Kraken's Claw — Bruce Chandler Fergusson

Falca Breks, a rapparee from Draica, left much in the northern wilderness of the Rough Bounds-the riches and renown that could have been his had he stayed at the lake-isle fortress of Scaldasaig he captured, against all odds, from traitorous Wardens of Lucidor. He also left something else that no measure of fortune or fame could have replaced. By choice or not, he'd lost everything. So when Falca decided to head farther south, he cautioned himself to keep his expectations low: when you undertake a long, solitary journey through the past and two of the Six Kingdoms to find a woman you've never met before-who may not even still be alive-and tell her the bitter-sweet truth of what happened to a man she once loved and believed tragically lost, who had become like a father to you...well, you've got to be prepared for things not to go the way you hoped. But Falca could never have prepared for what he found in fabled Milatum, the city he'd often dreamed about escaping to as an orphaned youth in Draica, that tough Lucidorian seaport where the only legend available to him was as a crouch-alley reiver, street buster and dock-heave. Only days after his arrival Falca was desperate to move on yet again-and quickly-though still far from realizing that sometimes escaping is the only way to find what you never knew you were looking for all along.