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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Sebastien de Castell
Excerpt from Queenslayer copyright © 2018 by Sebastien de Castell
Excerpt from The Fifth Ward: First Watch copyright © 2017 by Dale Lucas
Author photograph by Pink Monkey Studios
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
Cover art by Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Originally published in 2018 by Hot Key Books in Great Britain
First U.S. Edition: December 2018
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957255
ISBNs: 978-0-316-52587-9 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-52586-2 (ebook)
E3-20181012-JV-NF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1: The Problem with Sand
Chapter 2: The Virtue of Corpses
Chapter 3: The Trouble with Spells
Chapter 4: The Dilemma of Dying
Chapter 5: The Downside of Dreams
Chapter 6: White Sand
Chapter 7: Black Snow
Chapter 8: Onyx Shards
Chapter 9: The Fool
Chapter 10: The Sleeper
Chapter 11: The Stall
Chapter 12: The Break
Chapter 13: The Twist
Chapter 14: The Fourth Step
Chapter 15: The Epitaph
Chapter 16: The Shadows
Chapter 17: The Abbot
Chapter 18: The Tower
Chapter 19: The Firefly
Chapter 20: The Invitation
Chapter 21: The Dreamer
Chapter 22: The Sanctum
Chapter 23: The Compass
Chapter 24: The Interrogation
Chapter 25: The Duel
Chapter 26: People and Places
Chapter 27: Training and Tribulation
Chapter 28: Revelation and Regret
Chapter 29: Introductions and Interventions
Chapter 30: The Path of Onyx
Chapter 31: The Fork in the Road
Chapter 32: The Mad Mage
Chapter 33: The Miracle Cure
Chapter 34: What Kind of Man
Chapter 35: The Lock and the Key
Chapter 36: The Hero
Chapter 37: The Golden Passage
Chapter 38: The Shadow Play
Chapter 39: The Bones
Chapter 40: Across Shadow
Chapter 41: On the Brink
Chapter 42: The Pebble
Chapter 43: Constellations …
Chapter 44: … and Consolations
Chapter 45: The Price of Sleep
Chapter 46: The Visitor
Chapter 47: The Promise
Chapter 48: The Long Road
Chapter 49: The Informant
Chapter 50: The Camp
Chapter 51: Discord
Chapter 52: The Inks
Chapter 53: The Soulbinder
Chapter 54: The Apology
Chapter 55: The Negotiation
Chapter 56: The Gates
Chapter 57: The Casualty
Chapter 58: Bridge Dancing
Chapter 59: The War
Chapter 60: Renegotiation
Chapter 61: The Path of Tears
Chapter 62: Vengeance
Chapter 63: The Mahdek
Chapter 64: Farewell
Chapter 65: Two Letters
Acknowledgements
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of Queenslayer
A Preview of The Fifth Ward: First Watch
By Sebastien de Castell
Praise for Spellslinger
Orbit Newsletter
When I was seven years old, my parents unexpectedly picked my brother and me up from school. I figured something terrible had happened, but instead they presented us with two puppies. We named them Lady and Tramp, after the greatest movie of all time. In the strange way of these things, Tramp became ‘mine’ (or rather, I became his). I guess loads of people have had similar experiences, and I don’t know why they mean so much to us, but they do. They mean everything.
Hope is a wondrous island upon whose shores we all wish to tread. Be wary though, that when you find your eyes drawn to that distant horizon, you remember to look down once in a while …
—Stupid Argosi proverb
1
The Problem with Sand
The desert is a liar.
Oh, sure, from a distance that endless expanse of golden sand looks inviting. Standing at the top of a sand dune, warm breezes soothe the scorching sun above, beckoning you to the wonders awaiting below. Whatever you desire—treasure beyond imagining, escape from your enemies, or maybe even a cure for the twisting black lines that won’t stop growing around your left eye—some fool will swear it’s waiting for you across the desert. A dangerous journey? Perhaps, but the rewards, boy! Think of the rewards …
Look closer, though—I mean, really close—say, an inch or so from the sand itself. This is easy to do when you’re face down in it waiting to die of thirst. See how each and every grain of sand is unique? Different shapes, sizes, colours … That seamless perfection you saw before was just an illusion. Up close the desert is dirty, ugly and mean.
Like I said: it’s a stinking liar.
“You’re a stinking liar,” Reichis grumbled.
My head jerked up with a start. I hadn’t even realised I’d spoken out loud. With considerable effort I turned my head to see how my so-called business partner was faring. I didn’t get very far. Lack of food and water had taken their toll on me. The bloody bruises inflicted by the spells of a recently deceased mage whose foul-smelling corpse was rotting in the heat a few feet away didn’t help either. So was I going to waste what life I had left to me just to glare at the ill-tempered, two-foot-tall squirrel cat dying by my side?
