Read an Excerpt From <i>The Tomb of Dragons</i> by Katherine Addison

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Katherine Addison’s The Tomb of Dragons, the final book in the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, set in the same world as The Goblin Emperor. The Tomb of Dragons publishes with Tor Books on March 11^th.

“Why do you feed the cats, othala?”

The question came from the landing above me; I stepped back onto the stairs to get a better look. The asker was a child, a part-goblin girl almost old enough to start pinning up her hair, with skin that was not quite black and eyes of a vivid grass green. There was nothing accusatory or contemptuous in her voice, just curiosity.

“I like cats,” I said.

“My mother says you must have an eitheiavan.”

“It is true that all cats are prelates of Noranamaro, and she is a goddess whose favor is shown in strokes of luck and success against long odds. But really, I just like cats.”

She considered that for a moment, her green eyes solemn. Then she said, “My father says that cats are pests and you are wasting good sardines.”

“They are my sardines to waste,” I said mildly, since the child was not to blame for her father’s opinions. “But if cats are pests, what are the mice and rats they catch?”

“Oh,” she said. Another moment’s consideration and she said, “My name is Thenavo Shelenin.”

“I am Thara Celehar, a Witness for the Dead.”

“We read about you in the newspapers. My mother says you are a good man.”

“I follow my calling,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I had one anymore.

“Is it true you’re taking a sabbatical?” She took care with the pronunciation of the unfamiliar word.

“Of a sort,” I said cautiously. “The Archprelate of Cetho has another task for me. But Othalo Tomasaran will be Amalo’s Witness for the Dead while I am busy.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know. I’m still waiting for the Archprelate’s instructions to arrive.”

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The Tomb of Dragons

Katherine Addison

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Katherine Addison

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“I hate waiting,” she said sympathetically.

“Yes,” I said, although I was careful not to say it with the weight of sleeplessness and bad dreams it actually carried. “But his letter will arrive soon, and in the meantime I feed the cats.” I guessed suddenly why she had spoken to me in the first place. “Would you like to come help?”

Her face lit with an amazing smile, and she said, “Oh yes, please, I would like that very much.” She came scrambling down the stairs and said, “Do you think they will come while I am here?”

“I think if you stay back, you will not bother them, although the shyest of the queens may flee from you all the same.”

“Have you named them?”

“No,” I said. “Names have too much power, and I do not pretend that they are my cats. Only my friends.” Which was not something I had meant to say and certainly not to a child.

But she only nodded and said, “Where do you keep the sardines?”

* * *

I woke in the middle of the night and did not know where I was.

I lay still, staring into the darkness, and sorted through the possibilities. It was not my bed in the dormitory at Tavolaree. It was not my bed in the terrible apartment I had shared with three other prelates in Lohaiso. It was not Aveio—please let it not be Aveio—and it was not the closet-sized room my cousin Csoru had grudgingly given me out of her household in the Untheileneise Court. It was a rented room in Amalo, and after a moment’s fierce thought, I was able to remember which rented room in Amalo and orient myself. There the outer door, there the table, there the coldwater sink, there the closet I had turned into a michenmeire with an old dressing table, a threadbare black coat, and the coil of Evru’s hair—the only thing I had of him and the only precious thing I owned. I knew this room. I rolled over and, for a wonder, fell easily back to sleep—

—Only to be woken, sometime before dawn, by a harsh pounding that reverberated through the room. I grabbed my dressing gown from the back of the chair, scrambling it on over my nightshirt, and answered the door.

There were two members of the Vigilant Brotherhood standing outside my door, one elven and one goblin. The goblin was carrying an owl-light. They both looked grim and tired.

“Can… can I help you?” I said. I could hear my neighbors’ doors being pounded on up and down the hall.

“I’m sorry,” the elven man said, clearly by rote, “but we need to search this room. Prince’s orders.”

“Search?” I said. “For what?”

“Dach’osmer Coralis Clunethar,” said the goblin.

I yielded the doorway and did not tell them I did not know who they were talking about. They seemed unlikely to explain, and all too likely to think I was joking.

They were, at least, efficient. The goblin raised the owl-light to illuminate the room; the elven man checked under the bed and in the closet and behind the door, those being the only places in the room a person could conceivably be hiding. I stood and watched, since I could do nothing else.

“Nothing,” said the searcher. They nodded to each other and left the room without taking any further notice of me. I heard their boots clomping up the stairs to the next floor, where they would doubtless do the same thing all over again.

I shut the door and sat down blankly on the bed. I had not lived in Amalo long, but predawn searches seemed out of the ordinary.

And who in the world was Coralis Clunethar?

