Queenslayer

Book 5: Spellslinger

by Sebastien de Castell

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Coming of Age; Humorous Fantasy

Synopsis

The fifth novel in the captivating Spellslinger fantasy series.

Kellen and Reichis have just finished fighting a duel in the desert when Kellen inadvertently smears blood on the Daroman flag — an act of treason for which the Marshals have no choice but to arrest him. Just before he's put before the Queen to be executed, Kellen is given a strange piece of advice from one of his fellow prisoners: kill the Queen and he'll be given clemency by those who take power. But when Kellen comes face-to-face with the 11-year-old monarch, he realises she's vastly smarter than he expected — and in a great deal more danger.

Perfect for fans of The Dark Tower, Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett, Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

Release date: May 21, 2019

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 496

Sample

Shush, shush, shush, whispered the silvery snow, as soothing as a man clamping his hand over your mouth as he sticks a knife in your back in the middle of a crowded street. There were seven of us in this particular crowd, shivering on the frigid plateau high up in the border mountains. Merrell of Betrian, the man I’d come to kill, cowered behind Arc’aeon, the war mage he’d hired to kill me first. A few yards away stood two bored Daroman marshals who’d graciously offered to oversee our duel (which is to say, threatened to arrest us unless we paid the overseeing fee). That just left the tall, graceful eagle that was Arc’aeon’s familiar and the short, nasty squirrel cat who passed for mine. Oh, and me, of course.

“You’re gonna get it now, Kellen!” Merrell hooted at me from across the fifty-yard stretch of snow-dusted ground separating us. “Arc’aeon here’s a proper ember mage. Ain’t no fool, neither, so your spellslinger tricks ain’t gonna work on him.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Merrell,” I shouted back. “My tricks only work on fools.”

Merrell swore, Arc’aeon smirked and the two marshals chuckled. Neither the bird nor the squirrel cat paid any attention. They were focused on each other. Me, I was thinking that maybe Merrell wasn’t the biggest sucker shuffling about trying to keep his toes from freezing off.

I thought I’d been running him down, racing to keep him from crossing the border into the Zhuban territories where he knew I wouldn’t follow. I thought I’d been chasing after a dumb, pug-ugly wife beater who’d tried to cheat me at cards. Turns out that was all wrong.

Merrell was a lot wealthier than he’d let on. He was also a lot better connected, because however much money he had, hiring a full-on war mage couldn’t have been easy. My people usually shun contract work from repugnant borderland hicks.

Looking at Arc’aeon, on the other hand, was like staring into a distorted mirror of myself. I was a few days shy of my eighteenth birthday and unlikely to see twenty. Arc’aeon looked to be in his early thirties, already the head of a notable Jan’Tep house, with wealth, power and a long, glorious future in front of him. My hair is what’s politely referred to as “manure coloured”; his gleamed in the morning sunlight like it was spun from strands of platinum and gold. I was scrawny from hard living and a life on the run; he had the muscular build of a soldier.

“I like your armour,” I shouted across the swirling patch of snow that lay between us. Shining form-fitting plates linked by bands of silk thread protected his chest, arms and legs. “It’s very… golden. Matches your bird.”

“Shadea is an eagle, boy,” he corrected me, smiling up at the hunter flying in lazy circles through the air like a buzzard anticipating his next meal. “A bird is something that flitters around before you shoot it for dinner. An eagle makes a meal of you.”

He pointed absently towards me. I didn’t have any armour—just my leather coat and riding chaps to keep myself from getting scraped to bits every time I fell off my horse. “I like your hat,” he said, nodding at the Daroman frontier hat I wore to keep the sun off the black marks that wound around my left eye. “Those silver glyphs on the brim are… cute. Do they do anything?”

I shrugged. “The man I stole the hat from said they’d bring me luck.”

Arc’aeon smiled again. “Then he overcharged you. This fool has paid me rather a lot of money to end you, Kellen of the House of Ke, but I would have done it for free had I known you were shadowblack. I’m going to send a bolt of lightning straight through that filthy left eye of yours.”

The bird…eagle, rather, let out a caw for emphasis, as if it understood the conversation. “You think the bird knows…” I began.

“Of course he knows what you’re saying,” Reichis chittered in reply, then added, “Idjit.” The squirrel cat meant to say “idiot”, but we’d been travelling the borderlands for a few months, and he’d taken to talking like a gap-toothed sheep herder. “The eagle’s his familiar. Whatever that skinbag mage hears, the bird hears.”

