ALSO BY ANNE BISHOP
THE BLACK JEWELS SERIES
Daughter of the Blood
Heir to the Shadows
Queen of the Darkness
The Invisible Ring
Dreams Made Flesh
Tangled Webs
The Shadow Queen
Shalador’s Lady
Twilight’s Dawn
THE EPHEMERA SERIES
Sebastian
Belladonna
Bridge of Dreams
THE TIR ALAINN TRILOGY
The Pillars of the World
Shadows and Light
The House of Gaian
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Anne Bishop, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Bishop, Anne.
Written in red: a novel of the Others/Anne Bishop.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-61505-8
1. Fantasy fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.I7594W75 2013
813'.54—dc23 2012036432
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
For Blair
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Blair Boone for continuing to be my first reader and for all the information about animals and other things that I absorbed and transformed to suit the Others’ world, to Debra Dixon for being second reader, to Doranna Durgin for maintaining the Web site and for information about cow tongues, to Adrienne Roehrich for running the official fan page on Facebook, to Julie Green for telling me about Bully Sticks, to Jennifer Crow for her role as enabler when I talked about the Others Etiquette column, to Nadine Fallacaro for information about things medical, to Douglas Burke for answering questions about police (and for not asking what I would do with the information), and to Pat Feidner for her support and encouragement. Thanks to Kristen Britain, Starr Corcoran, Julie Czerneda, Claire Eamer, Lorne Kates, and Paula Lieberman for their input about stores for the Market Square and the surrounding neighborhood.
A special thanks to the following people who loaned their names to characters, knowing that the name would be the only connection between reality and fiction: Elizabeth Bennefeld, Blair Boone, Douglas Burke, Starr Corcoran, Jennifer Crow, Lorna MacDonald Czarnota, Julie Czerneda, Roger Czerneda, Merri Lee Debany, Michael Debany, Chris Fallacaro, Dan Fallacaro, Mike Fallacaro, Nadine Fallacaro, Mantovani “Monty” Gay, Julie Green, Lois Gresh, Ann Hergott, Danielle Hilborn, Heather Houghton, Lorne Kates, Allison King, and John Wulf.
GEOGRAPHY
NAMID—THE WORLD
CONTINENTS/LAND MASSES (so far)
Afrikah
Cel-Romano/Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations
Felidae
Fingerbone Islands
Storm Islands
Thaisia
Tokhar-Chin
Brittania/Wild Brittania
Great Lakes
—Superior, Tala, Honon, Etu, and Tahki
Other lakes—
Feather Lakes/Finger Lakes
River—
Talulah/Talulah Falls
Cities or villages—
Hubb NE (aka Hubbney), Jerzy, Lakeside, Podunk, Sparkletown, Talulah Falls, Toland
DAYS OF THE WEEK
Earthday
Moonsday
Sunsday
Windsday
Thaisday
Firesday
Watersday
This map was created by a geographically challenged author who put in only the bits she needed for the story.