Sollis returns! In fact, for me he returned in Many Are the Dead since I wrote The Lord Collector three years before. However, The Lord Collector is placed last in this collection because, along with The Lady of Crows, it falls within the timeline of Blood Song. For those who like to nit-pick such things, Sollis’s sojourn to the south-Asraelin coast takes place about four years subsequent to the narrative described in The Lady of Crows and shortly after Vaelin’s Test of the Sword in Blood Song, the event which marks the beginning of a prolonged estrangement. This novella also gave me the chance to explore a character who had a bit-part in Tower Lord and a slightly expanded role in Queen of Fire, namely Jehrid Al Bera, Tower Lord of the Southern Shore. Although never a major character, I had peppered his story with a few details that made him a fellow with an interesting backstory, one I didn’t know at the time but wanted to find out later. The main source of inspiration for the setting derives from 16-17th century Britain when excise duties were high and smuggling rife. This was particularly true on the southern coast where customs officials regularly fought deadly skirmishes with ruthless, heavily armed gangs who were not above luring ships onto the rocks to harvest their cargo. It’s a period most famously evoked in Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and the poem A Smuggler’s Song by Rudyard Kipling:
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!