Konnici na Liriite - Chevalier Du Lys

The Last Book "Swan Song" starts with Grainger is working as pilot on a small, undermaintained ship. While on a planet, he goes drinking with the engineer, Sam, and the two are approached by a man named Soulier who wants to hire Grainger. The man works for Caradoc, and wants the secrets Grainger might have learned working for Charlot. Soulier makes a series of attractive offers and veiled threats, but Grainger continues to refuse. Upon leaving the bar they're approached by thugs, hired by Soulier, and though they evade them, Sam and Grainger realize that Caradoc is going to get him one way or the other unless he flees. After being arrested for minor crimes but Denton (a police officer friend of Grainger) and have a way out. A warrant of his own to arrest Grainger for kidnapping (in the Promise Land book). Because extradition is required, Denton takes Grainger back to New Alexandria. Sam, because he's unimportant, unemployable, and Grainger owes him, tags along. At New Alexandria (after his acquittal), Grainger is approached by Johnny who tells him that Eve and Nick (and Rothgar, who was serving as their engineer) are dead. They took the Sister Swan (a second ship of the same design as the Hooded Swan) into the Nightingale Nebula, an unexplained phenomenon that Charlot believed was an interface between our universe and another, and they haven't been seen since. Grainger soon learns that Charlot believes there's a chance the ship and its crew might be alive, and wants Grainger to fly them in. He's willing to come along to prove his theory. Grainger agrees, but he doesn't like the scenario, or all the lives that would be risked. He impulsively decides to take Sam as his engineer and steal the ship and take it through the interface. The trip there is hazardous and, the ship is damaged upon entry to the other universe. Grainger also learns that Charlot's doctor was aboard when the ship was taken. However, they are able to find the Sister Swan. Grainger goes out to the other ship but the journey is complicated by the nature of the universe. The wind informs Grainger that the universe itself is a mind, and that if it manages to understand them, or vice versa, they will cease to exist, and that the danger will be greater when they are out on their own between ships. Aboard the sister ship, Grainger finds that Rothgar is dead, Nick is well and conscious, but Eve is catatonic. The wind also doubts that it will be able to survive the return journey, as it is made to interface with minds and understand them and came close on the journey there. As such, it has a last wish, that Grainger listen to the story of his its life, and remember. The wind dies on the trip back. Back at the Hooded Swan, Sam has become completely blind. With no one else qualified to perform the role of engineer, Grainger takes the job and trusts that Eve will regain herself and be able to serve as pilot once attached to the relatively undamaged, and active, Hooded Swan. When they make it home it is learned that in terms of subjective time outside the nebula, they have been gone for months, and Charlot has died of natural causes after proclaiming them all heroes.

In the end it was a compelling saga and it’s easily read. I must say that the end surprised me. It’s a melancholic end. I miss Wind.