In This Excerpt From The Raven Scholar, A Difficult Choice Will Have Far Reaching Consquences
Fans of epic fantasy should circle the date of April 15 on their calendars right now. No, not because it’s Tax Day here in America, but because it’s when Antonia Hodgson’s doorstopper of a fantasy debut, The Raven Scholar, hits shelves, and its story of murder, political intrigue, and magical animal gods is genuinely unlike anything else you’ll read this year. (Spoiler alert: It’s great.)
One part murder mystery, one part tournament competition, and one part traditional epic fantasy, The Raven Scholar has it all: A massive cast of morally complex characters, lavishly detailed worldbuilding, a delightfully snarky primary narrator, and a story that’s chock-full of surprising plot twists. A book that delights in doing the unexpected, The Raven Scholar is a thoroughly original spin on a story you’ll assume you’ve read before. (And you’ll be very happy to be wrong about your initial assumptions, is what I’m saying.)
Here’s how the publisher describes the story.
Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, the reign of Bersun the Brusque has come to an end. In the dizzying heat of midsummer, seven exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists compete to replace him.
When one of them is murdered, it falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer and fight for the throne. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.
If she succeeds, we will win an empire. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.
We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
The Raven Scholar won’t hit shelves until April 15, but we’re thrilled to bring you an exclusive look at the story right now. A bit of context: You can already read the book’s first three chapters at Orbit’s website, which establish an intricate web of history and tragedy that will reverberate throughout the rest of the novel. We’re here to bring you the fourth, in which story’s prickly and unconventional heroine, High Scholar Neema Kraa, makes her first appearance—and a choice that will come to define the rest of her life.
Four
Let us fly now from the eighth palace, away from the Valits and their unfolding tragedy. Skim low over the Grand Canal, past drifting pleasure boats, courtiers sharing stories under cream silk parasols, popping bottles of sparkling wine—it’s early but why not, it’s a beautiful day.
Then up, up again into the bright blue sky, soaring high over the Ox farm, where Fenn Fedala is pacing up and down the orchards. Later, when he hears the news of Yana’s exile, he will head to the temple with his hands curled into fists. He will ask the Eight—How could you let this happen, you fuckers?—and receive no answer.
And look, here it is, the Imperial Temple of the Eight. No time to linger among its white towers and parapets, no time to admire its stained-glass windows, its intricately carved entrance. Briefly, our shadow ripples over the golden dome, and we are gone.
Far behind us, buried deep in the evergreens, the Bear palace’s great bell is chiming the hour.
Six… seven…
Don’t worry. We’ll make it.
Eight… nine…
And we’ve reached the Raven palace. More of a village than a palace, with its interlocking houses of blackened larchwood and purple tiling. Dark buildings brightened with flower gardens and fountains, painted pavilions, cushioned benches and walkways woven with garlands.
Ten…
The Raven palace has many rooms, singular and communal. So many rooms, so many people with inky hands and hunched shoulders. Scholars and lawyers, clerks and accountants, speculators with their hoods over their heads, scribbling dense equations as the days pass by unnoticed. We could fly through any window and startle someone at their desk, knocking tea across their papers, flapping books off the shelves. Our more playful fragments would enjoy that tremendously, but even we have rules we must follow. Today we are here to see, not to be seen. And we have an appointment to meet.
Eleven…
A tiny balcony, attached to a modest room on the north side of the palace, overlooking a service hut, and some bins. Through the balcony doors, a glimpse of a young black woman seated at her desk, head down, writing. A scholar.
Twelve.
As the last chime fades we drop neatly on to the balcony’s rusting hand rail, folding our wings with a soft shuffle. Noon, on the ninth day of the eighth month, 1531. Neema Kraa’s lodgings. We are here, exactly where we should be, at exactly the right moment, because we are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
Neema Kraa, Junior Archivist (Third Class) sat at her desk, proofreading her latest monograph.
