Lord of Secrets

Book 1: The Empty Gods

by Breanna Teintze

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Humorous Fantasy; Romantic Fantasy

Synopsis

'I loved it . . . A perfect mix of traditional and new' Charlie N. Holmberg, author of The Paper Magician 'Deftly plotted and great fun' The Guardian Magic is poison. Secrets are power. Death is . . . complicated. Outlaw wizard Corcoran Gray has enough problems. He's friendless, penniless and on the run from the tyrannical Mages' Guild - and with the search for his imprisoned grandfather looking hopeless, his situation can't get much worse. So when a fugitive drops into his lap - literally - and gets them both arrested, it's the last straw - until Gray realises that runaway slave Brix could be the key to his grandfather's release. All he has to do is break out of prison, break into an ancient underground temple and avoid killing himself with his own magic in the process. In theory, it's simple enough. But as secrets unfold and loyalties shift, Gray discovers something with the power to change the nature of life and death itself. Now Gray must find a way to protect the people he loves, but it could cost him everything, even his soul . . . With the humour of V.E. Schwab, the scale of Trudi Canavan and the deftness of Naomi Novik, Lord of Secrets is a heartwarming fantasy novel about saving the people you love without destroying the world (or yourself). 'A fast-paced necromantic adventure' Emily Tesh, author of Silver in the Wood 'All I want is the next book, NOW' K.A. Doore, author of The Perfect Assassin

Release date: August 8, 2019

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 292

Sample

Rather inconveniently, I happened to be invisible that day. I hate invisibility. All the optical conjuration spells give me a headache and a sore throat – I think it’s because you have to swallow the runes – but invisibility is the worst.

Of course, there are reasons to put up with a sore throat. If nobody can see you, they can’t catch you and hang you. The miserable thing about invisibility, though, is the spell’s action. It manipulates light to confuse the eye of the observer, but it also alters the vision of the person inside the spell in nauseating ways. By the time I found the barn, I had been nursing a migraine for three days and wanted nothing but to pass out on a haystack until the spell wore off. Well, and a cup of hot water and honey, but that wasn’t going to happen. A leaky sod barn on the cold moors outside Fenwydd that did not contain twenty shitting goats was already a piece of luck. You can’t have everything.

I probably would have noticed the woman sooner if I hadn’t been invisible and trying not to look at anything. She certainly would have seen me when she came sprinting into the barn and dove into my haystack. And my lap.

‘What the hells—’ She twisted on top of me, digging a sharp elbow into my gut.

‘Ow,’ I said.

Even in the dim light of the barn, I saw her eyes fly wide a split-second before she inhaled. I grabbed her shoulder and clapped my other hand over her mouth. ‘Please don’t scream.’

She punched at the air in my general direction until she connected with my elbow.

‘Ow, dammit!’ I let her go, cradling my numbed hand.

She scrambled away from me, but didn’t run for the door. ‘Where are you?’

‘Sitting on a haystack, hoping you didn’t just break my arm,’ I said. ‘Where does it seem like I am?’

‘Why can’t I see you?’

‘I’m a ghost,’ I suggested. ‘Wooooo. Go away.’

She squinted at the haystack. ‘Is it magic?’

Gods and little saints. ‘No. Invisible people are an entirely natural phenomenon.’ I took a deep breath and endeavoured to peer past the migraine enough to examine her. ‘Are we going to have a problem?’

She must have been somewhere in her mid-twenties, but for someone with a wicked left hook, the woman wasn’t very big, disappearing inside a homespun shirt and trousers made for someone much larger. She had dark brown eyes with an odd circle of green around the pupil, light hair and a spray of freckles across her nose and jaw like a constellation. And her feet were bare, which made me pause. Even farm servants usually had moccasins. All in all, I didn’t think her reason for being in the barn was any more legitimate than mine.

‘You are a wizard, then,’ she said.

An alarm rang in my head. ‘Yes. No.’ I pressed the heels of my hands to my throbbing eye sockets. ‘I’m not anything. Why are you here?’

