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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 © 2017 by RJ Barker

  Excerpt from Hope and Red copyright © 2016 by Jon Skovron

  Excerpt from The Dragon Lords: Fool’s Gold copyright © 2016 by Jon Hollins

  Cover design by Tom Sanderson

  Cover image by Arcangel

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2017

  First U. S. Edition: August 2017

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939645

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-46649-3 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-46653-0 (ebook)

  E3-20170621-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Interlude

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Interlude

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Interlude

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Interlude

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Interlude

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Interlude

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Interruption

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Extras Meet the Author

  Interview

  A Preview of Hope and Red

  A Preview of The Dragon Lords: Fool’s Gold

  Orbit Newsletter

  For Lindy and Rook, who are all my best things

  Prologue

  Darik the smith was last among the desolate. The Landsman made him kneel with a kick to the back of his knees, forcing his head down so he knelt and stared at the line between the good green grass and the putrid yellow desert of the sourlands. Nothing grew in the sourlands. A sorcerer had taken the life of the land for his own magics many years ago, before Darik’s parents were born, and only death was found there now. A foul-smelling wind blew his long brown hair into his face and, ten paces away, the first of the desolate was weeping as she waited for the blade—Kina the herdsgirl, no more than a child and the only other from his village. The voice of the Landsman, huge and strong in his grass-green armour, was surprisingly gentle as he spoke to her, a whisper no louder than the knife leaving its scabbard.

  “Shh, child. Soonest done, soonest over,” he said, and then the knife bit into her neck and her tears were stilled for ever. Darik glanced between the bars of his hair and saw Kina’s body jerking as blood fountained from her neck and made dark, twisting, red patterns on the stinking yellow ground—silhouettes of death and life.

  He had hoped to marry Kina when she came of age.

  Darik was cold but it was not the wind that made him shiver; he had been cold ever since the sorcerer hunters had come for him. It was the first time in fifteen years of life that the sweat on his skin wasn’t because of the fierce heat of the forge. The moisture that had clung to him since was a different sweat, a new sweat, a cold frightened animal sweat that hadn’t stopped since they locked the shackles on his wrists. It seemed so long ago now.

  The weeks of marching across the Tired Lands had been like a dream but, looking back, the most dreamlike moment of all was that moment when they had called his name. He hadn’t been surprised—it was as if he’d sold himself to a hedge spirit long ago and had been waiting for someone to come and collect on the debt his whole life.

  “Shh, child. Soonest done, soonest over.” The knife does its necessary work on another of the desolate, and a second set of bloody sigils spatters out on the filthy yellow ground. Is there meaning there? Is there some message for him? In this place between life and death, close to embracing the watery darkness that swallowed the dead gods, are they talking to him?

  Or is it just blood?

  And death.

  And fear.

  “Shh, child. Soonest done, soonest over.” The next one begs for life in the moments before the blade bites. Darik doesn’t know that one’s name, never asked him, never saw the point because once you’re one of the desolate you’re dead. There is no way out, no point running. The brand on your forehead shows you for what they think you are—magic user, destroyer, abomination, sorcerer. You’re only good for bleeding out on the dry dead earth, a sacrifice of blood to heal the land. No one will hide you, no one will pity you when magic has made the dirt so weak people can barely feed their children. There is the sound of choking, fighting, begging as the knife does its work and the thirsty ground drinks the life stolen from it.

  Does Darik feel something in that moment of death? Is there a vibration? Is there a twinge that runs from Darik’s knees, up his legs through his blood to squirm in his belly? Or is that only fear?

  “Shh, child. Soonest done, soonest over.”

  The slice, the cough, blood on the ground, and this time it is unmistakable—a something that shoots up through his body. It sets his teeth on edge, it makes the roots of his hair hurt. Everything starts changing around him: the land is a lens and he is its focus, his mind a bright burning spot of light. What is this feeling? What is it? Were they right?

  Are they right?

  A hand on his forehead.

  Dark worms moving through his flesh.

  The hiss of the blade leaving the scabbard.

  He sweats, hot as any day at the forge.

  His head pulled back, his neck stretched.

  Closing his eyes, he sees a world of silvered lines and shadows.

  The cold touch of the blade against his neck.

  A pause, like the hiss of hot metal in water, like the moment before the geyser of scorching steam hisses out around his hand and the blade is set.

  The sting of a sharp edge against his skin.

