The Innocent Mage

Book 1: Kingmaker, Kingbreaker

by Karen Miller

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

"The Innocent Mage is come, and we stand at the beginning of the end of everything."



Being a fisherman like his father isn't a bad life, but it's not the one that Asher wants. Despite his humble roots, Asher has grand dreams. And they call him to Dorana, home of princes, beggars, and the warrior mages who have protected the kingdom for generations.



Little does Asher know, however, that his arrival in the city is being closely watched by members of the Circle, people dedicated to preserving an ancient magic.



Asher might have come to the city to make his fortune, but he will find his destiny.

Release date: December 1, 2011

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 300

Sample

Nine hundred and ninety-seven … nine hundred and ninety-eight … nine hundred and ninety-nine … one thousand!

Asher opened his eyes. At last.


Time to go.

Holding his breath, he slid out of his old, creaking bed and put his bare feet on the floor as lightly as the rising sun kissed
the mouth of Restharven Harbour.


In the other bed his brother Bede, mired in sleep, stirred and grunted beneath his blankets. Asher waited, suspended between
heartbeats. Bede grunted again, then started snoring, and Asher sighed his silent relief. Thank Barl they didn’t still share
this room with Niko. Bloody Niko woke cursing if a fly farted. There’d be no chance of creeping safely out of the house if
Niko still slept here.


But after Wishus finally got hisself married to that shrew Pippa and moved out of his solitary chamber to his own stone cottage
along Fishhook Lane, Niko had taken belligerent possession of the empty room. Claimed it as his own by right of being the
oldest brother still living at home – and with his fists if nobody liked that reason.


As the youngest, Asher didn’t rate a room of his own. As the youngest he didn’t rate a lot of things. Even though he was twenty
years old, and a man, and could be married his own damn self if he’d wanted to be. If there was a woman in Restharven or anywhere
else on the coast who could make his heart beat fast for longer than a kiss and a fumble on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.


Pausing to scoop up his boots, left conveniently at the end of the bed, Asher tiptoed into the corridor and past Niko’s closed
door. At Da’s room he hesitated. Looked in.


Da wasn’t there. Shafting moonlight revealed the sagging double bed, empty. The blankets undisturbed. The single pillow undented.
The room smelled musty. Abandoned, even though somebody still lived there. If he closed his eyes, he could almost catch the
sweet suggestion of Ma’s perfume.


But only almost, and only if he imagined it. Ma was long since dead and buried, and all that remained of her perfume was a
single cracked and used-up bottle Da kept on the dusty windowsill.


Asher moved on, a ghost in his own house.

He found his father in the living room, sprawled snoring in his armchair. An empty ale jug sat on the table by his right hand;
his tankard was tumbled on the carpet at his slippered feet. Asher wrinkled his nose at the sourness of spilled beer and soaked
wool.


The living room curtains were still open. Moonlight painted the floor, the armchair. Da. Asher stared down at him and felt
a pang of conscience. He looked so tired. But then he had a right to. Sailing towards sixty, Da was. When you saw him on the ocean, bellowing orders and hauling nets
over the side of whichever family smack he’d chosen to captain that day, or watched him gutting fish and bargaining the prices afterwards, it was hard to believe
he had seven sons grown and was a grandpa eleven times over. There wasn’t a man in all the Kingdom of Lur, Olken or Doranen,
who could beat back the waves like Da. Who could catch a leaping sawfish with just a hook and a rod, or snatch a bright-scaled
volly from right over the side of the boat and kill it with his bare hands alone.


Looking at him now, though, all black and silver in the moonlight, his uncapped head sparse with greying hair, his weathered
face sagging in sorrowed sleep, belief was all too easy.


Da was old. Old and wearing out fast, from work and worry.

Still holding his boots, Asher crouched beside the armchair. Gazed into his father’s slumbering features and felt a great
wave of love crash over him. He was going to miss this face, with its crooked nose, broke in a drunken brawl over Ma when
they were courting, and its scarred chin, split by slipping on a storm-heaved deck five seasons gone.


‘Past time somebody did the worryin’ for you, Da,’ he whispered. ‘Past time y’had things soft, ’stead of hard. I said I’d
do this for you, one day, and I reckon that day’s come.’


