Agora is an insular city-state where anything can be bought and sold. Everything is a commodity; goods, services, people, thoughts, concepts and even emotions are bartered on the open market. It’s an economy without money, where trade is the only way of life and debt is death. The successful elite rule, plague festers in the pitiless slums, and children are possessions until their twelfth birthdays.

In the ancient tower of Count Stelli, the city’s greatest astrologer, two children meet, both of whom have been sold into servitude. Mark is an emotional, imaginative boy who is sold by his father to the Count’s grandson in return for medical treatment. The other child, Lily, is reserved and thoughtful; an orphan now owned by the Count. At first, threatened with being thrown out to die on the disease-ridden streets if they displease their masters, Mark and Lily’s only goal is to work and survive. However, as they begin to understand that they can shape their own destinies, they each find their own path — Mark within the system, angling for power and the security it brings; and Lily beyond it, determined to change the city forever. Unbeknownst to them both, however, Mark and Lily are watched by the mysterious ruler of Agora, the Director of Receipts, whose interest in the apparently insignificant pair is more than a passing one.

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Chapter 1: The Staircase
Chapter 2: The Signet Ring
Chapter 3: The Deal
Chapter 4: The Glassmaker
Chapter 5: The Manservant
Chapter 6: The Violinist

INTERLUDE ONE

Chapter 7: The Dumbwaiter
Chapter 8: The Past
Chapter 9: The Future
Chapter 10: The Song
Chapter 11: The Star
Chapter 12: The Idea

INTERLUDE TWO

Chapter 13: The Dance
Chapter 14: The Secret
Chapter 15: The Daughter
Chapter 16: The Theft
Chapter 17: The Box
Chapter 18: The Night
Chapter 19: The Trial
Chapter 20: The Speech

INTERLUDE THREE

Chapter 21: The Fall
Chapter 22: The Scroll
Chapter 23: The Cell
Chapter 24: The Director
Chapter 25: The Promise

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David Whitley was born in 1984 and graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in English Literature and a passion for writing children’s fiction. At age 17 his first children’s novel was shortlisted for the Kathleen Fidler Award, and at 20 he won the Cheshire Prize for Literature for a children’s short story, the youngest writer ever to win this prestigious award.

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