A former rope-dancer waits at an inn on the road to empire. Kuni has rebuilt her life since falling from grace, but when the young councillor Lienhard Groland arrives at The Blue Pike seeking shelter, her carefully constructed calm shatters. He once saved her from ruin; now she must face what she owed him, what she lost, and what she still desires. Around them, Miltenberg teems with travelers heading to Emperor Maximilian's Reichstag, a nation in motion while two people untangle years of longing and shame. Ebers renders 16th-century Germany with sensory precision, but this is really a study of how the past arrives uninvited: in a face across a tavern, in a debt that cannot be repaid, in the space between gratitude and love. For readers who prefer their historical fiction interior and aching.