* * *

I had already been pledged to eat breakfast with my friend Anora Chanavar, which spared me the bother of going to find him. Everyone I passed on the streets looked tired and nervous, as if they, too, had been woken by banging on their doors in the middle of the night. In the Chrysanthemum, the elven server who greeted me and led me to Anora’s usual table looked as if she’d been crying.

I had purchased the newspapers—the Arbiter, the Standard, and the Herald—and I started reading while I waited for Anora. They all had shouting headlines about Coralis Clunethar escaping from a manor called Grivensee and not much else. By the time Anora came, I had added to my list of questions and found very few answers.

“Well,” Anora said. He was half goblin, with elven blue eyes behind his thick-lensed spectacles and a goblin’s bulky frame. He hung his overcoat on the back of the chair and sat down. “Coralis Clunethar escaped.”

“Yes, the Vigilant Brotherhood was looking for him in my closet this morning. I have seen his name in the newspapers before, I think, but it is not clear to me who he is.”

“He’s next in line for the principate until Prince Orchenis has a son, and he resents having to wait.”

“Oh,” I said.

“He was very chummy with the people who were trying to overthrow Edrehasivar last year,” Anora said grimly.

“Which ones?”

“Hah. But I take your point. The Tethimada. And when that ugliness was all dragged out into daylight and Edrehasivar was still on the throne, Prince Orchenis suggested Coralis might be more comfortable at Grivensee.”

“And ensured his comfort by sending along a squad of guards.”

“Exactly. He rather fell out of the Amaleise newspapers at that point, since they barely acknowledge that anything outside Amalo exists—and perhaps Prince Orchenis suggested it would be better not to talk about him. That, I don’t know. But Coralis has always been very popular with the factions among the nobility who oppose spending money on social reforms.”

The server brought the tea I had ordered, a four-cup pot of isevren, and poured for both of us.

“Thank you, Brizheän,” Anora said, and she managed a fleeting smile before she was called back into the kitchen.

“The Vernezada,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Anora again.

“Then what does his escape mean?”

“Someone must be harboring him. Which means someone has a plan, and Prince Orchenis’s life is in danger and will be until Coralis is caught again.”

The server reappeared and said, “Good morning, othalei.”

Anora said to me, “Shall we split an egg tart?”

“Let’s,” I said.

“Today’s egg tart,” Anora said to the server, who nodded and darted away again.

We both drank tea in silence for several moments, before I could not help protesting, “They can’t think the emperor will let them assassinate the Prince of Thu-Athamar.”

“I think,” said Anora, “that they think that if Prince Orchenis is dead and they have a suitable and legally correct heir to produce, Edrehasivar will have no choice but to accept it.”

“I don’t think the emperor will agree.”

“Yes, but at that point Prince Orchenis will be dead and it will be too late.”

“But what’s to be done?” I said.

“Prince Orchenis’s men have to find Coralis before Coralis’s rabble find a way to kill Prince Orchenis.”

“You make it sound like a game of bokh.”

“Bokh is not a bad analogy,” said Anora, “if you grant that one side is invisible.”

The server came out to set the egg tart down on our table. “Let us not talk about Coralis Clunethar while we eat,” said Anora. “He is enough to give anyone indigestion.”

* * *

That morning, there were elven Principate Guards at the entrance to the Amal’theileian from the Amal’ostro. Their captain, a tall, scar-faced part-goblin man with a soldier’s topknot, gave me a polite nod as I went past. I nodded back, thinking that unless they actually established a choke point (which would almost certainly cause a riot among the people it made late for work), it was ridiculous to imagine that posting guards here would accomplish anything—except to ensure that a great many people saw that the Principate Guard were out in force. And maybe that would help, even if I couldn’t see exactly how. It was, mercifully, not my problem.

The thought that recurred to me through the day was the pale orange fire of the captain’s eyes.

* * *

The next morning, I had almost reached the great marble archway when there was a commotion ahead of me: a heavy thump, a sudden swirl in the crowd. Someone screamed.

There were innocent interpretations, but years of service in the prelacy of Ulis had ground certain assumptions into my reflexes. I pushed forward, ducking under the elbow of someone trying to back away, and, yes, I was right. The noise had been a massive goblin man hitting the floor.

“A prelate!” someone said, and a little space cleared for me to reach him.

I knelt beside him and hesitated. He was lying on his front, and I was not quite sure of my ability to roll him over on the first try. The last thing anybody wanted was for this to become the spectacle of me wrestling with the body of a man easily more than twice my size.

“What do you need?”