Kraa, Neema, An Annotated Bibliography of Twelve Ancient Ketuan Folk Tales (1531, Imperial Palace Archives).
A smell of rotting food wafted gently up from the bins and through the balcony doors. When she was first allocated this room, Neema would try to cover the smell with incense and fresh flowers. These days, she barely noticed it.
There was a tap at the door. Neema looked up in surprise. No one ever visited her here except Cain, and it couldn’t be him, for obvious reasons.
“Who is it?” she called, enjoying the novelty of asking.
The door opened to reveal High Commander Hol Vabras. The second most powerful man in Orrun.
“Neema Kraa.”
“Yes.”
“I’m told you have the best hand on the island.”
Neema lay an arm along the back of her chair. “That’s right.”
Vabras stepped back outside, giving the two guards he’d brought with him the space to squeeze through. They set to work, clearing Neema’s desk before laying out fresh paper and brushes, an inkstone, a scroll sealed with gold wax, and a copy of The Laws of Orrun Volume XII, marked with a blue ribbon. In ten seconds they were done, and Vabras was back.
Neema stared at the drab, grey-green inkstone. “Is that—”
“The Stone of Peace,” Vabras confirmed.
The inkstone Empress Yasthala had used to write the Five Rules, carved by her own hand from a rare piece of Dolrun Riverstone. Neema ransacked her brain, trying to think of a more priceless artefact, and came up blank.
Vabras indicated the scroll. “Two copies, by sundown.”
Neema brushed her fingers over the gold wax, marked with five slashes. The emperor’s seal, pressed into the wax by his own hand. Imagine that. “I’d rather use my own brushes. New ones take a while to—”
“Fine.” Vabras handed her a thumb-sized stick of ink, embossed with a feather design.
She turned the stick in her fingers, admiring its exceptional quality and depth of colour, the intense black base softened with hints of indigo. Raven’s Wing ink. Produced on the Dragon island of Helia and reserved for the highest imperial proclamations. Coronations, abdications. Executions.
Vabras had picked up the first page of Neema’s proofs. He read a few lines. “Ketuan folk tales.”
Neema waited for the usual comments. You’re a historian, how is this history? They’re just stories for children. Ephemera. What are you doing, wasting your time on such worthless crap? (That final comment scrawled across the proofs themselves, by Neema’s head of department. A dispiriting moment.)
“This is thorough,” Vabras said.
Neema, who had not met the High Commander before, assumed he was being catty. It was either that, or he was genuinely interested in her work. Which would be a first, to put it mildly. No one cared about Neema’s studies except Neema.
She had arrived at court straight from the Raven monastery, with perfect grades and no friends. Without connections, she’d struggled to secure a decent position. And everyone knew the longer you remained in the same junior role, the harder it became to escape it. “Here in two years, here in ten,” was the rule at the Raven palace. Neema had been in her post for three. “I’m stuck on the first rung of the ladder,” she’d complained recently, to her head of department.
He’d responded with a startled smile. “You think you’re on the ladder?”
If it was just about the work, she wouldn’t mind so much. She was yet to find a subject she did not find interesting. What bothered her—what infuriated her, in a quiet, seething way—was the reason why she was being held back. Neema was a Commoner, of Scartown. The first Commoner of Scartown in history to secure a place at the second palace. For the last three years, she’d been forced to smile, and bite her tongue, as people with far less talent and dedication leapfrogged right over her. Every one of them had been from a Venerant or High Middling family.
“I am going to stab someone in the eye, the next time it happens,” she’d told Cain. He’d agreed that was certainly an option and then suggested, as he always did, “Why don’t you leave, Neema?”
But she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to prove them all wrong. The fuckers.
Vabras was still reading. “Is this a complete list?” he asked.
It was only now that Neema realised—Eight, he’s serious. The High Commander of Orrun wants to know more about Ancient Ketuan Folk Tales and their Variants. “No, it’s not complete,” she replied. “That would be impossible.”