I glanced down at Reichis. He looked a little ridiculous holding his paw just above his eyes to shield them from the harsh sunlight reflecting off the snow and ice so he could scowl at the mage’s eagle. If you’ve never seen a squirrel cat before, imagine some drunken god had gifted a slightly tubby two-foot-tall cat with a big bushy tail and furry flaps that ran between its front and back legs, enabling it to glide down from treetops and sink its claws and teeth into its chosen prey—which is pretty much everything that moves. Oh, and then that same deity had given his creation the temperament of a thief. And a blackmailer. And probably on more than one occasion a murderer.

“I bet that guy’s eagle doesn’t call him ‘idjit’,” I said.

Reichis looked up at me. “Yeah, well, that’s probably because I’m not your familiar, I’m your business partner. Idjit.”

“You think that’s going to make a difference in about five minutes when the marshals tell us to draw and that eagle snatches you up and rips out your entrails?”

“Point,” Reichis said. He patted me on the leg. “All right, so you’re a genius, kid. Now blow this guy away so we can eat that ugly bird of his for supper. I call both eyeballs.”

I let my hands drift down to the powder holsters at my sides. It had cost a small fortune to convince a leather-smith to make them for me, but they let me pull powder faster than my old pouches, and when you’re duelling a war mage, even a fraction of a second can mean the difference between life and death. Merrell nearly fell on his arse and the two marshals instantly had their crossbows trained on me in case I was about to cheat the duel, but Arc’aeon ignored the gesture entirely.

“He ain’t afraid of you blasting him,” Reichis said. Well, he doesn’t speak exactly—he makes squirrel cat noises—but the nature of our relationship is such that I hear them as words.

“Right,” I said. “Intransigent charm shield?”

“Gotta be.”

I peered across the gap between us and the ember mage. I couldn’t see anything on the ground. I’d picked this spot intentionally because it’s pretty damned hard to keep a circle intact when the only thing to draw it in is ice and snow. I couldn’t see markings, so that left only one logical possibility.

“Say, fellas? You all mind if we move just a few feet to the right? I’ve got the sun in my eyes here. Can’t have an unfair duel, right?”

The older of the two marshals, Harrex I think his name was, shrugged his bony shoulders and nodded towards Arc’aeon. The mage just smiled back and shook his head. His eagle did a little dive towards us and turned up just a few feet away from my face.

“They got here early and laid down copper sigil wire under the snow, then poured water on it and waited for it to turn to ice,” I said to Reichis. “Guess you were right that we should’ve camped out here last night.”

“Idjit.”

Harrex held up a miniature sundial. “Well, gentlemen, I reckon we’re just about there. In a minute it’ll be mid-morning and Marshal Parsus here will start the countdown from seven. You both know the rules after that?”

“Kill the other guy?” I offered.

Reichis glared up at me. “That your plan? Crack jokes until that mage can’t blast us on account of he’s laughing too hard to speak the incantations?”

“Might be our best shot. No way am I going to be able to blast through that shield.”

“So what do we do?”

I looked over at Arc’aeon and watched the smile on his face widen as he stood there, calm as could be, waiting for the duel to begin.

“Seven!” Marshal Parsus shouted out.

I looked down into Reichis’s beady squirrel cat eyes. “How about we switch dance partners?” I suggested.

“Six!”

“You’re saying I get the mage?” Squirrel cats don’t usually smile, but Reichis had a big nasty grin on his fuzzy little face. He might be greedy, he might be a liar, a thief and a blackmailer, but the little bugger loves nothing more than a knock-down, drag-out fight. A few months ago he got himself the same shadowblack curse around his left eye that I have around mine. It hadn’t improved his disposition any.

“Five!”

“Don’t screw around, Reichis. You know what to do.”

“Four!”

Reichis gave a little shake. His fur changed colour from its usual mean-spirited brown with black stripes to pure white, making him almost invisible against the thick carpet of snow. I flipped up the metal clasps on my holsters to open the flaps.

“Three!”

Arc’aeon brought the fingers of both his hands together in a steeple shape. I knew the somatic form, even if I couldn’t cast the spell myself. I winced at the thought of what it would do when it hit me.

“Two!”

Arc’aeon winked at me. The eagle pulled around from his last circle to get ready to dive after Reichis. The squirrel cat got down on all fours and pressed his back feet against the snow, digging in for leverage.

“One…” Parsus said, a little too much enthusiasm in his voice for my taste.

Observers of such things will note that there are usually only two ways to lose a duel: end up on your knees begging for mercy, or on your back waiting for the falling snow to cover your corpse.

“Begin!”

I was about to discover a third option that was even worse.

The first tiny blue sparks of lightning materialised around Arc’aeon’s fingers just as the eagle began a downward dive to kill Reichis. I could almost taste the ember magic in the air that preceded the bolt and I prayed that Arc’aeon was just arrogant enough to want to follow through with his earlier threat. I dropped to the ground, already jamming my hands into the holsters at my side, forefingers snatching a pinch of the red and black powders that awaited there. I watched the lighting bolt tear past where an instant ago it would’ve struck my left eye. This guy had good aim.

Reichis was kicking up a miniature snowstorm behind him as he raced towards Arc’aeon, screaming all the while, “Die, you stupid pigeon!”

The eagle’s talons were reaching for the squirrel cat’s hide when I threw the powders up in the air in front of me as my right shoulder hit the ground. Inert and innocent as babes on their own, the two powders had a hatred for each other that created a monstrous explosion on contact. The magic’s not in the blast, you see—that’s just the effect of the powders themselves. The magic’s in the hard part—guiding the explosion without blowing your hands and face off in the process. My fingers formed the necessary somatic shape: bottom two pressed into the palm, the sign of restraint; fore and middle fingers pointed straight out, the sign of direction; and thumb pointing to the heavens, the sign of, well, somebody up there, help me.

“Carath Toth,” I said, uttering the two-word invocation. Only the first two syllables were needed, strictly speaking. Toth was the name of a particularly mean-spirited bounty hunter who’d tracked down Reichis and me a few weeks ago, declaring before an entire town that he’d be the one to finally put an end to me. Since my powder was now suffused with his blood, saying his name gave the spell a little extra kick.

A blast of red and black fire, the flames intertwined like snakes, followed the direction of my forefingers as they shot out at the eagle, leaving a haze of smoke in their wake. I missed the bird’s heart, but got one of his wings. He went careening to the ground a few feet away from Reichis. The squirrel cat didn’t stop to look though—just kept those little legs pounding towards his true target.

“Shadea!” the mage screamed, his hands unconsciously relinquishing the somatic shape for his next spell. Hurts when your familiar gets hit, don’t it? I thought maliciously. I had nothing against the eagle, you understand, but he was trying to kill my business partner.

Arc’aeon aimed his second blast just as I was getting back to my feet, forcing me to drop again, this time flat on my stomach. I felt my hair stand up as the lightning passed just above my head. I wasn’t going to be able to evade a third bolt.

Reichis bridged the gap between himself and the war mage. With a feral growl he leaped up into the air. Arc’aeon nearly fell back, despite the fact that there was no way the squirrel cat was going to be able to breach the shield. But the shield wasn’t the target. The instant Reichis hit the ground he started digging ferociously, tearing through snow and ice to where the fragile circle of copper wire holding the spell must be buried.

Arc’aeon was just starting to figure it out when I fired another shot at his familiar.

“Carath Toth,” I murmured.

“No!” Arc’aeon screamed. He fired a different kind of spell this time, some kind of blessing or protection that enveloped the eagle and dissipated my blast into airy black smoke. Nice trick, I thought.

“Now!” Reichis growled at me.

I saw the crease in the snow where he’d been digging. That was my opening. But I wasn’t in the right place to send a bolt through the hole in the shield.

“Damn it,” I said, as I got to my feet and ran towards Arc’aeon.

I saw him look down at the ground, his hands forming a new and ugly shape. His eyes went from the hole to Reichis before settling on me and aimed the spell at my chest. Too soon, damn it, too soon. I wasn’t in line with the gap yet.

“Carath moron!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, aiming my fingers at Arc’aeon as if I’d really been casting the spell. The “moron” part wasn’t necessary, but when you’re an outlaw with a price on your head, you take your fun wherever you can. Reflexively he changed the configuration of his fingers and formed a transient shield. A mistake, since I hadn’t actually fired and his warding would only last a second without copper to anchor it. Arc’aeon’s mouth went slack as he realised I’d tricked him. I was now in line with the gap in his shield.

With the opening in the shield now visible as a stuttering shimmer in the air, I whispered, “Carath Toth,” one last time. The powders slammed against each other before me. Aiming down the line of my fingers, I sent the explosion through the gap before Arc’aeon could get another warding spell up. The bolt took him in the dead centre of his belly and right through the decorative plating of his armour.

There was quiet then, as we waited for the last echoes of the explosion reverberating off the mountains to fade. For a few seconds the war mage remained standing, ignorant of the fact that his body now lacked the vital organs necessary for life. The blast had left a hole big enough for me to see right through him to where Merrell was cowering behind his champion. I walked towards him as the mage’s body finally figured out what had happened and collapsed to the ground.

If that all sounds too easy, it wasn’t.

Besides, we’re still not at the part where I screwed everything up.

“Now, Kellen, don’t you go doing somethin’ we’re both gonna wish you hadn’t done…” Merrell pleaded. He turned to the two marshals, Harrex and Parsus. “Don’t let him get me!” he cried out. “I’ll pay you! I’ve got good money here, now that the mage is dead.”

The marshals gave Merrell stony looks. Trying to bribe the queen’s marshals service? Not too bright. I suspect the only reason they didn’t arrest him on the spot was because they knew I was about to make it a moot point.

“Don’t you come no closer, Kellen!” Merrell had his hands clasped together in prayer, which was a waste of time. My people are too civilised to believe in gods. We worship our ancestors instead.

“Me?” I asked. “I’m not planning on doing anything reckless, Merrell.”

I gave him just enough time to look relieved before I added, “Now the squirrel cat, he’s a mean little cuss, and I figure he’s going to rip your face off while I eat me some breakfast.”

Ancestors. Now Reichis has me talking like a borderlands hillbilly.

“No! Wait! We can still make a deal. Everybody knows you’re lookin’ for a cure for the shadowblack, right? Well, I got a guy.”

When it comes to snake oils and miracle cures, everybody’s got a guy.

The snow crunched pleasantly under my boot heel as I took another step towards Merrell. I could still see the look on that girl’s face when he…No. Anger just makes you sloppy. Focus on the here and now.

“I swear, Kellen! I got a guy! He can fix your shadowblack!”

Reichis was crouched down, ready to jump. He turned his puffed-up squirrel cat face towards me and I could already see what he thought of that idea. “Don’t fall for this crap again, idjit.”

The warning wasn’t needed or wanted. I’d travelled two entire continents and spent every penny I could earn or steal searching for a remedy for the twisting black marks around my left eye. Only thing I ever got was constipation and a bad case of rose pimples that one time.

“What’s this miracle worker’s name?” I asked.

Merrell was either too smart to think I’d fall for his game or too stupid to come up with a fake name. It didn’t matter though. He’d made me hesitate and that was enough. He reached behind his back and I caught a glimpse of steel just before he sent the knife whirling at me with an underhand throw. The blade took me square in the right shoulder and I went down like a sack of dirt. Reichis scrabbled up Merrell’s body and went for his face, clawing a strip of flesh around his left eye socket that sent a trail of blood into the air. Then the squirrel cat went for his neck.

Merrell was screaming a good one as I got back to my feet, but then I saw him reach behind his back again.

“Reichis! He’s got another knife!”

The squirrel cat ignored me. Bloodthirsty little monster.

I sprinted the few steps towards them, rubbing my fingertips together in hopes the feeling would come back so I could risk using the spell again. It was hopeless though—I’d used too much powder in my last shot and now my fingers were numb. If I tried again, I’d just blow my own hands off. I had a deck of razor-sharp steel throwing cards strapped to my right thigh, but those wouldn’t do me any good with numb fingers and a knife stuck in my shoulder.

Merrell brought the blade around and tried to slash at Reichis, but the squirrel cat was savvy enough to drop off his chest and go after his leg. Merrell kicked him hard and the squirrel cat landed a few feet away. In a fit of rage, Merrell chased after him and brought his foot down like a hammer. Had Reichis not rolled away he’d’ve been crushed. Merrell was about to give it another try when I caught up with him. Whistling through my teeth as I presaged the pain, I ripped the knife out of my shoulder and used it to stab Merrell of Betrian through the neck. In the end, I think I screamed more than he did.

The two marshals waited patiently for Merrell to bleed out, then led their horses towards us. As part of the overseeing service, they always patch up the victor’s wounds. The Daroman are civilised like that.

“You’re bleeding pretty good there, fella,” Parsus said.

I looked at my shoulder and realised he was right. There was more blood than there should have been. The knife must’ve hit something important. Absently I grabbed the first cloth I saw from the side of the marshal’s horse and pressed it against the wound to staunch the flow.

“Oh crap,” I heard Reichis mutter.

My gaze went from the squirrel cat to the two marshals. Parsus looked like he was about to go into shock. Harrex was pulling out his crossbow. That’s when I realised what I’d just done.

I’d come a hundred and fifty miles to kill a man with no legal justification other than that he’d cheated me at cards. I’d killed a Jan’Tep mage in a duel, murdered his employer in cold blood and up until that exact moment… when I’d grabbed the red-and-white flag of Darome off that marshal’s horse… I hadn’t even committed a crime.

Funny thing about the empire: by their way of thinking, unless you’re a foreign diplomat, the instant you cross into Daroman lands you become a citavis teradi—a territorial citizen. That dubious honour that comes with one or two minor legal protections and the sacred duty to defend the monarch. Unfortunately, I’d just soaked the queen’s flag in blood, which was how you declared war against the Royal Family of Darome, the very definition of an act of treason. And I’d done it in front of two of the queen’s own marshals.

I didn’t have the strength for another spell, but I probably would’ve tried anyway if Parsus hadn’t prudently hit me on the back of the head with his marshal’s mace. As I went down the last thing I heard was Reichis’s terrified, chittering voice.

“Idjit.”

My first thought on waking up was that Reichis was dead. Well, that’s a bit of a lie—my first thought was that someone must have vomited, because an acrid smell filled my nostrils. My second thought was that, since I could also taste it, the vomit had likely come from me. My third thought was that someone had strung me up over the side of a boat. But since the ocean below me appeared to be frozen, it was more likely I’d been tied to the side of my horse. The marshals had strapped me face down across the saddle and that’s not a good position to be in when the thing under your stomach is trotting through the countryside. My fourth thought, I promise you, was that my partner was dead.

The marshals don’t like wildcards and they don’t take chances. Having seen Reichis go after the bird and then the mage, not to mention shredding Merrell’s face, they’d have put him down rather than have him attack them when he realised I was being taken away. Poor little guy. I hoped he hadn’t seen it coming.

Then I heard a noise that sounded like a grunt and the sound of laughing. Ancestors, I thought. They’re torturing him for kicks.

“Bastards,” I said. At least he was still alive. Now I just had to find a way to free myself and rescue him. I twisted my neck uncomfortably to see what they were doing to the squirrel cat. I don’t know quite what I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t the sight of the older man, Harrex, on his horse behind me, with Reichis lying with all four of his paws up as the marshal plopped bits of food into his mouth. The squirrel cat gave another little grunt, followed by a burp.

“Let me take him for a while,” Marshal Parsus called to his partner.

“You had him practically all the way from the border,” Harrex said. “Besides, he’s comfy as he is.” Then Harrex held another morsel of food a few inches from Reichis’s muzzle. “You’re just a comfy fuzzy little bear, aren’t ya?”

Reichis reached up with his little paws and plucked the food from Harrex’s hand. This sent the marshal snorting with pleasure.

“Oh, you’re a clever one, aren’t ya, little fella?”

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

“What?” Reichis chittered. “It’s not like you’ll feel any better if I’m on an empty stomach.”

This is probably a good time to mention that I’m fairly sure squirrel cats are a type of flying rat.

I tried to pull my hands free, intent on murder but not entirely sure who to start with. That’s when I felt the Daroman handcuffs and realised—with the distant curiosity they say you experience just as the hangman drops the trap door below you—that I was screwed.

I don’t know what it is about handcuffs that fascinates me. It’s not the state of being bound, that’s for sure. As a frequent, if involuntary, wearer, I promise you my experience is nothing like the erotic pictures you sometimes see decorating the walls of the second-floor stairs of full-service saloons.

The thing about handcuffs, though, is that they tell you a whole lot about the country you’re in. Take the Zhuban, who live just north of where I’d been arrested. Now their handcuffs are really something: thick iron rings lined with sharp protrusions that provide steady, painful pressure against the nerves in your wrists. Anyone wearing the cuffs for more than a couple of hours experiences intense agony and frequently bleeds out from the cuts on their skin before they even meet their Zhuban advocate to prepare for trial. On the other hand, if you’re smart, and you can handle a lot of pain, the blood from your wrists can be an effective lubricant in the process of escaping the cuffs.

That’s the Zhuban people for you: they’re cruel, fearless and not altogether bright. The instruments of torture that pass for Zhubanese handcuffs are what you get when you have a culture completely devoted to the idea that all of existence is governed by destiny. They figure that if you’re in cuffs, whether guilty or not, you must’ve done something to annoy the universe and you deserve all the pain you get. On the other hand, anyone who breaks out of one of their jails is presumed to be innocent because, after all, it was their destiny to escape.

Now the Jan’Tep dislike using iron for anything. Magic is their game, or, I should technically say, our game, since I come from a Jan’Tep clan. Mages don’t have much use for pure iron since it interferes with magic. Besides, they don’t need anything as blunt as thick iron rings to keep a person bound. A pair of Jan’Tep binding loops are just thin copper wire inscribed with intricate little symbols. Binding loops have the insidious property of tightening the more you put pressure against them. So the more scared and frantic you get, the sooner you’ll see your hands flop down to the floor, cut through by the sharp copper wire.

Nasty things. Unbreakable too, unless you happen to be a more powerful mage than the one who charmed the binding loops. Well, that’s not entirely true—there is one trick that can get you out every time, but I’d rather keep that little secret to myself. Regardless, the Jan’Tep never bother asking the question: “What if the person being bound is, in fact, a more powerful mage than the one who made the loops?” because, for the Jan’Tep, whoever is the better mage is almost certainly the better man, and thus if the prisoner escapes, he must not have deserved to be in cuffs in the first place. Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about my people, my family and my life.

But the handcuffs that the marshals had put on me were Daroman in design. Daroman handcuffs are unlike those of the Zhuban or the Jan’Tep. Oh, don’t get me wrong; they’re strong like you wouldn’t believe: a half-inch-thick band of Gitabrian steel connected by a chain you could waste a dozen serrated blacksmith’s saws trying to cut through. But unlike the painful protrusions of the Zhubanese cuffs, or the wrist-cutting magic of the Jan’Tep, the inside of Daroman cuffs are thickly padded with silk. They’re extremely comfortable. Soft as a courtier’s winter glove, I swear.

This tells you a lot about the Daroman culture. For them, being an imperial people who over the past hundred years have come to dominate many of the smaller nations on the continent—including the Jan’Tep—the most important thing is to be seen as trustworthy. The Daroman have a queer notion of justice compared to most people: they think you shouldn’t be punished for a crime until you’ve been found guilty of committing it. It’s a crazy way to think, but seems to have worked for them over the years.

By Daroman reckoning, if they do have to hold you in order to take you to trial, you should be, if not comfortable, then at least not in pain. Darome is nothing if not a civilised country. No wonder they’ve taken over half the continent and killed a good portion of the other half.

But the Daroman people are also incredibly practical: the silk padding inside the cuffs actually fits so tightly around your wrists that it makes escape impossible because it forms a perfect seal. Daroman cuffs, in addition to being the most comfortable shackles you’ll ever encounter, are also the only ones that guarantee you’ll never get out by yourself. That’s why, when I say, I knew I was screwed the moment I felt the Daroman handcuffs around my wrists, I know what I’m talking about.

“Y’need anything?” Marshal Parsus asked me, nudging his horse alongside mine.

“The key to these handcuffs would be nice.”

The slightly confused expression on his plain, freckled face was a testament both to his genial disposition and utter lack of any sense of humour. “I was thinking more of some water or food,” he said.

Daroman marshals—they truly pride themselves on making sure their prisoners reach the gallows in perfect health. The thought of food, however, only brought on another wave of nausea. “Just some water, thanks.”

He pulled out a leather flask and brought it to my lips. I had to turn my head sideways to catch the stream, giving the marshal a clear view of the shadowblack markings around my left eye.

“Those things hurt any?” he asked, tilting the flask a little closer to my mouth.

I swirled the water around a little before swallowing. “They get cold when the sun shines on them. But other than that, not really.”

“Funny-looking thing.” He traced his finger in the air a few inches from my face. “Kinda like three rings being eaten by vines.”

“I’ve heard worse descriptions.” Mostly having to do with parts of people’s anatomy.