Written in Red

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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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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.

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.