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Chapters (70)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Map
  5. Epigraph
  6. BEGINNINGS
  7. PART I
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. TEN
  18. ELEVEN
  19. TWELVE
  20. THIRTEEN
  21. FOURTEEN
  22. FIFTEEN
  23. SIXTEEN
  24. SEVENTEEN
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. THIRTY
  38. THIRTY-ONE
  39. THIRTY-TWO
  40. THIRTY-THREE
  41. THIRTY-FOUR
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. PART II
  45. THIRTY-SEVEN
  46. THIRTY-EIGHT
  47. THIRTY-NINE
  48. FORTY
  49. FORTY-ONE
  50. FORTY-TWO
  51. FORTY-THREE
  52. FORTY-FOUR
  53. FORTY-FIVE
  54. FORTY-SIX
  55. FORTY-SEVEN
  56. FORTY-EIGHT
  57. FORTY-NINE
  58. FIFTY
  59. FIFTY-ONE
  60. FIFTY-TWO
  61. FIFTY-THREE
  62. FIFTY-FOUR
  63. FIFTY-FIVE
  64. FIFTY-SIX
  65. FIFTY-SEVEN
  66. TRICKSTER
  67. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  68. Also by Susan Dennard
  69. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  70. Newsletter Sign-up

PART I

Puppeteer

ONE

One Month After the Earth Well Healed

She knew she was walking into a trap. She had seen their tracks twenty paces before, just beside that bend in the road, and she had sensed their Threads even sooner.

Maybe, if she had wanted to, she could have avoided them. But she didn’t want to. She was hungry. Winter’s cusp had left nothing to forage on this side of the Ohrins, and what little she had managed to gather she’d given to her tiny companion, now waiting in a hollowed-out beech with a weasel who wasn’t really a weasel.

When she reached fifteen steps from the closest soldier, she stopped and planted her staff into the mud. It was roughly hewn silver fir, taken off a corpse two days before. Silver fir, the hill folk said, was good for warding off nightmares. So far that had not been true.

The closest man’s Threads hovered green with concentration. He was poorly hidden behind an alpine rhododendron, and even if his Threads had not given him away, the footprints speckling the road would have. Muddy from yesterday’s rain, the road had grooved so deep from travel it was practically a ditch—giving all these men in the forest brush higher ground.

Not that it would help them.

“I know you’re there,” she called.

As one, bright alarm punched across eight sets of Threads, each poorly hidden.

“And I have nothing of value,” she continued. Her voice was rough with hunger and the world had been a sickening spin for days now. If not for their Threads, she would never have been able to focus on them.

Or on the one man, now stalking toward her down the path. A Hell-Bard. She didn’t need to see his scarlet uniform to know that. The shadowy twirl at the heart of his Threads gave him away.

“We were warned about you,” he declared, pausing at twenty paces. Near enough for her to spot the ruddied nose of a man who drank too much. He smiled. “You don’t look like a threat.”

“Oh, but I am.” She lifted her right hand and flipped it his way. “Do you know what this means?”

He didn’t answer, but fresh concern rippled across the hidden soldiers’ Threads. Few people bore a filled-in circle for a Witchmark.

“And do you,” the Hell-Bard countered, drawing a gold chain from beneath his collar, “know what this means?”

She laughed at that—a dry, starving chuckle. “I guess they didn’t tell you, did they?”

His eyes thinned. He took the bait. “Tell me what?”

“They tried to make me like you, Hell-Bard.” She let a dramatic beat pass. Then added, “It didn’t work.”