The Rebel Prince (52 page)
Tá go maith?
– All right?
Tá na Haun ag imeacht, a Aoire
– The Haun are leaving, Aoire
Tá sí marbh!
– She is dead!
Tar anseo!
– Come here!
Tarraing siar! / Tarraingígí siar!
– Pull back! [singular / plural]
Tóg go bog é
– Take it easy
Tóin caca
– Shit arse
W
ITH HUGE
thanks to Svetlana Pironko of Author Rights Agency for her protection and guidance. A wonderful agent and friend. Also to my first publishers, the O’Brien Press, who took a chance on me and have supported me all through this adventure. In particular, thanks to Michael O’Brien for his fearlessness. Many thanks and much love to Sorcha De Francesco (Ní Chuimín) and Phil Ó Cuimín, who gifted me their beautiful conversational Irish. Thanks to Pat Mullan, whose kindness and generosity of spirit opened a door I had begun to think was locked for good. As always, thank you Catherine and Roddy. Finally and most especially, thanks to Elise Jones, my Allen & Unwin editor; seriously woman, you are a Godsend and a bloody hilarious one at that. I would have been lost without you.
BOOK I IN THE MOOREHAWKE TRILOGY
M
EET FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD
Wynter Moorehawke – Protector Lady, qualified girl apprentice in a man’s trade, former King’s Cat Keeper, and feisty heroine of the Moorehawke Trilogy.
Wynter returns from a five-year exile in the bleak Northlands to find her beloved homeland in turmoil. King Jonathan’s civilised, multicultural realm is no more; the gibbets and cages have returned. Days of laughter, friendly ghosts and gossipy cats remain only in Wynter’s memory – the present confronts her with power play, dark torture chambers, violent ghosts, and cats (those still alive) too scared to talk to humans. The Inquisition is a real and present danger.
Crown Prince Alberon is missing. There are murmurings of a ‘Bloody Machine’ of untold destructive power. And as Wynter and her friends, Prince Razi and the mysterious Christopher Garron, seek to restore stability to the fragile kingdom, risking death at every turn, Wynter is forced to make a terrible choice.
BOOK II IN THE MOOREHAWKE TRILOGY
W
YNTER TRAVELS
alone and unprotected in the bandit-infested mountains, searching for Alberon. But how many of the King’s enemies are lurking in these crowded shadows? It seems that every tyrant or bully who has ever threatened the kingdom is sending delegates to meet with the rebel prince, and Wynter is increasingly nervous of Alberon’s intentions.
Razi and Christopher make a welcome reappearance, but where old friends go, old enemies soon follow, and Wynter finds herself confronted with the infamous Loups-Garous. It is to Christopher and his adopted people, the nomadic Merron, that Wynter and Razi must now turn for sanctuary. But the Merron have sided with Shirken, the woman who has made it her life’s work to wipe their race from the face of the earth. What is behind the conspiracy – and is Alberon at the centre of all this?
B
ORN AND
raised in Dublin, Ireland, Celine Kiernan has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. Trained at the Sullivan Bluth Studios, her career as a classical feature character animator spanned over seventeen years. She spent most of her time working between Germany, Ireland and the USA.
Celine wrote her first novel at the age of eleven (it was excruciatingly bad), and hasn’t stopped writing or drawing since. She has a peculiar weakness for graphic novels as, like animation, they combine the two things she loves to do the most: drawing and storytelling.
For more information about Celine and
The Moorehawke
Trilogy
, see
www.celinekiernan.com
.