‘Don’t hurt me,’ she said. ‘I just – I need a place to sleep.’

I winced. ‘So sleep. Whatever you want. Of course I’m not going to hurt you. Just be quiet.’

I saw her searching eyes find my outline, probably from the motes of hay dust stuck on me. I tried to decide whether I dared lie down again. Even if she ran off and told someone I was here, what were the odds they’d believe that an invisible wizard was sleeping off a spell in their barn? The Guild won’t even officially admit invisibility exists.

Then again, the woman hadn’t run away, which was a bad sign by itself. Most normal folk view magic with distrust at best, and with active superstition at worst. I had too many people hunting me to waste a couple of hours dealing with a curious interloper who, alas, would certainly remember me. It was time to leave, before she could learn what I looked like.

I got to my feet, but I’d been down long enough that my bad knee had locked up. A pop of brilliant, multicoloured pain burst over me and I had to wait and breathe until it passed. I must have groaned.

‘Are you . . . sick?’ She stretched out a hand, creeping closer.

I wasn’t going to stand around and be felt for. ‘You can have the barn. I’m leaving.’ I tried, unsuccessfully, to push past her.

‘No! You have to stay here!’ She clawed at the air and caught my sleeve. ‘Just wait. They could still be out there.’

I halted. ‘Look, my head really hurts. Who could still be out there, and why should I care?’

She hesitated, a shade too long. ‘The men chasing me.’

‘In case that isn’t a lie, I promise not to tell them you’re here.’ I wrenched my arm away from her. ‘Let go.’

‘But they’ll see you.’

It took me a second to get the implication past the roaring pain in my skull. I looked down and saw my own trouser-clad knees shading into existence. At exactly the wrong time, the spell was finishing. Shit.

The woman stared at me. Or past me, actually. A wash of cold air across the back of my neck made me turn around. The spear pointing at my belly made me raise both hands.

A small door at the side of the barn was open. A priest in a dirty, cream-coloured robe and three other men stood just inside; one had a crossbow trained on the woman. Another was pointing the spear at me, goggling at my robe and, presumably, the parts of me that were still invisible.

‘Don’t move! You’re under arrest!’ The priest’s shrill voice cut through the air – and my head – like a steel spike. He was looking from the woman to my mostly-revealed left wrist, where my forged licence sigil was tattooed. ‘Careful! He’s a wizard – we’ll have to gag him.’

I flinched. ‘Keep your voice down. I haven’t done anything illegal. You can inspect my licence if you want.’ I waggled my wrist. My sigil had got me out of similar situations in the past. It was expensive, and realistic.

‘Tie his hands,’ the priest said. ‘We’ll let his own people sort him out.’ But none of his helpers moved, watching me uncertainly. Angering the Mages’ Guild isn’t done lightly.

‘The Guild has feelings about outsiders arresting its members.’ I forced my voice into bored, threatening tones. ‘What do you suppose they’re going to say about you poaching on their prerogatives?’

He smiled thinly. ‘What do you suppose the Guild will say to you consorting with a blasphemer? You’d obviously arranged to meet here with your criminal associate.’

Dealing with a blasphemy shakedown was another bother I didn’t need. I didn’t know much about the laws in this part of Varre, but blasphemy was sometimes punishable with death, and rarely a nice, quick death, either. I glanced at the woman, whose carefully flat expression did not quite hide the fine edge of terror in the lines of her body.

‘All we’ve established is that I am standing in a barn that all of you are also standing in,’ I said. ‘If you arrest me, I’ll demand a representative from the closest Guildhouse. I will be angry. The Guild officer will be angry. You will be forced to explain how a low-level priest thought it would be a good idea to importune a wizard—’

‘Turn out your pockets.’ The priest rounded on the woman. ‘Thief! Do as you’re told!’

‘—with trumped-up charges that Temples doesn’t have jurisdiction over anyway.’ The priest was ignoring me, grabbing at the woman.

