Swordlords (The Apprentice Trilogy Book 1)

Faltori has killed more people than there are days in a year. She was a soldier of the Church of the Nine, branded an oathbreaker for a crime she never committed and cursed with a mark that burns anew every day. For twenty years she has hunted the ones who betrayed her, believing their deaths would set her free. The killing is done now. Yet, the pain remains. And the debt, it seems, was never hers to settle.

Dint is seventeen, an orphan, and a liar. He charms tavern girls with stories he didn't earn and borrows magic that was never his – until a golden-eyed thief robs him of an enchanted ring worth more than he can earn in a lifetime of honest work. If he’s going to get it back, he’ll have to become the man he pretends to be.

In the crowded city of Semble, their paths cross over a single stolen artefact: one that sorcerers have killed to possess, and malevolent powers are already moving to seize. A warrior with nothing left to lose. A boy who has never had anything at all. And a secret buried beneath the city that could remake the whole world.