Dues of Blood: Transgressor Trilogy Book Three (Fortune's Fools 3)

In the arena a fight can only ever end one way - with blood on the sand.

“You are rattling the wrong cage. I laid those ghosts in my first year of the arena – I was eighteen and I killed the three men I thought of as my best friends in as many moons. You are the one with a problem about it, not me.”

The Sabre knows how to face any opponent on the sand and has defeated all comers in the blood-games patronised by the wealthy elite of Temsevar. But when Warlord Qabal Vyazin decrees the arena is to become a means of political execution, even the Sabre will struggle to survive.

Temsevar is an insignificant Periphery world on the very fringes of galactic civilisation. Settled long before the rise of faster-than-light technologies and left isolated for hundreds of years, its population has degenerated into the barbarism of a medieval culture. This primitive world has nothing the wealthy planets of the Coalition could want, until it becomes unwitting host to one of their most dangerous enemies - Avilon Revid. But Temsevar has its own struggles, which are being played out against the backdrop of its harsh society and unforgiving climate.

Dues of Blood is the third volume in the Transgressor Trilogy, which began with The Fated Sky and Times of Change. The action on Temsevar moves to the end-game. Those caught up in events find themselves polarised and choosing sides, unsure of where the dagger of betrayal may hide. Whilst Warlord Qabal Vyazin seeks to secure his grip over the last pockets of resistance and the true secret of Harkera is finally uncovered, offworld influences are reaching into the planet's affairs. Temsevar itself could fall under threat from the Coalition.