About the Book
A novella. Later incorporated into Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006). Introduction by S. M. Stirling.
Long ago – when History was not as it is now – the North African city
of Carthage lay under the eternal darkness of the Penitence...
Ilario,
a King's Freak from the minor Iberian kingdom of Tarraconensis, has
been raised as both man and woman. Now Ilario is on the run – as a
would-be painter. Ilario desires to paint neither symbols nor formal
icons, but simply and scandalously to paint what emis/em.
Carthage
is the great capital of the medieval Mediterranean, existing under an
aurora-stricken darkness – anyone who can paint under that light,
Ilario thinks, must be taken seriously by the budding New School of
painters further east in Rome and Florence and Venice.
But
Ilario will not only encounter thieves, slavers, priests of the tophet,
the Lords-Amir of Carthage itself, and a questionable eunuch book-buyer
from the Royal Library at Alexandria... Murder is hot on Ilario's
heels, following all the way from Tarraconensis – and the truth of the
past is not to be denied.
Under the Penitence takes place in the Visigothic Carthage of Ash: A Secret History, but stands alone, and can be read without any reference to the novel.