“You stink,” I replied.
“Heh,” he chuckled. Squirrel cats don’t have a very good sense of their own mortality. They do, however, have an acute penchant for assigning blame. “This is all your fault,” he chittered.
I rolled over, hoping to ease the stiffness in my spine, only for the wounds on my back to scream in protest. The pain drew a rasping moan from my parched throat.
“Don’t try to deny it,” Reichis said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did. You whimpered and I heard, ‘But, Reichis, how could I possibly have known that I was leading us into a death trap set by my own people? I mean, sure, you warned me that this talk of a secret monastery in the desert where monks could cure me of the shadowblack was a scam, but you know me: I’m an idiot. An idiot who never listens to his smarter and much better-looking business partner.’”
In case you’ve never seen a squirrel cat, picture an angry feline face, slightly tubby body, unruly bushy tail and strange furry flaps connecting their front and back limbs that enable them to glide down from treetops to massacre their prey. “Good-looking” isn’t exactly the phrase that comes to mind.
“You got all that from a whimper?” I asked.
A pause. “Squirrel cats are very intuitive.”
I drew a ragged breath, the heat off the sand burning the air in my lungs. How long had the two of us been lying here? A day? Two days? My hand reached for the last of our water skins, dragging it closer. I steeled myself for the fact that I’d have to share what was left with Reichis. People say you can live three days without water, but that’s not factoring in the way the desert robs the moisture from you like a … like a damned squirrel cat! The water skin was bone-dry. “You drank the last of our water?”
Reichis replied testily, “I asked first.”
“When?”
Another pause. “While you were asleep.”
Apparently the desert wasn’t the only liar I had to contend with.
Seventeen years old, exiled by my people, hunted by every hextracker and bounty mage with two spells and a bad attitude, and the last of my water had just been stolen by the closest thing I had to a friend out here.
My name is Kellen Argos. Once I was a promising student of magic and the son of one of the most powerful families in the Jan’Tep territories. Then the twisting black markings of a mystical curse known as the shadowblack appeared around my left eye. Now people call me outlaw, traitor, exile—and that’s when they’re being polite.
The one thing they never call me is lucky.
“Sure, I know the place,” the old scout had said, her mismatched hazel and green eyes glued to the dusty leather bag of copper and silver trinkets on the table between us. We had the ground floor of the travellers’ saloon to ourselves, with the exception of a couple of passed-out drunks in the far corner and one sad fellow who sat on the floor by himself, rolling a pair of dice over and over as he sobbed into his ale about having the worst luck in the whole world.
Shows what you know, buddy.
“Can you take me to it? This monastery,” I asked, placing a card face up on the table.
The scout picked up the card and squinted at the shadowy towers depicted on its surface. “Nice work,” she observed. “You paint this yourself?”
I nodded. For the past six months, Reichis and I had crossed half a continent in search of a cure for the shadowblack. We’d pick up clues here and there, brief scrawls in the margins of obscure texts referring to a secret sanctuary, rumours repeated endlessly by drunks in taverns like this one. The Argosi paint cards of important people and places, imbuing them with whatever scraps of information they collect in hopes that the resulting images will reveal otherwise hidden meanings. I’d taken to painting my own. If I died in my search for a cure, there was always a chance the cards would find their way into Argosi hands, and then to Ferius Parfax, so she’d know not to bother looking for me.
The old scout tossed the card back down on the table as if she were placing a bet. “The place you’re looking for is called the Ebony Abbey, and yeah, I could take you there … if I were so inclined.” Her smile pinched the crags of sun-browned skin on her forehead and around her eyes, her face like a map of some long-forgotten country. She had to be well into her sixties, but her sleeveless leather jerkin revealed rope-like muscles on her shoulders and arms. Those, along with the assortment of knives sheathed to a bandolier across her chest and the crossbow strapped to her back, told me she could probably handle herself just fine in a fight. The way she kept staring at the bag of trinkets on the table without paying much attention to me made it plain that I hadn’t made a similar impression on her.
Searching for a miracle cure hadn’t been a particularly profitable enterprise so far. Every coin I earned as a spellslinger during my travels had been wasted on snake-oil salesmen peddling putrid concoctions that left me sick and vomiting for days at a time. Now my travel-worn linen shirt hung loose on my skinny frame. My face and chest still showed the bruises and scars from my last encounter with a pair of Jan’Tep bounty mages. So I could understand why the sight of me didn’t exactly fill the scout with trepidation.
