Episode 1 · Chapter One: The Gulls Knew First

About

The old king of the Tides is dead — poisoned at his own victory feast — and the Tidemark, the seal that commands the empire's fleets, is missing. Five houses raise five claimants, and the empire slides toward war. The story follows four people on colliding sides of it: Maera Voss, a mercenary captain whose company is owed a fortune by a dead man; Lord Commander Aldric Vane, the king's oldest friend, who knows exactly how the poison reached the table; Queen-Dowager Lysandra, the foreign widow the whole court has already convicted; and Joren of the Shallows, a fisherman's bastard who pulls a drowned courier from the tide and finds a royal ring sewn into his collar. None of them is a hero. All of them are certain they are right. And while the great houses fight over a throne of salt, the sea itself keeps rising — and it does not care who wins.