Traitor

by E.A. Stewart

A mage-knight, a lost boy – and treachery

Orlando of Troyes, fight-master of knights’ sons in Carcassonne, awaits a promised reward from Simon de Montfort for his loyalty in the crusade against Cathar heretics. Impoverished and stranded in Carcassonne, Orlando believes in a knight’s duty, loyalty, and honor. Yet instead of a reward, Simon sends Orlando to plague local villagers with unfair taxes and riotous attacks, a quest that serves only Simon’s over-sized ambitions.

Soon Orlando is fighting a masked magical knight while finding new betrayals down every alley. Then strangers arrive in Carcassonne who beguile him with tales of his ancestors’ heroics—and ask him to undertake a greater test of loyalty and honor than he could ever imagine. There’s a lost boy, they say, and Orlando must rescue him or they all risk dishonor and death.

Traitor, a standalone story, joins the series of interrelated 13th century adventure tales, Legends of Valeros.

362 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 8, 2017

About the author

E.A. (Annie) Stewart is an American writer whose Accidental Heretics series explores intrigues in France and Spain in the Thirteenth Century. After a brief academic career studying myth and literature, she took up siege engineering—as a technical writer and project manager in the heart of the computer industry. Her technical work focused on strategic advances for cutting-edge hardware technologies for PCs and servers. During a lull between critical deadlines, she began this adventure series, and now focuses full time on fiction and cutting-edge publishing technologies.

Annie Stewart lives and writes in Seattle (no cats! no dogs!). She explores issues for Thirteenth Century Languedoc, heresy, and writing historical fiction in blog posts at www.accidentalheretics.com

Reviews

[Ajax · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to read this pre-release from my publisher. It's so good, y'all. Action, adventure, intrigue and just enough magic to keep things interesting. This author's whole universe is my favorite, but this series has been delightful, quick adventures. I love a sprawling epic like the author's Heretics books, but these have the same emotional punch in a diverting read you can finish in day (if you're willing to sacrifice sleep).

This story digs deep into what loyalty and honor really mean. Love seeing the characters from past books, but Orlando, the knight in this story is so original and wonderful I'm glad he's at the forefront. I don't want to spoil anything, but the challenges he faces as he tries to find his place in the world are at once personal and relatable, while still being the kind of heroic knight's tale that's made this author's books so good.