Acolyte Lirael Mort

The key at Lirael’s throat opens rooms she keeps exactly as her master left them. There is still work inside: unfinished records, a ritual half annotated, and the names of people who trusted her teacher with their dead.

A Confederacy frigate killed that master, but the frigate survived and remains in service. Lirael has spent years following reports of its movements, learning the names of its captains and discovering that crews change even when a ship does not. The distinction has made her pursuit more difficult than she expected.

Small Inheritance carries what she was left and what she has learned to make of it. Lirael wants justice for her master, yet she has begun asking who aboard the frigate bears responsibility for the old attack. The answer may not satisfy her grief, but she is determined to find it before grief makes the decision for her.