‘I’m not a thief,’ she growled. ‘Don’t touch me!’

He clutched her arm. ‘Temples has jurisdiction over anyone caught violating sacred property. I know you have it. Nobody else could have taken it.’ The priest thrust his hand into the depths of the giant, shapeless garment she wore, and pulled out a pair of small gold icons, no bigger than my thumb. ‘There!’

She twisted in his grasp. ‘That’s not mine! You planted that!’

He smiled. ‘No, you were bringing it to your accomplice. He just hasn’t had time to hide it yet.’ He gestured to the others. ‘Gag this man. And tie his hands.’

This time they obeyed.

*

We were soaked through by the time they marched us through the rain back to Fenwydd, which I had only seen briefly three days earlier. This visit confirmed my earlier impressions of it as a farm town which gave itself airs. The houses crammed inside the city wall were all stacked on top of each other, mismatched. Timber cottages squatted next to brick neighbours whose upper storeys overhung the street and dumped random streams of freezing water on to passers-by. The only important thing about it was a squalid little castle – a fort, really, with walls that were half earthworks – which looked just large enough to contain a decent dungeon.

The woman had been talking constantly while we walked, maintaining her innocence without convincing anyone. As our captors turned us down a narrow lane that led towards the castle, she fell silent.

We passed into a courtyard with claustrophobic stone walls and slippery brown cobblestones. Two soldiers lounged at a booth near the entrance, straightening as we appeared. A pair of stocks loomed beside a stained wooden block the size of a table, the axe grooves hacked into the block testifying to its purpose.

My stomach turned over. Maybe this was a duchy where they beheaded you for blasphemy.

‘Open the gate.’ The priest gestured at an ugly wooden door. I don’t know that I would have dignified it by calling it a gate. Still, it was thick, and a problem. I had been hoping for an ecclesiastical prison, where the doors are usually very old and decorative.

The men who had helped capture us left now, after being admonished to deliver their official testimony about the capture to the militia captain. The thrice-cursed priest did not leave, supervising as the soldiers hustled the woman and me inside. They brought us to a low, dank room lit by a couple of high, narrow windows. A thick layer of rushes covered the floor, an unsuccessful attempt to keep down the stink of vomit and old blood. A set of manacles dangled from rings in the ceiling, and an unpleasant collection of rusty iron instruments littered a table nearby.

They clapped the woman into the manacles, backed me into a corner and threw my leather satchel on the table. Only then did they remove the twist of cloth tied around my mouth.

‘Gods, that gag was none too clean.’ I spat on the floor and looked at the priest. ‘Well? Where’s the Guild representative? What’s this all about?’

‘You and your accomplice are charged with blasphemy and unsanctioned incantations. Because blasphemy is the more serious matter, you’ll answer to Temples before the Guild is alerted to your crimes.’ He folded his arms. I suppose he was trying to look menacing.

‘She isn’t my accomplice,’ I said. ‘I don’t pick accomplices out of mud puddles.’

‘Even if she isn’t your accomplice, you’re still a thief,’ he said. ‘She stole from the temple, and then you stole her. If you stop wasting my time, you might suffer less before this is over.’

Stole her? I needed time to think. ‘What precisely am I supposed to have done? Which unsanctioned incantations, I mean?’

‘I don’t truck with wizards’ impious attempts to manipulate nature,’ he said, coldly. ‘The incantations are a matter for the Guild to determine. My concern is rectifying your violation of the sanctuary of Jaern.’ He dug in his pocket for the tiny gold icons. ‘These were stolen from that temple library.’ He reached into my satchel and came out with a book. ‘And this is a restricted codex, taken from the temple of Neyar three days ago. Blasphemous intrusions, the both of them.’ He fingered the seal embossed on the front, and then glanced inside and frowned. ‘You stole an accounts book?’

It was actually the food purchase records for a group of Guild prisoners, forced labourers at the stone quarry in Denelle, fifty miles to the east. It had been a false lead.

