The Shear
The Shear is the space between parallel versions of Calder, and the name of the series. People called threaders can cross it. Crossing costs them, and the cost starts in the hands.
There is more than one Calder. The rest are not far away, and not reachable by any ordinary road, but a threader can find the way between them.
Threading is a skill and a sentence. The best threaders are very good, and none of them lasts. It starts in the hands: a tremor, a slip, a grip that is slightly less certain than it was. Ines Halloran is the best threader of her generation, and her hands are failing.
Routes
A route through the Shear is not a map so much as a bet. The routes are old, and some were opened by one person, a physicist called Dr Maren Halloran, who opened the first door twelve years before the story begins.
Navigators
No threader goes alone if they can help it. A navigator, a small and very polite device, plots the route and gives the odds. Fair Weather Friend is one.
In the story
Gate Six follows a detective and a threader into the Shear. Read Low Water, a free Rook story, or look at the wall that frames it all.
More from Calder
The Wall
Nine million kept dry. Its gates are numbered.
Fair Weather Friend
A pebble-sized navigator with terrible news about your odds.
Appears in Gate Six, Book One of The Shear. Back to the world of Calder.