The Port Naain Intelligencer collection are a group of ‘detective’ stories which follow the career of Benor Dorfinngil in Port Naain.
‘The Cartographer’s Apprentice’ takes Benor from Meor into Partann. ‘Flotsam or Jetsam’ charts his arrival in Port Naain and meeting Tallis Steelyard. From then on the stories can be read in any order.
Four short stories from the Land of the Three Seas casting a light on the early career of Benor Dorfinngil. The trials and tribulations of a young cartographer; this book features duels, savage halfmen, gassy beer, blood feuds and most dangerous of all, beautiful women.
Benor arrives in Port Naain intent on the simple task of producing a handbook for merchants. Then there is a murder, and a vengeful family who will stop at nothing to silence those who found the body. Suddenly Benor’s life is no longer simple.
Benor is asked to help warn off a blackmailer who appears to be threatening a young girl’s chances of marriage. But the deeper he digs, the more dangerous things become.
Mapping an old family graveyard was a technically complicated job Benor expected would take him some time. But then he hadn’t allowed for getting caught up in a world of intrigue, vengeance, and arbitrary justice…
Asked to look for a missing husband, Benor finds that the female of the species is indeed more deadly than the male.
No good deed goes unpunished. When Benor saves a man’s life he finds himself the target of assassins. Poetry, politics and the quarrels of academics make a lethal cocktail.
Rescuing random strangers on a whim may be the good deed for the day, but will Benor survive the blood feud he has unwittingly become part of. More importantly can he buy back the victim’s soul?
An honest cartographer attempts to steer his way though grasping bureaucrats, bent bookmakers, magistrates who practice performance poetry and a young lady who wishes to end an ‘arrangement.’
Can Benor see justice done? Will Mutt finally meet his match? What do they teach aspiring temple dancers nowadays?
Hired to do a comparatively simple piece of mapping work Benor should perhaps have been suspicious when the pay seemed generous.
Will he ever get to the bottom of what is going on?
How rough is the rough justice of rural Partann?
How to clean out a privy with a crossbow. Welcome to the pastoral idyll.
Benor learns a new trade, joins the second hand book trade, attempts to rescue a friend and awakens a terror from the deep. Meddling in the affairs of mages is unwise, even if they have been assumed to be dead for centuries.
No good deed goes unpunished. To help make ends meet, Benor takes on a few small jobs, to find a lost husband, to vet potential suitors for two young ladies, and to find a tenant for an empty house. He began to feel that things were getting out of hand when somebody attempted to drown him
When mages and their suppliers fall out, people tend to die. This becomes a problem when somebody dies before they manage to pass on the important artefact they had stolen. Now a lot of dangerous, violent or merely amoral people are searching, and Benor has got caught up in it all. There are times when you discover that being forced to rely upon a poet for back-up isn’t as reassuring as you might hope.
Tallis Steelyard 