Purple and Black

Subterranean Press is proud to announce a new novella by the enigmatic author of The Company and The Engineer Trilogy.

When his father, brothers and uncles wiped each other out in a murderous civil war, Nicephorus was forced to leave the University and become emperor.

Seventy-seven emperors had met violent deaths over the past hundred years, most of them murdered by their own soldiers. Hardly surprising, then, that Nico should want to fill the major offices of state with the only people he knew he could trust, his oldest and closest friends.

But there’s danger on the norther frontier, and Nico daren’t send a regular general up there with an army, for fear of a military coup. He turns to his best friend Phormio, who reluctantly takes the job.

Military despatches, written in the purple ink reserved exclusively for official business, are a miserable way for friends to keep in touch, at a time when they need each other most. But there’s space in the document-tube for another sheet of paper.

Purple and Black will be printed in two colors.

Trade state limited to 1500 fully cloth-bound hardcover copies and sold out at the publisher

Limited to 250 numbered copies signed by the author and sold out at the publisher