Whoever it was had left a package on the doorstep covered in a cloth. There was nothing magical about it — no ward, no curse, no booby trap — so I lifted it and carried it inside. It was light, but oddly balanced.
I set it on a table and pulled off the cloth.
It was a birdcage. Inside, a single, tiny brown bird with a rounded body and a short, upright tail hopped and fluttered from perch to perch.
Depths! My mouth was suddenly dry.
“That’s a wren,” Benny said from behind me. “Mate…”
“Yeah,” I said.
The Wren was telling me I was out of time. The next visitor wouldn’t be a bird.
All right. It’s all right.
I forced calm into my voice. “The Wren is calling in his debt,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Benny, my friend, it looks like I’m going back home.”
- End -
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading Shadow of a Dead God. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please consider leaving a review. It always helps.
Don’t forget that Nik’s adventures continue in Nectar for the God, coming in 2021.
If you want to be the first to find out about future books as well as to get free extras and short stories, please subscribe to my newsletter: patricksamphire.com/newsletter
You can find out about my other books and stories at my website: patricksamphire.com
Coming in 2021…
Nectar for the God
The sequel to Shadow of a Dead God.
Read on for an exclusive teaser.
Nectar for the God
Teaser
At half past seven on the morning of the ninth day of the month of Eppos, Etta Mirian walked into a bakery on Long Step Avenue. She bought two loaves of bread and an almond-and-honey pastry. She asked after the proprietor’s grandchildren (he had three, the oldest of whom had recently been apprenticed to a potter not far from the university district), remarked on the good weather (it had, until today, been an uncharacteristically cloudy and wet Eppos), and shared her hopes and aspirations for the new haberdashery business she and her husband were opening.
With a smile and a nod to the other customers, Etta Mirian left the bakery, crossed Long Step Avenue, and stabbed Peyt Jyston Cord three times in the neck. She then turned the knife on herself and, still smiling all the time, opened her throat from side to side. Both died before help could arrive.
The City Watch, who always liked a good murder to cheer up an otherwise boring day, were soon on the scene. There they put into play the full range of procedures and techniques that they were renowned for – mainly gawping at the body and asking some desultory questions – before concluding that neither Cord nor Mirian knew each other, and Cord had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were unable to track down exactly where Etta Mirian had got the knife she had used. It didn’t belong to her, the victim, or the bakery, and no one had seen Mirian carrying it prior to the attack.
At that point, as far as I could tell, there had been a lot of hand washing, buck passing, and general uninterested shrugging from the upstanding women and men of the City Watch before they decided that, yes, it was absolutely terrible what people got up to, and no, there really wasn’t anything they could do about it, what with the victim and perpetrator both being dead.
And then they had moved on.
Of course, I didn’t know any of that when Etta Mirian’s husband turned up at my door.
- End of Teaser -
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Books by Patrick Samphire
The Mennik Thorn Novels
Shadow of a Dead God
Nectar for the God (coming in 2021)
The Casebook of Harriet George Series
The Dinosaur Hunters
A Spy in the Deep
The Secrets of the Dragon Tomb Series
(for children)
Secrets of the Dragon Tomb
The Emperor of Mars
About Patrick Samphire
Patrick Samphire started writing when he was fourteen years old and thought it would be a good way of getting out of English lessons. It didn’t work, but he kept on writing anyway.
He has lived in Zambia, Guyana, Austria, and England. He has been charged at by a buffalo and, once, when he sat on a camel, he cried. He was only a kid. Don’t make this weird.
Patrick has worked as a teacher, an editor and publisher of physics journals, a marketing minion, and a pen pusher (real job!). Now, when he’s not writing, he designs websites and book covers. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and never uses it, so that was a good use of four years.
Patrick now lives in Wales, U.K. with his wife, the awesome writer Stephanie Burgis, their two sons, and their cat, Pebbles. Right now, in Wales, it is almost certainly raining.
He has published almost twenty short stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies, including Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Strange Horizons, and The Year’s Best Fantasy, as well as two novels for children, SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB and THE EMPEROR OF MARS.
SHADOW OF A DEAD GOD is his first novel for adults.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to thank my wife, Stephanie Burgis, for reading and critiquing many, many drafts of this novel and for being encouraging and positive every time.
Enormous, overwhelming thanks to Linda DeMeulemeester, Emily Mah, Claire Fayers, Katie Kennedy, Martin Owton, and Tiffany Trent for reading and providing feedback on earlier versions of the novel.
I also want to acknowledge and thank my agents, editors, and readers over the years whose encouragement and suggestions have made me a better writer.
Thank you all.
Special thanks to Xenia Tashlitsky for helping to find typos and other errors in the penultimate version of this book. You’ve saved me from some embarrassing mistakes. Any remaining are entirely my fault.
Copyright © 2020 by Patrick Samphire
The right of Patrick Samphire to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
The author and publisher have provided this ebook to you without Digital Rights Management (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book or make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Except where permitted by law and other than to read on one of your personal devices, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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