City of Rain by William Lejeune

SPFBO10

An ancient mystery. A sorceress in hiding. And the wizards who hunt her. Daughter of a minor house and fledgling mage, Summer Fontenay yearns for a life beyond her cloistered world. But when her dying master entrusts her with a mysterious parchment, she must use all that she has learned to survive. For there are those in the imperial court who would kill to obtain it and the secrets that it holds. Suspected of murder and pursued by the emperor’s wizards, Summer must deliver the parchment to the distant city of Torrick. But the city is a place of both splendour and peril, its labyrinthine canals and alleyways a mirror of the ever-shifting factions and loyalties that Summer must navigate in order to reach her goal and restore her name. The first in a series of novels, CITY OF RAIN is epic fantasy at its finest, set in a world of honour and treachery, swords and sorcery, plots, counterplots and the deadliest of intrigues; where the Great Houses jostle for power beneath the Nephrite Throne and where the parchment’s secrets threaten to change the very course of the empire itself.