Life
Hadrian Marlowe has passed into legend, but do legends ever really die? On the island of Thessa, a young keeper called Titus works to keep pilgrims from spoiling the graves of those buried there, not least the bones of Lord Marlowe’s own father. But when a pair of offworld strangers come to visit, the peace of the island is threatened—as is Lord Marlowe’s legacy.
Gutter Ballet
Simon Fabray was a knight of the Sollan Empire. Now he’s just a man trying to get by, and exiled among the demoniac Extrasolarians. But when a young woman—a homunculus and a dancer—comes to him asking for his help solving the murder of her clone sister, Simon has to decide if the machine that replaced his failing heart is as symbolic as it seems.
The Dragonslayers
Quentin Sharp is a centurion in the Imperial Legions, a soldier, and a simple man. His mission is equally simple: rescue the young Countess Irina Volsenna from the Cielcin and the ruins of her burnng world. Deep behind enemy lines, without backup, Sharp and his men must defeat one of the iron giants of the enemy: a colossal war machine deadly as any battleship.
Good Intentions
Before she met Hadrian, Valka Onderra Vhad Edda traveled the galaxy, digging through alien ruins on more than a dozen worlds in her efforts to better understand the Quiet, an ancient civilization of advanced, extinct alien xenobites apparently lost to time. Her journeys have brought her to the planet Sadal Suud, where the great clay Giants suffer beneath the whips of mankind. Unable to bear such injustice, Valka must choose not only to act, but to suffer the consequences of action, whatever they may be.
Kill the King
The Extrasolarian warlord Calen Harendotes has been amassing an army on the borders of the Sollan Empire for centuries, gathering refugees displaced by the Cielcin to himself. The hermit Monarch’s motives are wholly unknown, but his presence can no longer be tolerated. To this end, the Emperor has dispatched one lonely assassin to deal with the petty upstart once and for all. Unfortunately for him, not all is as it seems on distant Latarra, and there’s far more to Calen Harendotes than meets the eye . . . .
The Demons of Arae
This story appears to be a fragment from a lost volume of Hadrian Marlowe’s autobiography, set between Howling Dark and Demon in White. Ordered to track down a lost legion, Hadrian’s mission has brought him to the airless world of Arae, where a mountain fortress hints at a new terror in the war against the Cielcin, and for the first time pits the Halfmortal against the black mages of MINOS.