He looked up, sharply. “Why?”
A pragmatic shrug. “There must be dozens more variations buried away in the western archives. Not to mention private collections. And those are just the written versions. Ketu has a long oral tradition—”
Vabras was reading again. “But they could be collected.”
“In theory. You’d need a team of researchers. Fox travellers to collect the unwritten versions from border villages…” She lifted her hands at the prohibitive time and expense. Why were they even discussing this?
Vabras mused for a moment, casting around Neema’s room. Sifting for evidence. His gaze snagged on the painting of her parents’ grocery shop in Scartown, with its cheerful frontage.
Her framed graduation certificate from Anat-ruar—First in Year. A cartoon triptych of the Fox and the Raven, first dancing, then fighting, then dancing again. Signed by the artist: Look, it’s us! Happy Birthday, N. Love, Cain x
“The emperor has developed a passion for his homeland’s ancient history and culture,” Vabras said, shifting his attention back to Neema. “We ordered new studies from the Raven palace. His majesty was disappointed with the results.”
Neema was not surprised to hear it. She knew the scholars involved. Chosen for seniority, not expertise. Neema was the only Ketuan expert on the island, and not one of them had deigned to come to her for advice.
“You may be useful,” Vabras said, as if she were a garden implement. One of those odd-shaped tools designed for a single, highly specific purpose. “We shall discuss this further, once you have finished the Order of Exile.”
“Exile?” she echoed, weakly.
“Two copies. Bring them directly to my office. We shall visit the emperor together. His majesty has had a trying day. It will please him to meet someone who shares his interests.” Vabras paused, musing again. “This cannot be coincidence, to have found you today. This is the will of the Hound.”
Neema, who did not believe in the Eight, gave a frozen smile. But Vabras was already on his way out, closing the door behind him with a smart click.
There was a short silence.
“Is it strange,” Cain said, from the bed, “that he didn’t acknowledge me? At all? I think it’s strange.”
Neema stroked her arm absently, staring at the scroll. Exile. The cruellest of all punishments—not just for the victim, but for those who loved them.
“I’m right here,” Cain protested, pointing at himself. He was lying on his back, shirtless, balancing a bowl of chicken wings on his chest. “You can’t miss me. Unless I’ve turned invisible. Have I turned invisible?”
She forced her attention to the bed. “You know what they say about Hol Vabras.”
“I know what everyone says about everything. That’s my job.”
A pause. “What do they say about Hol Vabras?”
Neema leaned back in her chair. “Schedules. Efficiency. He came here for me. Talking to you would have been a waste of his time.”
“That’s hurtful. I was going to share my chicken wings with you—”
“No you weren’t.”
“—but now I won’t.” Cain sat up, only to discover the bowl was empty. “What? Where did you go?” he demanded of the missing wings. “How am I still hungry? Neema, I think my stomach has a false bottom. Like a magic trick. I eat the chicken wings and then someone else…” He mimed someone sliding open the false bottom and catching the food as it fell through. “Speaking of which, I built a secret compartment in the skirting yesterday, I know you said not to bother, but maybe one day your life will be exciting enough to need one, and then you will thank me…”
He carried on, circling around the only topic that mattered, the one resting on Neema’s desk. They were heading for an argument about it, no question. But Cain Ballari was a Fox, of Anat-russir. Foxes didn’t walk straight up to a problem and shake it by the hand. They circled, they sidled. And then, when the problem was looking the other way, they bit it on the ankle.
So Cain talked and Neema watched him, the way he moved, his lean, supple body. Thick auburn hair, sharp cheekbones. Those hips. He chattered on in that peculiar way of his—eloquence and street swagger, and a thick, thick accent from the gutters of Scartown that he wilfully refused to shake.
We’re going to break up over this, she thought. Before the temple bell chimes one it will be over. Again. They were always falling out, and making up—a ceaseless cycle.
