For the continuation of the race.
Five thousand years after Earth's last seed ship reached Canaan, humanity survives by the Link: an engineered bond that lets the body live where there is no air. Lose your Link and you lose your life.
William Faraday has never been told no. Heir to the Power Citadel, Sentinel of an elite scout team, he is right more often than anyone around him, and he makes sure they know it. Then a creature that should not be there tears his Link apart.
The Citadels honor him, mourn him, and send him into the wilderness to die.
He comes back.
Now the Citadels must decide what to do with a man their instruments cannot read, whose survival should be impossible, and whose return threatens everything five thousand years of precision has built. And William must learn the lesson his grandmother has been trying to teach him all his life: finding the right answer isn't enough.
The five Houses
Five Citadels keep humanity alive, each ruled by a founding House. Every House bears an Earth animal no one on Canaan has ever seen, chosen from the seed ship's archives and redrawn for five thousand years.
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Faraday
The Salamander. Source power.
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Darwin
The Tortoise. Life sciences.
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Turing
The Raven. Computation.
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Newton
The Elephant and Castle. Engineering.
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Malthus
The Hive. Population and resources.