Chapters (51)
- Dedication
- Contents
- PREVIOUSLY …
- PART I
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- PART II
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- PART III
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- PART IV
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- About the Author
- ALSO BY DAVID WRAGG
- About the Publisher
‘Hey, relax, kid, I’m not going to hurt you.’
The boy’s eyes were impossibly wide, his voice tiny.
‘You always say that.’
His gaze flicked over Chel’s shoulder, then he bolted, scrambling away through the narrow gap between the banked mud walls. Chel called after the boy, then turned in baffled frustration, hearing the crunch of Rennic’s footsteps behind.
Rennic was not there.
A beast of a man stood before him, no taller than Chel but twice the width, his jutting chest draped in a dark, gold-trimmed cloak, emblazoned with a single golden flower. A long baton, silver-tipped, hung from his belt on the cloak’s open side. It was his face that drew Chel’s attention, however; the two of them stared at each other in surprise. The man had long, straight black hair, bound tight at the nape of his neck and interwoven with gold filigree, and he stared at Chel from above a broken nose with eyes of blue-flecked grey. The same grey as Chel’s own.
‘Who in hells are you?’ Chel said, then started as another man, almost identical, sidled into view behind the first. They could have been brothers. They could all have been brothers.
The man said something Chel didn’t understand. He repeated it, his growing frown matching Chel’s own, then finally said something Chel caught.
‘Come with us, please.’ His accent was thick but oddly familiar.
He reached out a heavy hand and clamped down on Chel’s shoulder. There was no sign of Rennic, the row empty behind the two new arrivals. His options seemed limited.
The man pulled, and Chel followed.
THIRTEEN
The hood was plucked from his head, and he could see again.
‘Remove your armour, please.’
Beneath the grey-eyed gaze of the bull-like man who’d kidnapped him, Chel did so. They stood in what he took to be a library or reading room, a stone-walled room decked with low shelves, packed with more books than he’d ever seen in a single location, including his time in Black Rock. Long benches spread in bands from a central hearth, lamp tables spaced evenly between them, the combined heat of which did little to raise the room’s temperature above chilly. It got chillier as he drew the mail shirt over his head, wincing as the movement aggravated his bad shoulder. They already had his mace, of course.
‘Where am I?’