‘They owe me money,’ I said.

He handed the book and icons to one of the soldiers. ‘Regardless, clearly a criminal act. And demonstrating an unhealthy interest in meddling with books.’

I shrugged. ‘In that case, I see nothing for it but to decapitate us immediately. There can’t be any other punishment for book-meddling.’

‘Agreeing with me won’t buy you leniency.’ The priest, who had evidently never been exposed to sarcasm in his life, waved the soldiers towards the door. ‘She was obviously bringing the icons back to you.’

‘Obviously.’ I slid the heel of one foot through the litter on the floor. Under the rushes was a brownish-black, crusty stain that I didn’t want to identify at that moment. The rushes didn’t stay parted long enough for my purpose. Besides, even this dolt would probably notice by the time I got six runes traced on the floor.

‘This isn’t right,’ the woman said. ‘You’re not supposed to—’

‘Shut up.’ He slapped her, hard enough to turn her head. ‘Did I tell you to speak? Don’t toy with me, tart.’

‘Ugh,’ I said. ‘Don’t make us imagine someone toying with you.’

I didn’t see him move. The fist that he sank in my gut took my breath away, and for a moment I couldn’t see. When my vision came back, his face was inches from mine.

‘Leave,’ he said, without taking his eyes off me. Both the soldiers who had accompanied us into the room departed, the door clanging shut behind them.

He wandered over to the instruments and selected one, a slender knife with teeth and a hooked tip. ‘This is a surgical knife.’ He brought it to me and pressed the serrations against my cheek. ‘It’ll go through bone. It takes a long time, but . . . eventually . . .’

A pulse of cold, instinctive fear flooded my veins. I could deal with pain – practising magic teaches you that quickly enough – but I recognised the dreamy contemplation in his voice. He wasn’t just out to get answers. He intended to enjoy hurting me. If I didn’t end this conversation soon, he’d carve me and the woman up regardless of what we said.

‘Now.’ Saliva clung to the priest’s teeth. ‘You and I are going to understand each other.’

Something boiled over inside my skull, flowing down to the tips of my fingers. I scratched a curving symbol into the dirt on the wall behind me. ‘You’re spitting,’ I said.

He frowned. You could almost hear the creaking as he tried to think. ‘I—’

‘You’re going to hurt me if I don’t answer questions,’ I said. ‘Understood. So ask something.’

He drew the serrations sideways. The cut was small, but it burned. ‘I know you want to steal something from my god. It’s the codices, isn’t it? Like the one you stole from Neyar-temple?’ A drop of blood rolled down my jaw. His eyes followed it lovingly. ‘You won’t get them, but I do want to know who told you they were there.’

Codices. The word was significant enough that it momentarily distracted me from the knife. Jaern-temples were usually just places of worship, but some of them had libraries. Because priests of Jaern take secrecy seriously, the rich and important pay the librarians to store things that they want kept secure and private: royal financial accounts, say, or torturer’s interrogation notes. Or locations and inmate lists for the Guild’s secret prisons.

‘I don’t know what codices you’re talking about.’ I forced myself to concentrate on the pattern growing behind me. ‘I thought this was about icons.’

He made a second cut, flicking my earlobe with the blade. It surprised me, driving a gasp from between my lips. But it gave me time to scratch another symbol.

‘Stop it!’ The woman’s voice was low, fierce. ‘This is illegal. You said the Guild was supposed to deal with him. This is—’

‘I’m not going to be lectured by a temple-robbing little witch,’ he hissed. ‘This isn’t Guild business. He’s carrying a book from Neyar-temple. He’s stealing secrets. So—’ He put the tip of the blade just below my eyebrow. ‘Who told you? I can take your eye. Or one of hers, if you don’t find that convincing.’ His gaze, glassy with desire, wandered towards her.