I looked up into the pale orange eyes of the Principate Guard captain. At closer range, he looked to be in his early forties, with the crow’s feet of a man who spent a great deal of time squinting against sunlight. The white scar across his white face looked like the reminder of an ugly wound. “Captain Hanu Olgarezh,” he said. His accent was Ezheise, rather than Amaleise, which I put aside to find interesting later.

“Thara Celehar, prelate of Ulis,” I said, “and I could use a little help.”

“Of course,” he said at once, even as his eyebrows went up at the harsh sound of my voice, and together we rolled the goblin man over.

He was already dead. At a guess, he had been dead before he reached the floor. I said the prayer of compassion for the dead. It hurt not to be able to do anything else.

The captain said, “What can we do?”

“Move him out of the way,” I said, “and send someone to the Sanctuary to get them to come pick him up. He’ll have to go in the morgue and we hope somebody misses him enough to come identify him. Unless someone here knows him?” I looked up at the faces surrounding us, white and black and every shade of gray.

“He got on at Creivorn’ostro, every day,” someone volunteered.

“Do you know his name?” the captain asked.

“No,” the part-goblin woman said sadly. “We just nodded to each other. So I guess that’s not much help.”

“It doesn’t narrow things down very much, no,” the captain said, but I noticed that he said it ruefully, joining her in regret, rather than being harsh. He straightened up and raised his voice in a sudden shout: “C’mere, boys!”

Four elven guardsmen pushed politely through the knot of people, and the captain said, “Put the body in the watchstation and then, Cazenar, you run down to the Sanctuary and let them know.”

“Yes, Captain,” they said, and he surprised me by turning to offer me a hand up. His hand was harsh with sword calluses and very strong. I didn’t need the help, but I appreciated it.

“Thank you, othala,” the captain said.

“I follow my calling.”

He smiled, lopsidedly because of the scar, and said, “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thanked.”

* * *

The Archprelate’s letter arrived by courier from the Untheileneise Court the next day, a crisp, cold, late-fall morning. The courier, a young goblin man with blazing orange eyes, found me in the Prince Zhaicava Building, in the Witness for the Dead’s office that had been mine and now belonged to Velhiro Tomasaran. Tomasaran, who had learned that she was a Witness for the Dead when she touched her husband’s corpse, was a tall, sleekly elegant elven woman, my own age or a little older. She had come to Amalo in pursuit of her calling and had been determinedly learning everything I could teach her.

I was not surprised at the courier’s arrival, for all the empire’s couriers shared information with each other, and the prince’s couriers here in Amalo would have been able to tell him exactly where I was.

He delivered the letter with a courteous bow and was gone again, leaving Tomasaran and me staring at the letter—which was written on good rag paper and sealed with gold wax—as if it was something poisonous.

The Archprelate had promised me a task in Amalo, and I had no reason to doubt him, but three nights of patchy sleep had left me with an overabundance of time to imagine terrible possibilities.

After a few moments, Tomasaran said, “Are you going to open it?”

She knew the answer—we both knew the answer: I had to open it because the Archprelate was my superior and I owed him obedience and also because the Amal’othala was not going to pay me at the start of the new month—having lost the necessary ability, I could no longer be Amalo’s Witness vel ama for the Dead. If the Amal’othala could have taken money back from me without looking inexcusably petty and avaricious, he would have.

I opened the letter.

I stopped reading to shut my eyes for a moment. Ulnemenee was the municipal cemetery of the Veren’malo, and while its current beneficed prelate, Ulsedra Shalicar, was an inoffensive, nervous man, the previous prelate, Anlevis Drinimar, had been, by all accounts, a nightmare, quarreling with the other prelates, quarreling with the Ulisothala, quarreling with the Master of the Catacombs, and entirely untouchable because he was the brother of one of Prince Orchena’s—and later Prince Orchenis’s—most trusted councilors.

“Celehar?” said Tomasaran. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “I just…” I read the rest of the letter more quickly—noting with relief that the Amalomeire was being ordered to pay me again—and handed it to Tomasaran, since there was nothing in it unsuitable for her to see.

She read it, frowning, and said, “Ulnemenee? Isn’t that…”

“The municipal cemetery of the Veren’malo, yes,” I said. Tomasaran was learning the city’s cemeteries, but she was finding it a slow task.

“That’s Othala Shalicar.”

“Yes.”

“That’s… awkward?”

“Yes.” Shalicar had been the prelate of Ulnemenee for nearly five years and done nothing. “Although the Archprelate is correct that something needs to be done. And the problem predates Othala Shalicar, if what Anora has told me is accurate. He’s just failed to solve it.”

“The Amal’othala isn’t going to like this.”

“Nor is Vernezar. But they already dislike me, so it isn’t as if this will change anything.”

