ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The masque is over, the leftover sweetmeats sent down to the servants' hall, and it's time to say farewell to Mal and friends - but not without thanking everyone who made his final adventure possible.
Once again I sought professional help with my Latin. The sentences and phrases in the classroom scenes in Part Two were created with the patient assistance of Mark Davies, ARC Research Associate (Classics) in the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide. Any errors introduced during the writing process are mine.
It's not just the academic stuff that needs researching for these books, though. As an armchair adventuress, I don't have hands-on experience of all the practical skills my characters possess, particularly the more dangerous ones! In particular, I would like to thank fellow author Courtney Schafer for all her help with the climbing scene in Chapter XIII. I can't climb for toffee, so I had no idea what was really practical with the technology of the period.
I mustn't forget the yeoman warders (aka Beefeaters) at the Tower of London, who answered my slightly odd questions about how to get into and out of the Bloody Tower, and more crucially didn't arrest me when I ignored the armoury displays in the White Tower in favour of sketching the castle layout. OK, so maybe I was planning an act of terrorism - just not in this century!
As with previous books, my beta-readers Laura Lam and Alex Beecroft were invaluable in giving a fresh perspective on the story, which always difficult when you know the series inside-out yourself. On that same front, I'd like to thank my editor Marc Gascoigne for his professional insight in catching the areas where I tend to have blind-spots. And speaking of Marc, I'd like to thank everyone at Angry Robot - it's been a pleasure working with you guys for the past three years.
Last but not least, thank you again to all you readers who have stuck with Mal through his adventures and expressed your appreciation via Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, etc. I can't promise there will be any more - I'm working on a completely new setting for my next project - but you never know...
Anne Lyle
Cambridge, August 2013
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Lyle was born in what is known to the tourist industry in the UK as “Robin Hood Country”, and grew up fascinated by English history, folklore, and swashbuckling heroes. Unfortunately there was little demand in 1970s Nottingham for diminutive swordswomen, so she studied sensible subjects like science and languages instead.
It appears that although you can take the girl out of Sherwood Forest, you can’t take Sherwood Forest out of the girl. She now spends every spare hour writing (or at least planning) fantasy fiction about spies, actors, outlaws and other folk on the fringes of society.
Anne lives in Cambridge, a city full of medieval and Tudor buildings where cattle graze on the common land much as they did in Shakespeare’s London. She prides herself on being able to ride a horse (badly), sew a sampler and cut a quill pen but hasn’t the least idea how to drive one of those new-fangled automobile thingies.