Most libraries were nearly impossible to break into without knowing the correct countersigns. If this woman had gotten inside the library and managed to escape afterwards, she had abruptly become more interesting. I needed her, and she would presumably be less able to circumvent complicated wards if she was missing an eye.

‘No, stop!’ I had to keep his attention on me. ‘I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘Leave her alone.’

He turned back to me, grinning at the urgency that had leaked into my voice. ‘I’m waiting.’

Another flick of the knife, this time against my eyebrow. Another drop of blood.

‘And I’m cooperating.’ I fought the desire to twist away. I needed to scratch one more character on the wall behind me. ‘I just want a representative from the Guildhouse here, first. The law entitles me to that. Magic is their jurisdiction, not yours.’

‘Jurisdiction?’ The priest’s nostrils twitched, and he smiled. ‘Over a man using their precious incantations to rob the gods? Do you really think the Guild will care what happens to you, as long as you end up dead?’

‘No, I know they won’t.’ I wasn’t going to be able to distract him another way. What he wanted was blood and fear. I’d have to give it to him. I swallowed and allowed my voice to tremble. ‘Please. Don’t hurt me. I’ll do what you want.’

‘I know you will.’ He brought the blade to rest against my chin and licked his lips. ‘I suppose you think you’re brave? Most of them do.’

‘No.’ As I spoke, my finger traced the last symbol. ‘Just very good at writing things down without looking at them.’

He blinked, startled. He was, I suppose, expecting something else. Pleading, maybe. Instead, I pronounced the spell.

The symbols under my hand lit with red fire and rose into the air, the light coming together in the fluttering form of a bat. It flew straight to the priest’s neck and latched on. He twisted, slapping at it, his fingers passing through its body. The priest twitched for a moment and then fell, first to his knees and then prone on the floor.

The woman stared at me. ‘What did you do?’

‘Hush.’ I moved to the table, scanning the mess of tools on it as quickly as I could.

‘Is he dead?’

‘No, dazed. Now be quiet – my head still hurts and I’m trying to be efficient.’ I located another filthy blade. It took a bit of manoeuvring, but I managed to saw the cord around my wrists over the blade until it parted. I shook out my tingling hands. My mouth tasted sick and metallic with the remnants of the incantation I had thrown at the priest. The toxicity was going to hit hard. I didn’t have much time.

‘How did you do it?’ She was whispering. ‘I thought wizards had to have special paint to cast spells.’

‘You can see that I didn’t.’ I pulled my sleeves down over my wrists, grabbed my satchel and slung it across my shoulder. ‘Paint helps, but all you need is something that will ensure that the runes stay the right shape long enough to pronounce them.’ I bent over the priest. ‘A more detailed answer will take weeks, and I doubt very much if you’d understand even then.’

She glared at me. ‘Prick. You think nobody else knows anything about magic?’

‘At the moment it seems more relevant whether somebody knows where the key is.’ I pawed through the priest’s dirty vestments. ‘He has to have one, right? Or the guards wouldn’t have left him alone with us?’

She opened her eyes wide, mocking. ‘Are you asking me whether I saw where he put it? Even though I’m too stupid to understand paint? It’s on a cord around his neck, sirrah.’

I found the key ring, yanked it free and straightened. ‘Listen, I need to know. Did you get into Jaern-temple, or did the priest really plant the icon on you? Lord Toy-With-Me over there is going to wake up soon, so I suggest you answer quickly.’

Her tongue passed over her lower lip. ‘What if I did?’

‘I am interested. I will bargain.’ I held up the keys. ‘I’m going to let you out. In return, you’re going to get me into that temple long enough for me to get at the books. Agreed?’

‘Why?’ She did not appear to understand how short our time was. ‘I’ve got no reason to help you. I don’t even know your name. What’s in the books?’

‘Nothing that would be useful to you. A list.’ I glanced towards the priest. If this went on much longer, I’d have to find a way to tie him up. ‘You do realise that they’re going to cut your head off if I don’t let you go?’

