Today we’re thrilled to be able to exclusively share with you the cover for Black Tide Son by H. M. Long!

Black Tide Son is the sequel to H. M. Long’s nautical fantasy adventure Dark Water Daughter. Let’s find out more:

A swashbuckling adventure on the high-seas, full of magic, betrayal, redemption and fearsome women, for readers of Adrienne Young and Naomi Novik

A captured pirate reveals shocking news to Mary and Samuel that sends them in urgent pursuit of Samuel’s twin brother, Benedict, but their search uncovers much more than they bargained for. While evading a cunning new foe, Mary and Samuel must navigate the complexities of their own growing bond as they launch a rescue mission within one of the most secure fortresses on the Mereish Coast.

Black Tide Son is out July 2024 from Titan Books, so get your pre-orders in now! You can pre-order from Bookshop.org

And now for the cover itself….

Cover artist is Julia Lloyd – @julialloydJLD on Twitter. 

Read on for an excerpt from the first chapter!

Chapter One

The Demete

SAMUEL

The hush that followed the wind was portentous and thick with drifting smoke. The guns fell quiet in their cradles and the rush of water against the hull ebbed as Hart slowed, nosing alongside his drifting prize. 

No roar of victory came from the dozens of armed men and women crowding the waist of my ship. Neither I nor their former captain had been a miser for discipline, so their mutters were low, their muskets primed but at ease. Nor did I hear desperate or vengeful cries from the pirates on our prize’s deck. They were slung about with pistols, cutlasses and machetes, and marksmen hung in their rigging. Outnumbered, outgunned and exhausted from two days’ pursuit, the flag flying from their mainmast was white, crosshatched with red – not a flag of surrender, but of parley. 

Their captain stood on the quarterdeck with two helmsmen, who cradled muskets and loitered at their posts with resentment in their eyes.

“I am flattered you risk so much for my head, Aead,” she called in accented Aeadine. She came forward to lean on the rail, her voice easily carrying the dozen yards of docile waves between our ships. Her greying hair was braided, its length tied by a black silk ribbon, she wore a felted cocked hat with a blue overcoat faded to spruce. Her eyes were rimmed with black against the usual glare of sun off snow and ice and Winter Sea. 

The pirate continued with feigned apprehension: “Bringing the Fleetbreaker’s daughter into Mereish waters?” She gestured to the woman beside me, in her pale-blue calico skirts and oversized wool coat.

Mary Firth, daughter of the infamous Stormsinger known as the Fleetbreaker, had her arms crossed over her chest, but at this she raised one hand a margin and fluttered her fingers in a wave. She was tall and dark-haired, her head uncovered to the wind in a way that no mother on the Winter Sea would condone. 

“She knows who I am?” Mary squinted at our would-be captive, speaking quietly to me. “We may soon be notorious, Sam.”

“Is that not our intention?” I murmured back. “If you wanted obscurity, you should have gone south.”

Mary hid a smile and called over the water in her rounded, inland accent. “Mereish waters, you say? I see nothing but fog. Though, we’ve a letter of marque from the Usti Queen and the right to be in every corner of this Winter Sea.”

The pirate captain snorted. “The fog that you called yourself, witch. And letters can burn. Captain, let us resolve this before we have a patrol on our heads.”

“Very well, Ophalia Monna.” I drew up to the quarterdeck rail, hands in my pockets, and faced the other captain over the stretch of sea. Mary stayed where she was, out of pistol range, as she marked the station of every musket in the pirate’s rigging. “I am Captain Samuel Rosser of Hart, privateer under commission of the Usti Crown. Surrender yourself. You are taking on water, you have no Stormsinger, and falling into the hands of your countrymen will be your death. Come with me back to Hesten and you will face fair trial under the Usti for your crimes against their ships. Or we can wait here, becalmed, until a patrol sets to blowing us both out of the water.”

The pirate replied, “Would you perhaps be related to a Benedict Rosser?” 

There was no question in her voice. She knew who Mary was. She knew who I was. And evidently, she knew something of my brother too.

A whisper of premonition swept over me, blurring the edges of the world – the lines of the rails and rigging, the masts and lifeless sails, the waves and Monna’s fixed gaze. Then my fingers brushed the long, oval coin in my pocket, and the whisper faded. The world took on clear edges again and I realized Mary had drawn up to my shoulder. 

“Someone is coming,” she murmured. “Ghisten ships.”

I cursed. The fog shrouded us, but it also limited what we could see of the world around us – by natural means, at least. 

“Can you delay them?” I asked, equally low. 

Mary gave a nod and stepped back. I heard the smooth intake of her breath, then the first notes of a song slipped into the still air. They were low and melancholy, drawing in the hushed solemnity of the sea and returning it in sympathetic kind. 

“There is a voice among the trees, that mingles with the groaning oak, that mingles with the stormy breeze…”

The wind stirred in response and damp air prickled across my cheeks. Monna lifted her chin, sensing the change at the same time as one of her crewmen stepped up and murmured in her ear. 

“We will surrender,” Monna decided. “No more storms, guns or bloodshed. I will peacefully come aboard, and then will tell you how I met your twin in the belly of a Mereish frigate.”

Black Tide Son is out July 2024 from Titan Books, so get your pre-orders in now! You can pre-order from Bookshop.org