  And the grass is talking, and the land is talking, and the trees are talking, and all in a language he cannot understand but at the same time he knows exactly what is being said. Is this wh
at a hedging lord sounds like?

  The creak of leather armour.

  “I will save you.” Is it the voice of Fitchgrass of the fields?

  “No!”

  “Only listen …” This near the souring is it Coil the yellower?

  “Shh, shh, child.” The Landsman’s voice, soothing, calming. “Soonest done, soonest over.”

  “I can save you.” Too far from the rivers for Blue Watta.

  “No.” But Darik’s word is a whisper drowned in fear of the approaching void. Time slows further as the knife slices though his skin, cutting through layer after layer in search of the black vessels of his life.

  “Let me save you.” Or is it the worst of all of them? Is it Dark Ungar speaking?

  “No,” he says. But the word is weak and the will to fight is gone.

  “Let us?”

  “Yes!”

  An explosion of … of?

  Something.

  Something he doesn’t know or understand but he recognises it—it has always been within him. It is something he’s fought, denied, run from. A familiar voice from his childhood, the imaginary friend that frightened his mother and she told him to forget so he pushed it away, far away. But now, when he needs it the most, it is there.

  The blade is gone from his neck.

  He opens his eyes.

  The world is out of focus—a haze of yellows—and a high whine fills his ears the way it would when his father clouted him for “dangerous talk.” The green grass beneath Darik’s knees is gone, replaced by yellow fronds that flake away at his touch like morning ash in the forge. He stares at his hands. They are the same—the same scars, the same half-healed cuts and nicks, the same old burns and calluses.

  Around him is perfect half-circle of dead grass, as if the sourlands have taken a bite out of the lush grasslands at their edge

  His wrists are no longer bound in cold metal.

  Is he lost, gone? Has he made a deal with something terrible? But it doesn’t feel like that; it feels like this was something in him, something that has always been in him, just waiting for the right moment.

  He can feel the souring like an ache.

  There had been four Landsmen to guard the five desolate. Now the guards are blurry smears of torn, angular metal, red flesh and sharp white bone.

  Darik rubbed his eyes and forced himself up, staggering like a man waking from too long a sleep. A movement in the corner of his eye pulled at his attention. One of the Landsmen was still alive, on his back and trying to scuttle away on his elbows as Darik approached. The smith knelt by the Landsman and placed his big hands on either side of his head. It would be easy to finish him, just a single twist of his big arms and the Landsman’s neck would snap like a charcoaled stick. He willed his arms to move but instead found himself staring at the Landsman. Not much older than he was and scared, so scared. The Landsman’s lips were moving and at first the only sound is the high whine of the world, then the words come like the approaching thunder of a mount’s feet as it gallops towards him.

  “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry …”

  “It’s wrong,” Darik said, “this is all wrong,” but the Landsman’s eyes were far away, lost in fear and past understanding. His mouth moving.

  “… I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry …”

  Darik stared a little longer, the killing muscles in his arms tensing. Now his vision had cleared he saw beyond the broken bodies of the other Landsmen to the shattered corpses of those who had died beside him. They had been picked up and tossed away on the winds of his fury.

  Darik leaned in close to the Landsman.

  “This has to stop,” he said, and let go of the man’s head. The words kept coming.

  “… I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry.”

  He could see Kina’s corpse, dead at the hand of the knights then shredded into a red mess by his magic.

  “I forgive you,” said Darik through tears. The Landsman slumped to the floor, eyes wide in shock as the smith walked away.

  Inside the thick muscles of Darik’s arms black veins are screaming.

  Chapter 1

  We were attempting to enter Castle Maniyadoc through the night soil gate and my master was in the sort of foul mood only an assassin forced to wade through a week’s worth of shit can be. I was far more sanguine about our situation. As an assassin’s apprentice you become inured to foulness. It is your lot.

  “Girton,” said Merela Karn. That is my master’s true name, though if I were to refer to her as anything other than “Master” I would be swiftly and painfully reprimanded. “Girton,” she said, “if one more king, queen or any other member of the blessed classes thinks a night soil gate is the best way to make an unseen entrance to their castle, you are to run them through.”

  “Really, Master?”

  “No, not really,” she whispered into the night, her breath a cloud in the cold air. “Of course not really. You are to politely suggest that walking in the main gate dressed as masked priests of the dead gods is less conspicuous. Show me a blessed who doesn’t know that the night soil gate is an easy way in for an enemy and I will show you a corpse.”

