally, caught.
Some time later we return to Tara in the midst of a torture dream that finds her back at the Hidden Schools with Denovo. It takes her a while to figure out what’s going on, but she’s Tara Abernathy so of course she does. She wakes in a tank, hanging from the tentacle of a squid saint (Tiffany, from Theophania, as Gladstone has spent too much time on the internet) for interrogation. Through the questioning, she realises that the Isakri squid saints know about the skazzerai, know Grimwald is dead, and that she’s been set up to take the fall and lead the unknown enemies to Saint Tiffany.
Right on time, two grey men enter with the woman from the opera, who turns out to be an ancient vampire with claws and WINGS. Wings, y’all. The vampire, Clarity, welcomes Tara to the oldest war, and begins to fight. Saint Tiffany is killed. Tara uses a holy lighter from Abelard to bring down fire, but sees Clarity heal. Tara is lifted by moonlight and passes out. She wakes half-naked in the catacombs, and slams Shale against a wall before recognising him and seeing Kai. OT3. Chartegnon is aflame but they need to get Grimwald’s information. Tara uses bones from the catacombs to make a flying skullbeast, and the three of them fly to the broken and cracked skyspire, using Grimwald’s severed head to enter.
They realise the entire spire (essentially a floating skyscraper) is empty other than a prism of bone hidden in the spire’s heart, with one metal chair and twelve crystal columns holding ancient artifacts. Tara attempts to interrogate dead Grimwald with Craft, and some of the artifacts explode. Kai realises she, with her Kavekanese priestess experience, may have a better shot at this than Tara; she kisses Tara, and dives over a ward circle that ought to kill her.
She appears to die, and Tara attempts CPR. Eventually it works, and Kai awakes to tell her and Shale that she saw Grimwald’s memories - he is unspeakably ancient, a survivor of the last time the skazzerai came to the Domain and ate the world. Clarity and the grey men are taking pieces off the board that might be able to stop the skazzerai. They realise that the next target will be the Serpents. Clarity, now flying, attacks. Shale prays to Seril, who makes the three of them and the skullbeast vanish just in time.
They don’t make it to Dresediel Lex in time for the battle our other protagonists fight, but they are in time to see Abelard nearly self-sacrifice himself to godfire. He draws the fire into himself, saving the city, but almost falling to ash himself.
Tara blames herself for everything Dawn has done. Elayne, who is there too, says they will stop her, together.
And that, 6,000 words later, is Tara’s story so far.
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