The Old Drum

Kesani has never spoken a word in her life. She keeps the river god's liturgy with a hand-drum instead of a voice, ferrying passengers across the Sahaya beside her blind aunt. Then an emperor's dam chokes the river upstream, and the dying god threads its last heartbeat into Kesani's chest. Two hundred miles of cracked riverbed lie between her and the Ironclasp Dam, guarded by soldiers, a deserter's ghosts, and a song she cannot sing.