With Alec as leverage, Horn forces Richard to challenge Michael. Alec is kidnapped on the orders of Lord Horn. Halliday has consolidated executive power for himself and is fighting to remove term limits on the Chancellorship Ferris wants to become Crescent Chancellor himself.Īn enraged Horn tries to hire Richard to kill Michael Richard refuses. Richard meets with Katherine, an old friend, to obtain the name of his target: Crescent Chancellor Basil Halliday. He shows Richard a signet indicating that Tremontaine is also secretly supporting him. Later that night, Ferris asks Richard to kill an opponent in a duel. At a party, he humiliates Horn and flirts with Duchess Tremontaine, but she rejects him for Chancellor Ferris. Michael begins taking lessons from Vincent Applethorpe.

Michael meets Richard on the street and asks for sword lessons, but Richard declines. Lord Michael Godwin rejects the advances of Lord Horn.

When a man intimidates Richard’s lover Alec, Richard kills him as a warning to the other Riverside residents. Richard St Vier, a swordsman-for-hire based in the seedy neighborhood of Riverside, kills two men at a party thrown by Lord Horn.

Swordspoint has been called a defining text of the fantasy of manners subgenre Kushner was one of the first authors to use the phrase 'fantasy of manners' to describe her own and similar works. Later editions of the novel were also bundled with three short stories set in the same universe. It is Kushner's debut novel and is one of several books and short stories in the Riverside series. Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners is a 1987 fantasy novel by Ellen Kushner. 'The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death' The Privilege of the Sword

Swordspoint novel