“But it is not comfortable.”

“That isn’t really much of a change, either. I have found that being a Witness for the Dead is usually uncomfortable one way or another.”

“That explains a great deal about you,” said Tomasaran.

“What do you mean?”

“You never expect to be comfortable, so you don’t complain when you aren’t.”

“Is that a criticism?”

“No, not at all. But I worry that it means you will be taken advantage of.”

“By whom?”

“The Amal’othala, for one. Amalo is a wealthy prelacy. He could pay you better.”

“You’ve been talking to Anora,” I said. “I recognize this line of thought.”

“And?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “My stipend is sufficient.”

“And that’s why you’re wearing a coat of office with visible mends?”

“It’s still respectable,” I said and heard the defensive note in my own voice.

“Barely,” said Tomasaran. “Considering that you defeated a revethavar, I think the least the Amal’othala could do is buy you a new coat.”

“I hope you don’t intend to say that to him.” Tomasaran’s inevitable audience with the Amal’othala was scheduled for that afternoon.

“I’m not brave enough,” she said with a shrug of her own. “I never made any of the impassioned speeches to my husband that I imagined, either.”

* * *

This would have been a notable day without the letter from the Archprelate, for it was the execution of Osmin Esmeän Tativin for the murder of the Marquise Ulzhavel. Tomasaran came with me without my having to ask. The plaza before the Ulistheileian was packed with people, even more (I thought) than had been present for the execution of Broset Sheveldar. It was rare to have a woman executed—women either murdered less often than men, or were less frequently caught. Or both.

Tomasaran paid a half-zashan for a confession pamphlet, complete with a woodcut of the execution on the title page. “It will not say anything unexpected,” I told her.

“How can it, being printed before her death?”

“Just so long as you know what you’re buying.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m just curious about—”

She broke off at the sound of a shriek from within the Ulistheileian, and then another, and when the doors swung wide, it wasn’t two Brothers escorting a condemned person, it was six Brothers trying to contain a frenzy. I barely recognized Osmin Tativin in the haggard, raggedly crop-headed woman screaming like an animal and struggling at every step against the men who held her.

Everyone in the plaza fell silent, shocked at Esmeän Tativin’s complete abrogation of every shred of formality, decorum, or dignity.

It was pure misfortune that she caught sight of me, but she did, and she howled like the werewolves in a wonder-tale: “Thara Celehar! I curse thee, Thara Celehar! May thy days be restless and thy nights be sleepless! May thy calling fail thee! May thou murder thy love! May—” One of the Brothers gagged her with a handkerchief, and before she could get it out of her mouth, they had brought her to the dais, and she forgot about me entirely in her desperate, clawing attempts to avoid the reveth-atha waiting for her. The Brothers flung her down, one of them grabbing her ragged hair to hold her head while the executioner dropped the stock into place. She was still screaming, muffled behind the gag, when the reveth-atha dropped.

Mercifully, no one in the crowd had identified me as the person at whom she was shouting, and as the plaza slowly warmed back to life, Tomasaran and I were able to make our way unregarded back to the tram stop.

We returned to the Veren’malo and had ordered lunch at my usual zhoän before Tomasaran said, “You’re awfully calm for someone who’s been cursed.”

“She had none of the training she would have needed to make a curse that would actually work,” I said.

“There’s training?”

“Of course,” I said. “Every prelate has to be taught the curses of their god. Ulis has only death curses, and we only learn them when we’re old enough to understand why we must never use them.”

“But surely the curse of a condemned woman has some power, even if it’s… purely an amateur effort.”

I shrugged. “Maybe so. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Everything she cursed me with has already happened.”

Tomasaran stared at me, and I realized what I had said.

“The insomnia I knew about,” she said. “And your calling. But murder?”

“Not a literal murder,” I said. “But my lover committed murder, and I was the Witness for the victim.”

“What? Celehar—”

The server came with our food, chicken tobasthas with yogurt-garlic sauce, and when she left, Tomasaran said, “But how terrible. I am surprised you are still a Witness, having had that happen to you.”

“I tried not being a Witness,” I said. “I thought I had no choice. But being a Witness is better by far than not being a Witness. It gives me…” “Purpose” sounded embarrassingly pompous, even just in my head. “Something to do.”

“You follow your calling,” Tomasaran said thoughtfully.

We ate in silence for some time before she said, “Do you think the Archprelate’s task will be enough?”

I knew what she meant, although I wished she had not asked the question.

“It will have to be,” I said. “At least I have no fears that it will not keep me busy.”

Excerpted from The Tomb of Dragons, copyright © 2025 by Katherine Addison.