Realms
The Orinthian Empire
A crown spanning several worlds, a court accustomed to being heard, and provinces with reasons of their own to remain within its reach.
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People
Aveline before the voyage
Her childhood, education, relationships and ambitions: a life already under way before the novel’s opening.
Atlas
The Serev system
The inner setting: Orinthian Caelune, Sarthene Damar, and the independent moon kingdom of Nereth.
Worlds
Caelune
A temperate world of estuaries, upland settlements and old industrial districts, where royal history is only one layer of daily life.
Cities
Velisar
Palace gardens, working quays and tram streets: the city of Aveline’s childhood and Edris Ro’s household.
Realms
The Sarthene Empire
A neighbouring empire whose cities value examination, civic reputation and the maintenance of shared works.
Worlds
Damar
A world of inhabited basins, managed water and civic gardens whose beauty depends on unglamorous work.
Realms
The Kingdom of Nereth
A lunar monarchy whose sovereignty is sustained by skilled yards, careful maintenance and agreements with larger neighbours.
Worlds
Tarsenne
The princess’s scheduled destination: a frontier rim world with local histories, disputed claims and people who have not been waiting to be discovered.
Cities
Reedbank
A settlement of raised houses, gardens, repair work and practical care, with its own stake in the coastal charter.
Culture
A civilisation at household scale
An almanac of livelihoods needs meals, affection, ambitions and changing circumstances as well as constitutions.
Culture
Knowledge and power
Technical learning, Psionic Aether and spellcraft belong to societies with practitioners, disagreements and material needs.
Lives
Edris Ro: The Good Tablecloth
At forty-two, Edris Ro knows how to preserve an embroidered cuff and how to stretch a quiet evening. A change to his working hours gives him a chance to keep a promise at home.
Lives
Kesra Dey: A Seam of Her Own
Kesra wants to be trusted with work that will leave the yard. Learning to report a small error gives her a more useful confidence than pretending she never makes one.
Lives
Istra Harn: Room on the Bench
Istra can usually tell where a boat leaks before its owner has finished denying it. A troublesome repair prompts her to let a neighbour take a larger part in her work.
Lives
Sevren Hal: Lessons After Lunch
Sevren spent his working life preparing other people's children for doors already open to them. In retirement, he finds a smaller and more reciprocal use for what he knows.
Atlas
The Rim and its worlds
The outer galactic setting of the almanac: many star systems, several civilisations, and inhabited planets and moons known as rim worlds.
People
House Orinth
The imperial family around Aveline: relatives who share a name and a household history, without sharing a single understanding of duty.
Realms
An Orinthian chronology
A historical spine, from the estuary compact to the royal voyage, with the costs and disputed memories left visible.
Realms
Provinces of an uneven empire
The estuary, the Valed uplands and Pelaset show how different communities live within Orinthian government.
Realms
At the Orinthian court
A practical account of petitions, household influence and the difference between being received and obtaining a decision.
Cities
Asterfall
A regional centre in the Valed uplands, where municipal glasshouses, water councils and new arrivals share a constrained valley.
Culture
The things a household keeps
Domestic customs across three imperial regions, with enough room for disagreement, affection and a song someone wishes would end.
Lives
Lethra Cerin: Beyond the Garden Wall
Lethra wants to work with plants in conditions the palace gardens carefully prevent. A paid junior post in the highlands offers less comfort than the place Aveline could find for her, and a prospect she cannot leave alone.
Lives
Edris Ro: The Wrong Song
With Evin away for a restday, Edris goes out to hear a favourite singer. The singer is absent, her replacement is loud, and the evening refuses to become the quiet pleasure he had ordered for himself.
Worlds
Tarsenne: planetary almanac
A planet of cold crowns, reservoir cities, monsoon kingdoms and island parliaments. Its countries share a sky; they have never shared a single government.
Realms
The Sedge Coast charter communities
North Quay’s port and the six settlements contesting its customs claim share a trading coast without sharing a government.
Cities
North Quay: city and harbour
A working harbour pressed between deep water and a high bank, where the shortest journey through town often includes a climb.
Culture
Reading the location almanacs
How to follow the almanac through worlds, countries, districts and settlements, using its maps, reference tables and citizen lives.
Realms
The Crown of Halvyr
Halvyr occupies Tarsenne's northern uplands and western fjords. Its monarchy joins communities that expect the Crown to keep routes open, remember its promises and leave many decisions at home.
Cities
Rimefold
Halvyr's capital occupies terraces on both sides of a north–south river gorge. Its bridges bring households and institutions together while winter makes the height of an address a daily consideration.
Realms
The Republic of Selnic
In the rain shadow east of Rauth's western mountains, Selnic maintains a dryland civilisation of canals, freight towns, orchards and argument. Its citizens elect their government; inherited water privileges remain harder to dislodge.
Cities
Tessovar
Tessovar faces its reservoir across a working edge of canals, treatment facilities and public promenades. The dry city's shaded courts and freight districts give its national arguments ordinary addresses.
Realms
The Veydan Concord
A federation across the Merean Sea whose common institutions grew from the need to travel, and whose inhabitants have never agreed that sharing a ferry requires sharing every opinion.
Realms
The Kingdom of Orsala
A southern kingdom of monsoon plains, provincial estates and assertive towns, where inherited rights meet the practical question of who must move when the river rises.
Cities
Nacre Sound
On the western shore of an east-opening bay, the Concord’s capital rises from working quays towards a lived-in northwestern hill.
Cities
Miravel
Orsala’s capital stands west of the broad Ildren, with courts and markets on the terraces and floodable meadow across the water.
Realms
Tarsenne: industries, dependencies and imperial demand
Optical glass, bearings, marine cable, medical cultures and technical cloth connect distant workshops to local households and an empire’s purchasing offices.
Cities
Rauth Crossing: a valley town
A low town gathered beside a river crossing: older streets on one bank, timber and freight on the other, with homes and public services between the working yards.
Atlas
Stars, worlds and competing clocks
The physical registers, calendars and astronomical limits behind life in three systems of the rim.
Culture
Passage, freight and news
Spaceflight, ground routes, communications and the people excluded from their advertised reach.
Culture
Biomes, weather and bad air
Environmental conditions across the rim, from cold pressure settlements to corrosive rain belts and inhabited wetlands.
Culture
Teeth, wings and working animals
Predators, pests, domestic animals and the ecologies that make them more than encounters on a road.
Culture
Roots, spores and creeping growth
Plants, fungi and colony-forming growths in food, medicine, industry and the slow occupation of neglected places.
Culture
Care, injury and the repairable body
Clinics, disease, prostheses, inherited modifications and the limits of diagnosis on the rim.
Culture
Psionic Aether and the learned arts
Distinct disciplines, training, materials and institutions governing psychic and arcane practice.
Culture
War, garrisons and their invoices
Armed institutions, strategic industry, civilian exposure and the limits of force across the rim.
Culture
Law, debt and captivity
Status, courts, enforcement, coercive labour and the practical limits of a person’s rights.
Culture
The household ledger
Food, wages, shelter, domestic work and the small reserves that let people make choices.
Culture
Old works and unquiet ground
Ruins, salvage rights, underground infrastructure and phenomena that resist a convenient explanation.
Worlds
Pelaset
An ocean-dominated world of working coasts, glass-making districts and communities whose connections exceed the reach of any single charter.
Cities
Tavren Reach
Pelaset’s principal charter harbour joins furnace districts, coastal traders, imperial correspondence and households waiting for passage.
Cities
Serrat
Damar’s imperial seat spreads around reservoirs, allocation courts and instrument workshops, with public beauty resting on intensely disputed work.