Sunhaven

The southern kingdom is a working harbour with a crown on it, and it was bought, not conquered: when the onslaught drove the old realm's fleets south, the fishing towns of the Sereth strait fed and berthed them through the worst years, and at the treaty the sailors' debt was paid with a throne. Sunhaven has never pretended to be anything grander than what it is, the place where the world's south does its business, and its court runs like a harbourmaster's office, which is what it was.

Under the working cheer sits the city's one old secret: the TIDE-DEBT, the founding ledger's first line, an obligation to the sea itself that the first harbourmasters signed in a form nobody living has read. The drowned hosts rising politely along the ferry lines have begun balancing that ledger, entry by entry, and Sunhaven's factors have quietly reopened the question of what, exactly, the founders promised, and to whom, and whether it is transferable. The kingdom's famous toast, TO THE SEA, WHO KEEPS FAIR ACCOUNTS, has started to sound less like gratitude and more like hope.