‘Things don’t have to change,’ she insisted, hanging on to me as if the wind was about to send me drifting down the road. ‘Father said you wouldn’t even have to be Sha’Tep. You can stay with us while he and Mother find a way to keep your … condition from—’
‘Our laws state that anyone with the shadowblack can be killed without consequence. Why would Father ever allow me to live under his roof?’ I asked. The answer came to me almost immediately: the great and honourable Ke’heops had come to see that protecting a house like ours sometimes became an ugly business. I had shown that I could do those ugly things for him. I could be our family’s enforcer, the one he sent to deal with our enemies. After all, it’s not like my soul can be saved anyway.
As gently as I could, I pushed Shalla away. ‘I love you, little sister. I reckon that’s never going to change.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You “reckon”? Don’t you dare start talking like that Ferius woman, Kellen. You’re not some Argosi wanderer. You’re a Jan’Tep of the House of Ke.’
I thought about the card that was even now sitting in my pocket, the one painted to look like me. The ‘Spellslinger’. A Discordance. A disturbance that could change the direction of the world. It sure didn’t sound like me.
But it didn’t sound too bad either.
I turned back to the horse, took a firm hold of the saddle and put my foot in the stirrup. ‘What I am, Shalla, is a sixteen-year-old with one spell, a squirrel cat for a business partner and a death sentence written in black shadow around my left eye.’ I took the horse’s reins and nudged him into motion. ‘I need to find out if I can be something more than that.’
Shalla cut me off, hands out in front of her, fingers already preparing a spell for which I had no counter. ‘Stop! I’ll strike you down, Kellen. I will.’
The glare of her magic was so bright I could see it reflecting off grains of sand on the road between us. ‘Follow your conscience, Shalla. It’s all any of us can do.’
I nudged the horse again. Reluctantly, the beast started moving. Even more reluctantly, Shalla let us pass. We had gone only a few yards when she called out after me. ‘You’ll be hunted, don’t you understand? Without the protection of the clan, every Jan’Tep mage on the continent will be duty-bound to kill you. The Daromans won’t take you in and neither will the Berabesq. You’ll be alone, Kellen! You’ll spend the entire rest of your life as an outcast.’
I pulled on the reins, just for a moment, and turned to give my sister my very best smile before continuing on my way out of town. ‘Reckon I prefer the term “outlaw”.’
Acknowledgements
It took seven perilous and peculiar spells to bring the world of Spellslinger to life. Thankfully, the master mages of my literary life were equal to the challenge.
A Conjuration of Inspiration
My friend and occasional writing partner Eric Torin, as he does with all of my books, posed the questions that most needed to be answered in order to bring Spellslinger to life.
An Incantation of Purpose
I never tried writing a novel until I met my wife Christina, who makes marriage the best and most alluring adventure an otherwise aimless rogue could ever hope for.
An Evocation of Exploration
Members past and present of my excellent (and exceedingly nasty) writing group saw many different versions of Spellslinger, always telling me with (again, exceedingly nasty) candour what worked and what needed rewriting. My ongoing thanks to Kim Tough, Wil Arndt, Brad Dehnert, Claire Ryan, Sarah Figueroa, and Jim Hull of Narrative First.
Some of my favourite people took the time to read earlier drafts of the novel and help me see both what was working and what was not. My thanks to Anna Webster, Mike Church, Sandra Glass, Sarah Bagshaw, Dougal Muir, Kat Zeller, and Sam Chandola.
A Binding of Clarity
My editor, the delightfully kind and utterly persistent Matilda Johnson, forced me to answer all the questions about Kellen and his world until I was almost convinced the magic would actually work.
A Spell of Sparkling
The eagle-eyed Talya Baker at Hot Key Books not only brought polish and crispness to the prose, she also found holes that I’d missed.
A Prestidigitation of Publication
This book would never have seen print without my incomparable agents, Heather Adams and Mike Bryan, who found the perfect home thanks to the indomitable Mark Smith who took a chance on me both with my first series and now with this one. Thanks also to Jane Harris, for helping me solve the esoteric dilemmas surrounding certain homicidal furry creatures.
A Summoning of Kindred Spirits
Thanks to all of you who take chances on new authors and books. One of the great pleasures of this business is meeting and hearing from readers who aren’t simply fans but rather fellow travellers down the strange pathways of fantasy and adventure.
Look out for the next SPELLSLINGER book, SHADOWBLACK.
Read on for a preview.
The way of the Argosi is the way of water.
Water never seeks to block another’s path, nor does it permit impediments to its own. It moves freely, slipping past those who would capture it, taking nothing that belongs to others. To forget this is to stray from the path, for despite the rumours one sometimes hears, an Argosi never, ever steals.
1
The Charm
‘This isn’t stealing,’ I insisted, a little loudly considering the only person who could hear me was a two-foot-tall squirrel cat who was, at that moment, busily picking the combination lock that stood between us and the contents of the pawnshop’s glass display case.
Reichis, one furry ear up close to the lock as his dextrous paws worked the three small rotating brass discs, chittered angrily in reply. ‘Would you mind? This isn’t as easy as it looks.’ His tubby little hindquarters shivered in annoyance.
If you’ve never seen a squirrel cat before, picture a mean-faced cat with a big bushy tail and thin furry flaps of skin between his front and back legs that let him glide through the air in a fashion that somehow looks both ridiculous and terrifying. Oh, and give him the personality of a thief, a blackmailer and, if you believe Reichis’s stories, a murderer on more than one occasion.
‘Almost done,’ he insisted.
He’d been saying that for the past hour.
Thin lines of light were beginning to slip through the gaps between the wooden slats in the pawnshop’s front window and beneath the bottom edge of the door. Soon people would be coming down the main street, opening their shops or standing outside the saloon for that all-important first drink of the morning. They do that sort of thing here in the borderlands: work themselves into a drunken stupor before they’ve even had breakfast. It’s just one of the reasons why people here tend towards violence as the solution to any and all disputes. It’s also why my nerves were fraying. ‘We could have just broken the glass and left him some extra money to cover the damages,’ I said.