‘And you evidently can’t get into the temple without me.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘As far as I can see, I have something you need. A list of what?’

I moved to the door. One of the keys on the ring unlocked it, but I had no way of knowing what was on the other side. Had the guards gone back to the shack in the courtyard, or were they down the hall in some other cell?

‘Wizard,’ she said.

‘My name is not “wizard”.’ I opened the door a crack, listening. ‘It’s Gray. Corcoran Gray. Are you delaying on purpose, or . . . ?’

‘Whatever you call yourself.’ She sounded irritatingly calm for someone who was haggling for her life. ‘If you want my help, you’ll tell me what you’re really after. I don’t think you have a choice about this.’

I could hear nothing in the hallway, not that I would unless I got her to stop babbling. My knee was starting to send warning twinges up my thigh. If I waited much longer, it would start to stiffen up, and then I’d be magic-sick and slow. I had to resolve this, now. I forced myself to think through everything I knew about her, systematically. There had to be something I could use for leverage.

‘You’re not a temple acolyte,’ I said, slowly, ‘or you’d at least have sandals, yet you know the temple and the countersigns well enough to circumvent the wards. And the priest was able to track you, in the rain, without dogs.’

‘So?’ She was once again doing an almost-convincing impression of someone who wasn’t afraid.

‘So a Temples slave would know all of those things.’ I scanned her body. No earrings. No nose ring. The navel, maybe? ‘That’s why they’re forced to wear trackers. A piece of jewellery, usually. Magically applied, and difficult to remove unless you know what you’re doing.’ I paused, met her eyes. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

I was offering freedom, of a sort. We were in an urban part of the provinces, not the wild border country where slavers were allowed to hunt anyone who wandered. If she stayed in towns, she might be able to live a decent life, even without the expensive official papers that would have ensured her legal status as a freewoman.

Her jaw tightened. ‘You’re saying you can take it off? Make it so they can’t find me again?’

‘Yes. I unlock you, you get me into the temple and then I unbind your tracker. In that order, to keep everyone honest.’ I held up the key. ‘Do we have a bargain, or not?’

She swung her wrists towards me. ‘Yes. Just hurry, Corcoran.’

‘Finally.’ I grabbed her chain and began trying one key after another. ‘Call me “Gray”, not the other. And you’re supposed to tell me what your name is after I tell you mine. That’s the way it’s done in polite society.’

The manacles opened for the third key. She drew her wrists out. ‘Do you have a plan to get us out of here?’

I dug through my satchel. ‘How about an alias? I would be content with an alias. It gets inconvenient just calling someone “you”.’

‘Brix. My name is Brix.’ A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. ‘You’re a very strange person.’

‘It’s part of my charm.’ I found a scrap of parchment, a mostly-empty wineskin and a pencil. ‘How would you like to be invisible?’

The prison was only a hallway with a half-dozen cells, empty except for one snoring drunk. Brix had grasped a handful of my sleeve as soon as I finished the spell and led me and my newly-revived headache towards the courtyard. The two guards were once again at their post, shielded from the afternoon rain by the thatched roof of their booth.

‘Ugly little snit,’ one was saying, as we approached. ‘I don’t know why Lord Fenwydd puts up with him.’

‘Because Halling has my lord convinced he has a bridle on the gods.’ The guard opened a pouch and took out a pinch of shan leaves before offering it to his friend, who also took a pinch. They both chewed solemnly.

‘I suppose we should look in on him.’

The second shook his head. ‘Gods, no. He won’t be even halfway finished yet, even if the prisoners are talking. It’ll be bad enough cleaning up later.’

The pressure of Brix’s grip made me move forwards, following her through the shadow along one side of the wall. We exited the courtyard and found ourselves confronted by a broad, muddy square. It must have been market day, with carts of vegetables hulking amid a crowd of people, goats and a pair of women selling pastries. Luckily the soldier guarding the doorway we had just emerged from was occupied in talking to a girl with a baby on her hip, and we got past him without any trouble.

