The story
Proposed blurb, not approved yetIn Shahrein, the dead don’t always stay gone. Sometimes they come back to work the next morning.
Jamal al-Kindi has never forgotten anything he has read. So when a pamphlet signed Hich, Nothing, is nailed to every door in the city, he is the only one who recognises the mark beside the name. He has seen it once before, in a forbidden ledger beneath the Grand Library.
By noon, the Sultan’s shadows have taken a scribe from his desk. By nightfall, Jamal has found a door behind a shelf, and beneath it a vault of masks, each with a name, a date and a life.
Put one on, and you live a dead man’s last hours. Take it off, and his memories stay. So does his handwriting.
Now a patient investigator is testing every bottle of ink in the city, Jamal’s best friend is lying for him, and somewhere in the palace, someone is wearing a face that isn’t theirs.