Cover art shows four women gathered around a sword and looking outwards; a queen, a wise woman a sorceress and a beauty. A castle looms in the background.
Book extract reads: Five bold knights had claimed the benches closest to the steps leading up to the king’s table. Mouse-Nimue crept to the edge of the dais. She made herself as small as she possibly could as the hall became impossibly large and terrifying. Every instinct of the form she wore urged her to flee for some crevice and safety. Fighting those impulses, she crouched to listen to this conversation and to commit the men’s voices to memory. A mouse’s eyesight was lamentably poor, and her magic could only improve it a little. Everything beyond the closest table was a blur where any number of predators might lurk. Mouse-Nimue trembled.
”It has to be poison,” a lord with a shaved head insisted. His yellow surcote bore an armoured gauntlet embroidered in black. He had never come to Tintagel. Nimue would have remembered him.
Another unknown knight agreed. “It must be, to strike down Brastias, Jordan and Baudwin in the same night.” His blazon was a sheaf of wheat on a dark green weave.
“Poison is a woman’s weapon,” the first lord said emphatically.
