Cover

Dedication

For the ladies who make me look so good:
(in alphabetical order)
Jennifer Brehl, Emma Coode, Jane Johnson,
and Katherine Nintzel; rarely does an author
get one good editor, let alone four

CHAPTER 1

SACRIFICE

Howls filled the night.

The blasted hills smoked and the stench of char filled the air. Hundreds of robed figures slowly wended their way through rocks to the huge clearing below what remained of a fortress’s gate tower. A man of power stood atop the pile of stones, looking down at his followers.

On the opposite side of the clearing, another man hung back in the shadows, using his considerable skills to remain unseen, and wishing fervently he was just about anywhere else in the world but here. He took a slow, even breath, as much to calm himself as to catch his breath.

James Dasher Jamison struggled to keep his wits about him. In the courts of the three largest nations in the region, he was a minor noble of the Kingdom of the Isles, a man who had inherited rank solely due to his lineage, being the grandson of the Duke of Rillanon; to most others, he was Jim Dasher, a businessman with some ties to crime in the city of Krondor; to a few, he was the Upright Man, leader of the Thieves Guild, the Mockers. And known to even fewer, he was the head of the Kingdom of the Isles intelligence apparatus, reporting directly to his grandfather.

In his slightly more than forty years, Jim had seen a great many strange and terrifying things—it came with his various positions. At times he felt he had become as heartless a bastard as those he had put down in the name of the Crown, or the Conclave of Shadows, with whom he often worked, but even a lifetime of blood and intrigue had not adequately prepared Jim for what he saw before him.

Already the dead numbered in the dozens, if not hundreds, as a massive fire burned around a circle of stakes, to each of which had been tied four human sacrifices. What had churned Jim’s stomach as much as anything had been that the murdered seemed willing, even eager, to embrace their flaming death.

Around the edges of the clearing more sacrifices dangled at the ends of ropes, as only moments before Jim had witnessed them place nooses around their own necks then jump off small ladders, hanging themselves. Many broke their necks with an audible crack, but a few died by slow strangulation, kicking for what seemed far too long a time. Jim had witnessed more than his share of public hangings in Krondor but this was something far more horrific than a criminal meeting his just desserts. This was a willing self-sacrifice to as evil a creature as man could imagine.