“She’s thinking of beating you up and taking our money,” Reichis said, sniffing the air from his perch on my shoulder.
“That thing ain’t rabid, is it?” the scout asked, sparing him a wary glance.
Other people don’t understand the chitters, snarls and occasional farts Reichis uses to communicate. “I’m still trying to figure that out,” I replied.
The squirrel cat gave a low growl. “You know I can just rip your eyeballs right out of their sockets and eat them while you sleep, right?” He hopped off my shoulder and headed towards the two drunks passed out in the corner, no doubt to see if he could pick their pockets.
“Ask them that know the tales,” the old scout began in a sing-song voice. “They’ll tell you naught but seven outsiders have ever been inside the Ebony Abbey’s walls. Five of them are dead. One’s a dream-weed addict who couldn’t find his own nose with both hands, never mind a secret monastery hidden in the desert.” She reached for the little bag that contained everything I still had of any value. “Then there’s me.”
I got to the bag first. I may not look like much, but I’ve got fast hands. “We haven’t agreed terms yet.”
For the first time the old scout’s mismatched eyes locked on mine. I tried to match her glare, but it’s unnerving to have two different-coloured eyes staring back at you. “Why you want to mess with them Black Binders anyway?” she asked. Her gaze went to my left eye, and I could tell she’d picked up on the slight discolouration where the edges of the skin-coloured mesdet paste met the top of my cheekbone. “You ain’t got the shadowblack, do ya?”
“Shadow-what?” I asked. “Never heard of it.”
“Well, I hear there’s a posse of Jan’Tep spellcasters who’ll pay plenty for one o’ them demon-cursed. There’s a particular fellow they’ve been hunting a while now, or so I hear.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said, trying to lend my words a hint of a threat. “Like I told you before, I’m just writing a book about obscure desert monks.”
“Lot of money for that bounty. Maybe more than what’s in that bag of yours.”
I removed my hands from the bag and let my fingers drift down to open the tops of the pouches attached to either side of my belt. Inside were the red and black powders I used for the one spell I knew that always left an impression. “You know what?” I asked casually. “Now that you mention it, I think maybe I have heard about this shadowblack bounty you mention. Word is, a lot of dangerous folk have tried to collect on it. Have to wonder what happened to all of them.”
One corner of the scout’s mouth rose to a smirk. Her own hands, I saw now, had managed to make a pair of hooked knives appear. “Met plenty of dangerous men in my time. None of them impressed me much. What makes you any different?”
I returned her smile. “Look behind you.”
She didn’t, instead angling one of her knives just a touch until the blade caught the reflection of a certain squirrel cat who’d surreptitiously made his way up to the top of the coat rack behind her and was now waiting for the cue to pounce.
Yeah, the little bugger makes himself useful sometimes.
I counted three full breaths before the old scout slowly set her knives down on the table. “Sounds like a mighty fine book you’re
writing, my young friend.” She snatched up my bag of trinkets and rose from the table. “Best we load up on supplies in town before we make the trip.”
I waited a while longer, doing my best to make it appear as if I hadn’t decided whether to hire her as my guide or blast her into ashes. Truthfully though, I was waiting for my heart to stop racing. “How far away is this abbey?” I asked.
She adjusted the strap of her crossbow and slid her knives into their sheathes. “A long ways, as these things go, but don’t worry; you’ll enjoy the journey.”
“Really?”
She grinned. “Folks say the Golden Passage is the gentlest, most beautiful place you’ll ever see.”
2
The Virtue of Corpses
Faint scratching sounds returned me to my current predicament. I opened one eye a fraction, groggily expecting to be blinded by the reflection of sunlight against the shimmering golden sand. Instead I was greeted by twilight and a bitter chill. You’d think a place as blisteringly hot during the day as the Golden Passage would be temperate at night. But no, the temperature goes from scorching to freezing with barely an hour of warmth in between. I shivered and tried to go back to sleep.
The scratching continued though—so close that for a second I batted at my ear, fearful that some insect was burrowing inside. When that failed to solve the problem, I forced my head up enough to turn towards the source of the incessant noise. Reichis was wearily dragging himself along the sand.
He’s trying to get to me, I thought.
Fondness broke through the cold and despair. For all our quarrelling, the squirrel cat and I had saved each other’s lives more times than either of us could count; now he wanted to die beside me.
I reached out a hand, only to discover he wasn’t getting any closer. He was actually crawling away from me.
Have I mentioned that squirrel cats are ungrateful little wretches? My so-called business partner hadn’t been expending his last ounce of strength so that we could meet our end together; this wasn’t some final moment of friendship between us. No, instead the furry monster was slowly working his way to the war mage’s corpse.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
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