Dues of Blood (Transgressor Trilogy #3)
E.M. Swift-Hook
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· 1 ratings · 402 pages · Published: 26 Jul 2016
“You are rattling the wrong cage," he said, his tone cold. "I laid those ghosts in my first year of the arena – I was eighteen and I killed the three men I thought of as my best friends in as many moons. You are the one with a problem about it, not me.”
The Sabre is the most famous of the gladiatorial fighters in the Arena of Alfor. He knows how to face any opponent on the sand and has defeated them all in the blood-games patronised by the wealthy elite of medieval Temsevar. But the Warlord Qabal Vyazin has decreed the arena is to become a means of political execution and even the Sabre will have to struggle to survive.
Temsevar is an insignificant Periphery world on the very fringes of galactic civilisation. Settled long before the rise of faster-than-light technologies and left isolated for hundreds of years, its population has degenerated into the barbarism of a medieval culture. This primitive world has nothing the wealthy planets of the Coalition could want, until it becomes unwitting host to one of their most dangerous enemies - Avilon Revid. But Temsevar has its own struggles, which are being played out against the backdrop of its harsh society and unforgiving climate.
As the action on Temsevar moves to the end-game, those caught up in events find themselves polarised and choosing sides, unsure of where the dagger of betrayal may hide. But offworld influences are reaching into the planets affairs and Temsevar itself could fall under threat from the Coalition.
Dues of Blood is the third volume in the Transgressor Trilogy, which began with The Fated Sky and Times of Change. It follows events up to the final crisis on Temsevar, as the Warlord Qabal Vyazin seeks to secure his grip over the last pockets of resistance and the true secret of Harkera is finally uncovered.