The Prisoner of the Twelve Provinces

In Brittany, there is a belief in the black man Anku, who takes sinners on their final journey. For many, a one-way trip on his black cart lies ahead—it's 1914, and the thunder of an unprecedented war has reached even... the remote fishing villages. But for Gwen, a healer's apprentice, the afterlife is not what awaits him, but an unknown distant land. In the lands of the Twelve Provinces, they have never heard of steamships and submarines, but they believe that the bird pipil can heal wounds, and that turtles can travel through time. Fate saves Gwen from slavery and certain death—but now he must survive in a new, cruel world where no one trusts anyone, the sea teems with predatory krakens, and on land all borders are watched by a powerful customs agency—a source of horror for some and certain profit for others.