Behind These Walls – a Human 76 story

Old bonds were fading, and new peoples were forming, settled peoples able to defend their own, nomad peoples inured to loss, all manner of peoples. There would always be Searchers amongst them, all the same, as long as there were people such as the Prometheans to prey upon the weak.

… but Ghabrie is not weak, and when her sister is torn away from her she is determined to search until they are reunited. That’s the premise of Human 76, a multi-author shared-world anthology now available in paperback and as an ebook.

It has been an honour to be involved in this project, and to watch it to develop into the fine thing it has become. You can find out a lot more about its origins and development and about the other authors involved here, and you can find out more about Water is Life, the charity the anthology supports, here, so I’ll talk a little bit about Chrissy Finch and Behind These Walls.

Chrissy is old enough to remember a time when things were otherwise, but since the world changed she has lived in the Tour, a trading post at the mouth of the Barrantine Pass. Her exposure to the world beyond the safe walls of her community has been limited to her interaction with the guests who pass through. It has been her duty to harvest information any way she can, and she has been successful enough in her way, except when it comes to Glint, with whom

She had tried cunning, she had tried wheedling, she had blazed at him in fury that he was throwing away what mankind had once been and might yet be again, and at last she had owned her helplessness and asked that others might be sent to deal with him.

Despite this, Glint has become something almost like a friend to her. So when Glint, of all people, is seen in the company of one of the despised so-called Moderns it challenges her perceptions. Can she overcome a lifetime’s prejudice? It’s not looking good.

It was harder to put out of mind a second time, harder to put out of mind now that she had seen Glint treat Lauren as a real girl. Glint, she thought, would have expected her to pass news of Nahria to her sister. Glint could go to hell. Glint was wrong.
She held on to the thought fiercely, but it did not seem to help.