  “You have shown me many corpses, Master.”

  “Be quiet, Girton.”

  My master is not a lover of humour. Not many assassins are; it is a profession that attracts the miserable and the melancholic. I would never put myself into either of those categories, but I was bought into the profession and did not join by choice.

  “Dead gods in their watery graves!” hissed my master into the night. “They have not even opened the grate for us.” She swung herself aside whispering, “Move, Girton!” I slipped and slid crabwise on the filthy grass of the slope running from the river below us up to the base of the towering castle walls. Foulness farted out of the grating to join the oozing stream that ran down the motte and joined the river.

  A silvery smudge marred the riverbank in the distance; it looked like a giant paint-covered thumb had been placed over it. In the moonlight it was quite beautiful, but we had passed near as we sneaked in, and I knew it was the same livid yellow as the other sourings which scarred the Tired Lands. There was no telling how old this souring was, and I wondered how big it had been originally and how much blood had been spilled to shrink it to its present size. I glanced up at the keep. This side had few windows and I thought the small souring could be new, but that was a silly, childish thought. The blades of the Landsmen kept us safe from sorcerers and the magic which sucked the life from the land. There had been no significant magic used in the Tired Lands since the Black Sorcerer had risen, and he had died before I had been born. No, what I saw was simply one of many sores on the land—a place as dead as the ancient sorcerer who made it. I turned from the souring and did my best to imagine it wasn’t there, though I was sure I could smell it, even over the high stink of the night soil drain.

  “Someone will pay for arranging this, Girton, I swear,” said my master. Her head vanished into the darkness as she bobbed down to examine the grate once more. “This is sealed with a simple five-lever lock.” She did not even breathe heavily despite holding her entire weight on one arm and one leg jammed into stonework the black of old wounds. “You can open this, Girton. You need as much practice with locks as you can get.”

  “Thank you, Master,” I said. I did not mean it. It was cold, and a lock is far harder to manipulate when it is cold.

  And when it is covered in shit.

  Unlike my master, I am no great acrobat. I am hampered by a clubbed foot, so I used my weight to hold me tight against the grating even though it meant getting covered in filth. On the stone columns either side of the grate the forlorn remains of minor gods had been almost chipped away. On my right only a pair of intricately carved antlers remained, and on my left a pair of horns and one solemn eye stared out at me. I turned from the eye and brought out my picks, sliding them into the lock with shaking fingers and feeling within using the slim metal rods.

  “What i
f there are dogs, Master?”

  “We kill them, Girton.”

  There is something rewarding in picking a lock. Something very satisfying about the click of the barrels and the pressure vanishing as the lock gives way to skill. It is not quite as rewarding done while a castle’s toilets empty themselves over your body, but a happy life is one where you take your pleasures where you can.

  “It is open, Master.”

  “Good. You took too long.”

  “Thank you, Master.” It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but I was sure she smiled before she nodded me forward. I hesitated at the edge of the pitch-dark drain.

  “It looks like the sort of place you’d find Dark Ungar, Master.”

  “The hedgings are just like the gods, Girton—stories to scare the weak-minded. There’s nothing in there but stink and filth. You’ve been through worse. Go.”

  I slithered through the gate, managing to make sure no part of my skin or clothing remained clean, and into the tunnel that led through the keep’s curtain wall. Somewhere beyond I could hear the lumpy splashes of night soil being shovelled into the stream that ran over my feet. The living classes in the villages keep their piss and night soil and sell it to the tanneries and dye makers, but the blessed classes are far too grand for that, and their castles shovel their filth out into the rivers—as if to gift it to the populace. I have crawled through plenty of filth in my fifteen years, from the thankful, the living and the blessed; it all smells equally bad.

  Once we had squeezed through the opening we were able to stand, and my master lit a glow-worm lamp, a small wick that burns with a dim light that can be amplified or shut off by a cleverly interlocking set of mirrors. Then she lifted a gloved hand and pointed at her ear.

  I listened.

  Above the happy gurgle of the stream running down the channel—water cares nothing for the medium it travels through—I heard the voices of men as they worked. We would have to wait for them to move before we could proceed into the castle proper, and whenever we have to wait I count out the seconds the way my master taught me—one, my master. Two, my master. Three, my master—ticking away in my mind like the balls of a water clock as I stand idle, filth swirling round my ankles and my heart beating out a nervous tattoo.