Neema had first met Cain when she was nine and he was eight and three quarters. She was tucked away in the family storeroom, reading a book, and he was breaking in. Tunnelling through, to be precise. He’d emerged through a hole in the floor, coughing up dirt, shaking with exhaustion. Hollow eyes, hollow cheeks. Painfully thin.
Neema could have screamed, and then a series of very bad things would have happened to Cain. Instead, she’d let him eat whatever he wanted, which he did with his back turned, so she couldn’t see him crying with relief. And then they’d talked on the storeroom floor, legs crossed, knees almost touching. Hours and hours, caught in the spell of each other. He told her he’d been kicked out of his Scrapper gang, wouldn’t say why. Now he had no protection, no shelter, no patch. If a rival gang found him in their territory, they’d slit his throat. So he had to keep moving, and hiding. He’d been living that way for months. Hadn’t eaten properly in weeks.
Neema wasn’t supposed to talk to Scrappers, it was taboo. But then, no one talked to Neema, either, outside of her family. Friendship was an art that eluded her. “I know someone who can help you,” she’d said, and taken him to her teacher Madam Fessi, who let him stay the night, and then another, and eventually adopted him. Madam Fessi didn’t give a shit about taboos either, which was why she was running a school in Scartown, when she could have been making a fortune preparing Venerant children for their monastery exams.
For the next seven years, Neema and Cain were inseparable, until Neema won a scholarship to the Raven monastery, and Cain disappeared into Anat-russir, the Fox monastery.
Literally. There were no entrance exams for Anat-russir. If you could sneak in without being spotted, you were welcome. Over the centuries myths had grown up around the more elaborate “admissions.” People said, for example, that the Fox adventurer Maliwren Tide (723–97) used a trebuchet to fling herself over the walls. They didn’t believe it, but they said it, with considerable relish. “Sailed right over the wall. Arms and legs wheeling. Landed in a laundry cart.”
They still wrote—Neema’s letters neat and detailed, Cain’s spidery—but the world was pulling them apart. Neema secured a position at court, Cain travelled the empire, sniffing out secrets and scandals and anything else that caught his interest, feeding it back to his superiors. For a long time, they did not see each other. Neema buried herself in her work, her most constant sanctuary.
Then one night, sitting at her desk just as she was now, she had caught a scent of him—sweet, dusty cinnamon and a hint of sweat. Looked up, and there he was, pulling a stupid face through the window of her balcony door. Twenty-four years old and so fucking handsome, even with his tongue sticking out.
He’d poked about her room, flipping through her books and eating her food—some things never changed. Except he’d seemed nervous, which wasn’t like him at all.
“I never stopped thinking of you,” he admitted out of nowhere. He’d turned his back to her, just as he had the first day they met. “This is new,” he said, tapping the picture of her family’s shop. “Did you paint this? No, wait, there’s a signature.”
Neema’s heart was beating so hard, she could hardly breathe.
“Oh, your cousin painted it for you, that’s sweet. Do you ever think about me?” His back still turned. “Don’t worry if you don’t. I’m sure you don’t. Forget I asked. How old is Trestan now, seventeen?” He scratched the back of his head, eyes still on the painting.
“Eighteen.” She swallowed, found her courage. “I think about you all the time.”
He’d turned then, and she had laughed. He looked so happy, and surprised. He genuinely had no idea how much she loved him, the idiot.
“You answered the empirical question first,” he said. “That is so commendably you.”
“They’re both empirical questions,” she told him, “it’s just one is more objectively measurable than the other. Also, for the record, I should tell you that my second answer was hyperbolic. I don’t think about you all the time. That would be impractical. But I do think about you a lot. Possibly more than is healthy.”
He was moving towards her by this point, and she was moving towards him, and the next thing they were kissing, with a passion that surprised them both, and the next thing after that they were on her very narrow bed, and clothes were coming off everywhere.
