A Crown of Small Hours

Anveth's hours are disappearing. Not the hours of daylight — the hours themselves, sold by the minute under the guild-market to clients old enough and rich enough to buy them. Perrin Ash is a fixer: small problems, small people, solved mostly with bribery and charm. When a clerk hires her to find one missing hour, Perrin finds a market that has been running under the city for six months, run by a tired clever man named Harkin whom she likes more than is convenient. He is not the villain of this story. Neither are the buyers. But the city is running wrong, and the only way to fix it is to ring the six bells in the correct order, at night, one at a time — which is illegal, dangerous, and, according to Harkin's own ledger, entirely her fault tomorrow.