I spied a nook behind a pastry stand, some twenty feet away, that would offer shelter from prying eyes. Brix let go of me and I grasped at the air for a minute until I caught her clothes. The startled squeak she gave made the soldier look up from his conversation, confused. Time to go.

I held on and hustled her towards the pastry stand as quickly as I could. When we reached it, I crouched between the stand and the city wall and yanked her down beside me. The owner of the stand was hawking her wares closer to the street, in a raucous sing-song that would have drowned out a trumpeter.

‘Look for an inconspicuous path,’ I said. ‘Our footprints will show if the mud is too deep.’

‘What?’ Brix’s hand found mine, trying to pry my fingers from the cloth I had grabbed. ‘Let go. I find it hard to concentrate when a man has a handful of the seat of my trousers.’

I let go and jerked my hand back to myself, glad she couldn’t see me blush. How had I managed that? All I could find to mumble was: ‘Sorry.’

‘No matter,’ Brix said. ‘You didn’t aim for it. Will the spell last until nightfall, you think? I don’t see very many places we can move without leaving tracks in the mud. I suppose we could keep along the wall.’

Keeping along the wall sounded good to me, but I still didn’t know how I was going to survive until I could get outside it. The runes I had washed off the parchment were sloshing around in my stomach, mixed with wine and bile. I hiccupped, and grimaced at the acrid taste in my mouth. The magic was finishing, too quickly. Invisibility has an unpredictable duration, but it shouldn’t have been this unpredictable. It had been a mistake, using the spell again before I had recovered from the last time.

‘I don’t think we should wait,’ I said. ‘The spell is degrading. Breaking up, I mean.’

‘Where are you?’ Brix’s fingers stabbed me in the knee. They stopped there, grasping the hard outlines of the copper-and-leather brace I wear on my left leg. It fits under my trousers, I don’t limp unless I’m very tired and usually people don’t notice it. ‘What in the world . . . ?’

No, I wasn’t going to answer questions about that. I grabbed her hand and carried it away from the brace. ‘Look, could we get on with it? Now you have my hand, and I have your hand, and neither of us needs to go fondling the other.’

Which wasn’t quite fair, but it did shut her up.

She changed her grip, sliding her hand up until it was wrapped around my sleeve cuff; I gripped her wrist in turn. We got to our feet. I let her drag me along the wall at a trot. My headache was worsening, though not as quickly as I would have expected. More troubling was the snake of light that kept pulsing across my field of vision. I must not have written my shielding runes perfectly.

Brix led me away from the main road into the alley behind an inn. A short distance away stood the inn’s stable, filled with yokels shouting to each other. Each noise seemed to hook into the back of my eyes.

I halted, only to have Brix pull on my wrist again.

‘Don’t let go of me,’ she said. ‘I’ll never find you again.’

I wasn’t about to let go of her; I could barely see. I dug my heels in. ‘I need to stop.’

‘We can’t.’ She tugged. ‘We have to find a safe place, or they’ll find us again. You have to keep going.’

‘But—’ I bent at the waist and threw up.

‘Hells!’ Brix didn’t let go of me, though I think she jumped backwards. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I’m bloody invisible,’ I snapped. ‘It hurts. I want to sit down.’

Behind us, a cacophony of distant bells erupted. Light exploded through my head. I gasped and stumbled, just managing to miss putting a knee in the puke puddle. ‘Listen—’ My tongue felt thick. I couldn’t make it say what I wanted it to. When I tried, a weird groan came out.

‘Those are the prison bells. They know we’re gone.’ She yanked, trying to heft me back up on to my feet. ‘We’ve got to go. Now!’

‘Right.’ It took all my concentration to get the word out. I let her put my arm around her shoulders and staggered along beside her. We went through a maze of tiny lanes, finally coming to another inn, this one not prosperous enough to possess a stable. One horse and three donkeys were tied to a railing in front of the three-storey house. We made our way past the donkeys and paused behind the row of b. . .