Almost two years ago now. Cain travelled. Neema worked. They spent more time apart than together. They fought, they made up. They loved each other. Neema had missed Cain so much on his last long trip away, she had painted her door a bright emerald green, the same colour as his eyes, so she could remember him every time she came home. The way he looked at her.
She picked up her penknife and broke the emperor’s seal. Opening out the scroll, she groaned as she read the name. Yanara Valit.
“Well that settles it,” Cain said, as if they were already halfway through the argument. “She’s not a traitor.”
“The emperor says she is.” Neema tossed the scroll back on to her desk.
Cain picked it up and read it. “She kept her father’s colours. That’s it?” He turned the scroll over, examined the empty back. Shook it vigorously, as if something else might drop out.
“She knew about the rebellion—”
“She was eight.” Cain peered at her, incredulous. “You’re not actually considering writing it for them. You can’t.”
Neema touched the inkstone, the Raven’s Wing ink. Straightened her brushes.
“Neema, you can’t. She’s a child.”
“She’s sixteen,” Neema muttered.
“That’s disgusting. Why are you being disgusting? You’re not a disgusting person. What’s wrong with you?”
Neema opened The Laws of Orrun Volume XII with the ribbon. Page ninety-seven: the formal words for an Imperial Order of Exile and its design. The precise measurements for the paper.
One copy of the Order should be lodged in the Imperial Archives. The other must be stitched directly into the Traitor’s skin, over the heart, and worn for the duration of the Procession. The Order must be left upon the abandoned corpse, once the Exile is complete.
The abandoned corpse. She rubbed her eyes.
“I met her last summer,” Cain said, throwing on his shirt.
“You were spying on the Valits?” He didn’t talk much about his work, but she knew what he did. What he was.
“I talked to her, N. She’s harmless. Her big dream is to open a sort of café/bookshop/theatre venue.”
Neema pulled a face. “I hate those places.”
“I love them. Why be one thing when you can be three?”
“Ugh.”
“Remember that place on Pumphouse Street? The Velvet Frog?”
“I remember,” Neema said, darkly. “You’d be drinking your coffee, minding your own business, and the waiters would start juggling at you. No warning, just whenever the mood took them. Spontaneous juggling.”
“I know, but if you could focus for a moment,” Cain said, and they both laughed, because that was usually Neema’s line, “my point is, Yanara Valit is not a threat to anyone.”
“She confessed.”
Cain rolled his eyes at her.
Neema fell silent. She could say no. She could. And that would be the end of her life at court.
“Let’s leave, today,” Cain said. “Give it all up, and start afresh.”
This was not a new idea. They’d often discussed it, usually late at night, half asleep. Travel the empire, find a place of their own. Or they could go home to Scartown. Raise a family. Reopen the school. Neema had never really believed any of it would happen. Cain was too restless to settle. And, be honest Neema: she liked it here. She liked her work. Even if no one else did.
She rubbed the silver pendant hanging from her neck, an anniversary gift from Cain. Fox on one side, Raven on the other. “If I don’t write it, someone else will.”
“So let them. Neema,” Cain shifted to the edge of the bed and reached out, covering her hand with his. “Let them.”
It felt good for a moment. The warmth of his hand over hers. Then it felt restrictive. She slid her hand free. “This is a big chance for me, Cain. A meeting with the emperor.”
“Well don’t trip on Yana’s corpse in the rush over,” Cain snapped. It was the wrong thing to say, he winced as soon as he said it.
Neema bridled. “You’re lecturing me? Seriously?”
“I’m not lecturing you. I’m trying to protect you.” Cain’s expression was more serious than she’d ever seen before. “There’s a line, Neema. A thick, black line. Once you cross it…” His jaw tightened. “You’re not the same person any more.”
“And how many times have you crossed that line, Cain?”
He drew back, searching her face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh come on, I’m not stupid. I know what you are.”
Cain went very still. “What am I?”
She looked at him.