Trouble was, it was easier said than done. To make good on his promise he needed more than dreams, though he had plenty of
those. He needed money. Lots and lots of money. But he wasn’t going to find it in Restharven. Not just because it was Restharven,
but because of his brothers. In a family business, money made was money shared … and the youngest got the smallest slice of
the pie.


Well, sink that for a load of mackerel.


He was off to find his own pie, and he wasn’t going to share it with anybody. Not till the pie was big enough to buy him a
boat of his own, so he and Da could leave Zeth and the rest of them to their own devices, sink or swim, who cared? He and
Da wouldn’t. He and Da would have their own damn boat, and with all the money they’d make fishing it, just the two of them,
they’d live as grand as the king hisself.


For two years now, he’d been scrimping and saving and going without, just so he’d have enough to get by. Enough to get him
all the way to the grand City of Dorana. He had it all worked out.


‘It’s just for a year, Da,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll only be gone a year. It ain’t that long a time, really. And I’ll be back afore
y’know it. You’ll see.’


The clock on the wall struck half past ten, loud chiming in the silence. The Rusty Anchor would be closing soon, and Jed was
waiting with his knapsack and purse. He had to go. Asher leaned over the armchair, pressed a kiss to his father’s weathered
cheek and slipped out of the small stone cottage he and all his brothers had lived in from birth.


When he was sure it was safe to make a noise he stamped into his boots then hurried from shadow to shadow until he reached
the Rusty Anchor. The pub was full, as usual. Asher pressed his nose to the bobbled windowpane, trying not to be seen, and
searched for Jed. Spying his friend at last amongst the crush of carousing fishermen, he tapped and waved and hoped Jed would
notice him. Just as he was despairing, Jed leapt away from an enthusiastically swung arm, stumbled, turned, and saw him.


‘I were about to give up on you!’ his friend grumbled as he came outside, a fresh tankard of ale in his hand. ‘You said ten o’clock, or soon after. It be nigh on closin’ time now!’


‘Don’t look like y’missed me over much.’ Asher swiped the tankard from Jed’s clutches and took a deep swallow of cold, bitter
ale. ‘Did y’bring ’em?’


Jed snatched the tankard back. ‘Course I brung ’em,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘I’m your friend, ain’t I?’

‘A friend would let me drink that tankard dry,’ said Asher, grinning. ‘It’s a long ways between me and the next pub, and from
the looks of you, one tankard more’ll be one tankard too many.’


‘Ain’t no such thing,’ said Jed. Then he relented. ‘Here.’ He shoved the tankard at him. ‘Bloody bully. Now come on. I’ve
stashed your things round the corner. If you stop fritterin’ my time and get along I’ll manage a last mouthful meself afore
the Anchor closes.’


Asher took the tankard. Good ole Jed. There wasn’t another soul he’d have trusted his precious purseful of trins and cuicks
to, or his goatskin of water and knapsack stuffed with cheese and apples and bread and clothes. Nor his dreams, neither. They’d
been friends their whole lives, him and Jed. He’d even offered to take Jed to the City with him, but there’d been no need.
Jed wasn’t plagued with a school of brothers. He was all set to inherit his da’s fishing boat in a few more years.


Lucky bastard.

‘You take care now,’ Jed said sternly as Asher guzzled the rest of his ale. ‘Dorana City’s a long ways from here, and it be
a powerful dry place. Not to mention swarmin’ with Doranen. So just you watch your step, Meister Asher. You ain’t the most
respectful man I ever had the pleasure of knowin’. Fact is, I ain’t sure those magic folk up yonder be ready for the likes
of you.’


Asher laughed and tossed him the empty tankard. ‘Reckon those magic folk up yonder can take care of ’emselves, Jed. Just like
me. Now you won’t forget to see my da first thing tomorrow and let him know I be fine and I’ll be back a year from today,
will you?’


‘Course I won’t. But I still reckon you ought to let me tell him where you’ll be. He’s bound to ask, y’know.’

‘Aye, I know, but it ain’t to be helped,’ said Asher. ‘You got to keep that flappin’ tongue of yours behind your teeth, Jed,
’cause two seconds after you tell him he’ll tell Zeth and the rest of ’em and that’ll be the end of that. They’ll find me
and drag me back here and I won’t ever get enough money saved to set Da and me up all grand and comfy. Just ’cause we’re related
and I be the youngest they think they own me. But they don’t. So it’ll be safest all round if you just act like you ain’t
got the foggiest notion where I am.’


‘Lie, you mean?’

Asher pulled a face. ‘For ’is own good, Jed. And mine.’

‘All right,’ said Jed, belching. ‘If you say so.’

Asher tied the water-filled goatskin to his belt and hitched his knapsack over his shoulders. ‘I say so.’

Jed sighed mournfully. ‘You’ll miss the festival.’

‘This year. We can drink twice as much next year to make up for it. My shout. Now get yourself into the Anchor, would you,
afore somebody wonders where you’ve got to and comes lookin’.’


‘Aye, sir,’ said Jed, and bruised Asher’s ribs with a clumsy hug. ‘Have a grand time, eh? Bring yourself home safe and sound.’

‘I aim to.’ Asher stepped back. ‘Safe and mighty plump in the pocket to boot. And mayhap I’ll bring a tidy armful of City
Olken lass home with me and my money!’


Jed snorted. ‘Mayhap you will at that. Provided she’s half blind and all foolish. Now for the love of Barl, it be ten minutes till closing time. If you don’t get out of here now
you’ll be leavin’ with an audience.’


Which was the last thing he needed. With a smile and a wave Asher turned and hurried up the street, away from his friend and
the pub and the only life he’d ever known. If he walked all night, fast, he’d reach the village of Schoomer in time to hitch
a ride on one of the potato wagons heading for Colford. From Colford he could hitch to Jerring, from Jerring to Sapslo, and
in Sapslo he could buy a seat on one of the wagons travelling to Dorana.


No way would his sinkin’ brothers ever work out that plan.


As he strode up the hill towards the Coast Road he looked out to the left, where Restharven Harbour shone like a newly minted
trin beneath the full-bellied moon. The warm night was full of salt and sound. A rising breeze blew spray in his face and
his ears echoed with the pounding boom of waves crashing against the cliffs on either side of the keyhole harbour.


He felt his heart knock against his ribs. A year in dry Dorana. A year without the ocean. No screaming gulls, no skin-scouring
surf. No pitching deck beneath his feet, no snapping sails above his head. No racing the tide and his brothers back to port,
or diving off Dolphin Head into surging blue water, or scoffing grease and vinegar fresh-fried fish for dinner with Jed and
the other lads.


Could he stand it?

Ha. ‘Could’ didn’t come into it. He had to. There were dreams to fulfil and a promise to keep, and he couldn’t do either without
leaving his heart and soul behind him. Without leaving home.


Head up, whistling and unafraid, Asher hurried towards his future.

‘He’s here.’

Caught unawares, Matt straightened sharply and stared at the woman framed in the stable doorway. Her thin fingers clung tight
to the top of the bolted half-door and her angular face was taut with suppressed excitement. The startled horse he was saddling
tossed its head and snorted.


‘Easy, Ballodair, you fool,’ he said, one hand on the dancing brown hindquarters. ‘Sneak up on a body why don’t you, Dathne?’

‘Sorry.’ As usual, she didn’t sound particularly repentant. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

Matt ducked under the stallion’s neck and checked the girth buckles on the other side. ‘Not really.’

Dathne glanced over her shoulder, unbolted the stable door and slipped inside. From the yard behind her, the sounds of voices
raised in bantering laughter and the clip-clopping scrunch of iron-shod hooves on raked gravel as two of the stable lads led
horses to pasture. ‘I said,’ she repeated, lowering her voice, ‘he’s here.’


The gold buckles on the horse’s bridle weren’t quite even. Tugging them straight, frowning, Matt glanced at her. ‘Who? His Highness?’ He clicked his tongue. ‘Early again, drat him. Nine o’clock he asks me to have Ballodair ready,
some meetin’ or other somewhere, but it ain’t even—’


Dathne made an impatient hissing sound. ‘Not Prince Gar, you clot-head! Him.’

At first he couldn’t make head or tail of what she meant. Then he looked, really looked, into her face, her eyes. His heart
leapt, and he had to steady himself against Ballodair’s warm, muscled neck.


‘Are you sure? How do you know?’ His voice sounded strange: cracked and dry and frightened. He was frightened. If Dathne was
right … if the one so long awaited was here at last … then this life, which he loved despite its dangerous secrets, was ended.
And this day, so bright and blue and warmly scented with jasmine and roses and fine-boned horseflesh, marked the beginning
of the end of all things known and cherished.


The end of everything, should he and Dathne fail.

Dathne was staring at him, surprise and annoyance in her narrow, uncompromising face. ‘How do I know? You of all people ask
me that?’ she, demanded. ‘I know. He woke me out of sleep with his coming, late last night. My skin crawls with him.’ Then she shrugged, an impatient twitch
of her bony shoulders. ‘And anyway, I’ve seen him.’


‘Seen him?’ said Matt, startled. ‘In the flesh, you mean? Not vision? When? Where?’

Pulling her light shawl tight about her, she took a straw-rustling step closer and dropped her voice to a near whisper. ‘Earlier.
I followed my nose till I found him coming out of Verry’s Hostelry.’ She sniffed. ‘Can’t say I think much of his taste.’


‘Dathne, that was foolish.’ He wiped his sweaty palms down his breeches. ‘What if he’d seen you?’


Another shrug. ‘What if he had? He doesn’t know me or what I’m about. Besides, he didn’t. The City’s thronging with folk for
market day. I blended with the crowd well enough.’


‘You don’t reckon …’ Matt hesitated. ‘D’you think he knows?’

Dathne scowled and scuffed her toe in the yellow straw, thinking. ‘He might,’ she said at last. ‘I suppose.’ Then she shook
her head. ‘But I think not. If he did, why would there be need of us? We’ve a part to play in all this that hasn’t begun yet.’
Her dark eyes took on a daunting, familiar glow. ‘I wonder where it will lead us. Don’t you?’


Matt shivered. That was the kind of question he’d rather wasn’t asked, or answered. ‘So long as it’s not to an early grave,
I don’t much care. Have you told Veira?’


‘Not yet,’ Dathne replied after a heartbeat’s hesitation. ‘She’s got Circle business, trouble in Basingdown, and beyond him
being here I’ve nothing to tell. Not yet.’


‘You sound so calm. So sure!’ He knew he sounded accusing. Couldn’t help it. There she stood, strong and certain and self-contained
as always, while his guts were writhing into knots and fresh sweat damped his shirt. Sensing his distress, Ballodair blew
a warning through blood-red nostrils and pinned back his sharply curved ears. Matt took a strangled breath and stroked the
horse’s glossy cheek, seeking comfort. ‘How is it you’re so sure?’ His voice was a plaintive whisper.


Dathne smiled. ‘Because I dreamed him and he came.’

And that was that. Stupid of him to expect more. To expect comfort.

Dathne was Dathne: acerbic, cryptic, unflustered and alone. After six years of knowing her, arguing with her, deferring to her, a drab and fluttering moth to her flame, he knew
it was pointless to protest. She would be as she was and there was an end to it. As well to complain that a horse had four
legs and a tail.


A grin, fleeting and impish, lit her plain face. She could read him as easily as any of the books she sold in her shop, drat
her. ‘I should go. The prince will be here for his horse any moment, and I have things to do.’


Something in her gleaming eyes unsettled his innards all over again. ‘What things?’

‘Meet me in the Goose tonight for a pint,’ she invited, fingers lightly resting on the stable door. ‘Could be I’ll have a
tale to tell.’


‘Dathne—!’

But she was out of the stable, bolting the door, snick, behind her, and the sun was bright on the raven-black hair bound in a knot close to her long straight neck. ‘No later than
seven, mind!’ she called over her shoulder, stepping neatly aside from young Bellybone with his buckets of water dangling
left and right. ‘I need my beauty sleep … for all the good it’s done me so far!’


Then she was gone, slipping like a shadow through the stable yard’s arched main entrance, and coming through the door in the
wall leading to the prince’s Tower residence was the prince himself, ready for riding and for business, bright yellow hair
like molten gold and the easy smile on his face that hid so much, so much.


With a sigh and a last frowning stare after the woman he was soul-sworn bound to serve and to follow, Matt thrust aside his
worries and went forth to greet his sovereign’s son.


In the great Central Square of Dorana, capital city of the Kingdom of Lur, market day was in full, uproarious swing. First
Barl’s Day of every month it was held, regular as rainfall, and even though the sun had barely cleared the tallest turret
on the distant royal palace the square was crammed full of buyers and sellers and sightseers, flapping and jostling like fish
in a net.


Asher stood in the midst of the madness and stared like a lackwit, his senses reeling. A rabble of noise dinned his ears and
his nose was overwhelmed by so many different smells, sweat and smoke and cow dung and incense, flowers and sweetmeats and
roasting fowl and fresh-baked bread and more, that his empty stomach churned.


Most of the stallholders were his own people, Olken, dark-haired and industrious, selling their wares with cheerful ferocity.
Fresh fruit, vegetables, butchered meat, live chickens, cured fish, candles, books, jewellery, saddlery, furniture, paintings,
haircuts, bread, clocks, sweetmeats, pastries, wool, work clothes, fancy clothes … it seemed there was nothing a man couldn’t
buy if he had a yearning, and the money.


‘Ribbons! Buy yer pretty ribbons here, six cuicks a dozen!’

‘Teshoes! Ripe teshoes!’

‘Oy! Mind how ye go there, lad! Mind how ye go!’

Asher spun on his heel and stumbled clear just as a bull handler, chocolate-brown beast in tow, ambled past on his way to
the Livestock Quarter. The bull’s polished nose ring flashed in the sunshine, and its splayed hooves clacked on the cobblestones.


‘’Ere, you great lump, git out of me way!’ grumbled the fruit seller, a fat Olken woman with her dark hair straggled back
in a bun, her bright green dress swathed in a juice-stained apron and a brace of plump pink teshoes in one capable hand. ‘You be trippin’ up me customers!’


Because he’d sworn a private promise to ask whoever he could, he said to her, ‘Would you be needin’ a body to hire?’

The fruit seller winked at the crowd gathered about her barrows and cackled. ‘Thanks, sonny, but I already got me a man wot’d
make two of you, I reckon, so just be on yer way if you ain’t buyin’ none of me wares!’ A roll of her meaty shoulders heaved
her abundant bosom, and her lips pursed in a mockery of invitation.


Around him, laughter. Hot-faced, Asher waited till the ole besom’s back was turned, nicked a teshoe from the pile at the front
of the stall and jumped into the swift-flowing stream of passers-by.


He finished the fruit in three gulps and licked the tart juice off his stubbly chin. It was all the breakfast he’d get. Lunch,
too, and maybe even dinner if he didn’t find work today. The purse tucked into his belt was ominously flat; it had taken nearly
all his meagre savings just to get here, and then last night’s board had gobbled up most of the rest. He had enough for one
more night’s lodging, a bowl of soup and a heel of bread. After that, he was looking at a spot of bother. But even as doubt
set its gnawing rat teeth in his guts, he felt a wild grin escape him.


He was in Dorana. Dorana. The great walled City itself. If only Da could see him now. If his brothers could see … they’d puke their miserable guts out, right enough.


Ha.

Long before devising the plan that had brought him here, he’d dreamed of seeing this place. Had grown up feeding that dream on the stories Ole Hemp used to tell the eager crowd of boys who gathered round his feet of an afternoon,
once the boats were in and the catch was cleaned and gutted and the gulls were squabbling their fill on the pier.


Ole Hemp was the only man in Restharven who’d ever seen the City. Sprawled on his favourite bench down by the harbour, puffing
on his gnarly pipe, he used to tell tales that set all their hearts to thumping and nigh started their eyes right out of their
heads.


‘Dorana City,’ Ole Hemp would say, ‘be so big you could fit Restharven in it twenty times over, at least. Its houses and hostelries
be tall, like inland trees, and painted every colour under the sky. And its ale houses, well, they never run dry, do they.
And the smells! Enough to spill the juices from yer mouth in a river, for in their kitchens they roast pigs and lambs and
fat juicy bullocks over fire pits so big and deep they’d hold a whole Restharven fambly, near enough.’


And the listening boys would sigh, imagining, and rub their fish-full bellies.

But there was more, Hemp would say, so hushed and awestruck his voice sounded like the foam on the shingle once all the waves
had run back to the sea. In Dorana you could see Barl’s Wall itself, that towering golden barrier of magic bedded deep into
the sawtooth mountain range above and behind the City.


‘See it?’ the boys would gasp, unbelieving, no matter how many times they’d heard the story.

‘Oh aye,’ Old Hemp assured them. ‘Barl’s Wall ain’t invisible, like the spells sunk deep in the horizon-wide reef that stops
all boats entering or leaving the calmer waters between coral and coast. No, no, Barl’s Wall be a great flaming thing, visible
at noon on a cloudless blue day. Keeping us safe. Protecting every last Olken man, woman and child from the dangers of the long-abandoned world beyond.’


That was when somebody would always ask. ‘And what about the Doranen, Hemp? Does it protect them too?’ And Hemp would always
answer: ‘Course it do. Reckon they’re like to build a wall as won’t save their own selves first and foremost?’


But he always said that quietly, as though they could hear him, even though the nearest Doranen lived over thirty miles away.
For Doranen ears were magic ears, and they weren’t the sort of folk who took kindly to criticism.


Unsettled and suddenly homesick, Asher shook himself free of memories then looked up and over the marketplace into the distance
beyond the City, where Barl’s Wall shimmered in the morning sun. Ole Hemp had been right about that much, any road: there
the Wall was, and there it would stand, most like until the end of time itself.


A laughing group of Doranen sauntered by. Asher couldn’t help himself: he stared.

They were a tall race, the Doranen. Hair the colours of silver and gold and ripe wheat and sunshine, looped and curled and
braided with carelessly expensive jewels. Eyes clear and fine, glass hues of green and blue and grey, and their skin white,
like fresh milk. Their bones were long and elegant, lightly fleshed and sheathed in silk, brocade, velvet, linen, leather.
They carried themselves like creatures apart, untouched, untouchable, and wherever they walked the dust of the marketplace
puffed away from them in deference.


That was magic … and they wore it like an invisible cloak. Wrapped it around their slender shoulders and kept it from slipping with the haughty tilt of their chins and the way they placed their fine-shod feet upon the ground,
as though flowers should spring blooming and perfumed in their wake.


Down Restharven way, you’d hardly see a Doranen from one end of the year to the next. The king, at Sea Harvest Festival. The
tax collector. The census taker. One of their fancy Pothers, if a good old-fashioned Olken healer couldn’t fix your gripes
or your broken bones for you. Other than that, they kept themselves to themselves on large country estates or in the kingdom’s
bigger towns and here, of course, in the capital. What they did to amuse themselves, Asher had no idea. Farmed and fished
rivers and grew grapes and bred horses, he supposed, just like his own people. Except, of course, they used magic.


Asher felt his lip curl. Living your life with magic … it wasn’t natural. These fancy yeller-headed folk with their precious powers to do near on everything for them, to make the world bend to their
wishes and whims, who’d never raised the smallest blister in all their lives, let alone an honest sweat … what did they understand
about the world? About the way a man should be connected to it, should live steeped in its tides and rhythms, obedient to
its subtle voices?


Nowt. For all their mysterious, magical powers, the Doranen understood nowt.

With an impatient, huffing sigh, he moved on. Standing about like a shag on a rock wasn’t going to get him any closer to finding
a job.


With his elbows tucked in and one hand hovering protectively over his purse, he navigated the crowded spaces between the market
stalls, asking each stallholder for work. The little girls back home, picking winkles at low tide, put fewer shells in their gunny-sacks than the rejections he collected now.


His heart was banging uncomfortably. This wasn’t the way his dreams had gone at all. He’d reckoned finding a job’d be a damn
sight easier than this …

Scowling, he stopped before one of the few Doranen stalls in the marketplace. The pretty young woman tending it smiled at
him and snapped her fingers. The cunningly carved and painted toy dog prancing among the other toys immediately barked and
turned a somersault. With another Doranen finger-snap a jolly fat clown dressed in spangled red began juggling three yellow
balls. The little dog yapped and tried to snatch one out of the air.


The stall’s other onlookers laughed. Just in time, Asher caught and swallowed a smile. Snorting, he turned his back on the
dog and the clown and the pretty young woman and stumped away through the streaming crowd. Bloody Doranen. Couldn’t even flummery
toys to amuse spratlings without reaching for a spell.


At the heart of the marketplace stood a fountain, spewing water like a whale. Its centrepiece was a carved greenstone statue
of Barl, with arms outstretched and a thunderbolt grasped in one fist. Beneath the bubbling surface, trins and cuicks winked
and flashed in the sunshine. Asher fished a single precious copper cuick from his purse and tossed it in.


‘It’s a job I be needin’,’ he said to the silent face above him. ‘Nowt fancy, and all in a good cause. Reckon y’could see
your way clear to helpin’?’


The statue stayed silent. Moisture slicked its carved green cheeks like tears … though what Barl had to cry about, he surely
didn’t know. Turning his back, Asher slumped onto the lip of the fountain’s retaining wall. Not that