Heather Fawcett

Kamzin dreamed of becoming one of the Emperor's royal explorers, the elite climbers tasked with mapping the wintry, mountainous Empire and spying on its enemies. Then River Shara, the greatest explorer ever known, arrives and demands to hire Kamzin -- not her older sister Lusha, as everyone had expected -- for his next expedition. River's mission to retrieve a rare talisman for the emperor; it means climbing Raksha, the tallest and deadliest mountain...