Some Fox spies were just that—spies, and nothing more. But Neema had suspected for a long time that Cain was an imperial assassin. Things he’d said, or not said, about his missions. The places he’d been and the rumours that followed. Subtle hints, but Cain was Neema’s specialist subject. It had broken her heart when she’d first realised. But over time, she had come to accept it. Fox assassins acted within the law. Little darts of contained chaos, delivering peace and order to a vast empire. That’s what she told herself, and that’s what she’d come to believe. She had to, if she wanted to keep loving him. Which she did—she really did.
Cain was staring at her. “How long have you known? Weeks? Months?”
“About a year.”
Cain hissed through his teeth. “And you never thought to say anything? Never asked me a single question…”
Neema’s eyes widened, incredulous. “You’re not suggesting I’m the one at fault here?”
“No, what I’m saying is—”
“Because you’re the one who kills people for a living, Cain.”
There. She’d said it. It was out there in the air between them.
He looked away from her, out to the balcony. Looked without seeing. “Well,” he said, quietly. “I guess you have a choice to make.” He stood up, and slung his bag over his shoulder. “There’s a boat leaving in two hours. I’ll wait for you at the quay.”
Cain hesitated, stealing one last look. Then he slipped out through the balcony door, and was gone.
Neema sat for a while. All around her, the familiar sounds of the palace. Footsteps in the room above. A conversation down the hall. On the service path, someone walked by, whistling.
Cain’s scent lingered, then faded.
Yanara Valit was going to die a cruel, miserable death. Dragged across the empire, forced to stand in every town square along the route. Confess her crimes in front of jeering crowds. And then, as she left, they would turn their backs, shunning her. You exist no longer in this place. You are nothing. You are no one. Day after day, month after month, town after town, until she reached her final destination. Dolrun Forest. There she would die in its poisoned embrace, untended, alone.
And after that, no one would ever speak of her again—on pain of death. She must be forgotten, completely. Her name cut from the records. Her family forced to smother their grief. No memorial stone, no prayers, no candles. Nothing. Exile wasn’t just death. It was erasure. And if you believed in such things, even her spirit would be destroyed. No chance to return to the Eternal Path, and begin a new journey. What had been Yana would be a void, an absence. For ever.
But she had confessed. And the emperor had passed sentence.
The emperor was a good man. His reforms had given Commoners like Neema the chance to attend the great monasteries, the anats, and take positions at court. She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. If Andren Valit’s rebellion had succeeded, the only Commoners working on the island would be the servants.
The bell in the Bear tower chimed one.
Yanara Valit would suffer and die whether Neema wrote the Order or not.
And she had been commanded, by her emperor.
And Cain had done far worse.
She poured a splash of water into the inkstone and began to grind the block of Raven’s Wing ink against the stone’s rough surface. It took her half an hour to get the colour and consistency she wanted.
She breathed. Relaxed her posture. And set to work.
Her brushwork was a hand trailing in water, a breeze ruffling the grass. And it was beautiful. Achingly beautiful.
They will stitch this to her skin.
She pushed the thought away. Dipped her brush and began the second copy.
As she wrote, a horn blared from the western quay. The afternoon boat was leaving for the mainland. Neema, absorbed in her work, didn’t hear it.
Lowering her brush to the paper one last time, she added the name, and the crime.
Yana’s fate seeped into the paper, indigo-black.
As Neema finished the final stroke, she caught a ruffling of feathers, the light ting of claw on metal. She leaned sideways in her chair, craning to see through the balcony door. Was that a blur of black? The snap of opening wings? Or was it nothing?
It was nothing. Just her mind playing tricks, as she moved from her trance world of ink and brush and paper, back into the cramped reality of her narrow room.
She turned her attention back to the Order of Exile, reading it through one more time for errors. “… on behalf of His Majesty, Bersun the Second… according to the laws of Orrun… Yanara Valit… traitor to the empire…”
Perfect.
Neema blew on the ink, a scholar’s kiss, and it was done.
The Raven Scholar will be released on April 15, but you can pre-order it right now.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB