Welcome back to Rotherweird, where an ancient plot centuries in the making is about to come to fruition - and this time the forces of darkness might actually win . . ."Intricate and crisp, witty and solemn. Line by line, silent and adroit, it opens a series of trap-doors in the reader''s imagination" --Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf HallThe town of Rotherweird has been independent from the rest of England for four hundred years, to protect a deadly secret.Sir Veronal Slickstone is dead, his bid to exploit that secret consigned to dust, leaving Rotherweird to resume its abnormal normality after the travails of the summer . . . but someone is playing a very long game.Disturbing omens multiply: a funeral delivers a cryptic warning; an ancient portrait speaks; the Herald disappears - and democracy threatens the uneasy covenant between town and countryside.Geryon Wynter''s intricate plot, centuries in the making, is on the move.Everything points to one objective: the resurrection of Rotherweird''s dark Elizabethan past - and to one date: the Winter Solstice.Wynter is coming . . .