Blade reforged, p.1
Blade Reforged, page 1
“Aral the jack, formerly the noble Aral Kingslayer, is the best kind of hero: damaged, cynical, and despondent, yet needing only the right cause to rise from his own ashes.”
—Alex Bledsoe, author of Wisp of a Thing
Praise for
BARED BLADE
“The second Fallen Blade fantasy stars an interesting hero with an irreverent, self-deprecating attitude…Fans will appreciate the magnificent McCullough mythos.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
“Full of action, fun characters, and an interesting plot.”
—Whatchamacallit Reviews
BROKEN BLADE
“Creative world-building really helps the reader to immerse themselves…A strong beginning to a new fantasy-mystery hybrid series.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
“Broken Blade explores a different side of dark fantasy than the typical European/medieval fare…I could definitely spend hundreds of pages wandering around in the wilds of McCullough’s newest creation.”
—Flames Rising
“Broken Blade is a compelling read that was hard to put down…Mr. McCullough has the ability to make even his dastardly characters sympathetic.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Filled with multifaceted characters, layered plots, and the type of quixotic scenarios that only the imagination of Kelly McCullough could possibly create. The author, once again, crosses genres…Stories by Kelly McCullough are one of a kind—just like him. I found Aral’s world to be compelling and highly addictive. Brilliant!”
—Huntress Book Reviews
“McCullough’s atmospheric little tale of betrayal and skullduggery is brisk, confident, intelligently conceived, and suspenseful…With as promising a start as this, McCullough’s new series is looking like one sharp blade indeed.”
—SF Reviews.net
“Broken Blade is perfect for a fan of political/hierarchal conspiracy in a fantasy series…It’s also filled with some heart-pounding action…The story is positively bursting with excitement.”
—Whatchamacallit Reviews
“The world McCullough sets up was certainly the highlight of the book for me. I enjoy fantasy-world politics and dark humor, both of which are in abundance here.”
—Night Owl Reviews
More Praise for Kelly McCullough
SPELLCRASH
“Simple and elegant…McCullough is the true demigod of Web magic. Brilliant!”
—Huntress Book Reviews
“The book is filled with action and suspense. The world-building is awesome, the plot intense, and there is plenty of pathos and humor.”
—Three Crow Press
“Entertaining and rapid-fire.”
—San Francisco Book Review
MYTHOS
“A smooth, flowing tale that entices the imagination.”
—Huntress Book Reviews
CODESPELL
“A hint of cyberpunk, a dollop of Greek mythology, and a sprinkle of techno-magic bake up into an airy genre mashup. Lots of fast-paced action and romantic angst up the ante as Ravirn faces down his formidable foes.”
—Publishers Weekly
“One long adrenaline rush.”
—SFRevu
“Imaginative, fascinating, with a lot of adventure thrown in…Mr. McCullough has followed his first two books with a worthy sequel. CodeSpell will keep the reader on edge.”
—Fresh Fiction
CYBERMANCY
“McCullough has true world-building skills, a great sense of Greek mythology, and the eye of a thriller writer. The blend of technology and magic is absolutely amazing.”
—Blogcritics.org
“McCullough has the most remarkable writing talent I have ever read.”
—Huntress Book Reviews
WEBMAGE
“The most enjoyable science fantasy book I’ve read in the last four years…Its blending of magic and coding is inspired…WebMage has all the qualities I look for in a book—a wonderfully subdued sense of humor, nonstop action, and romantic relief. It’s a wonderful debut novel.”
—Christopher Stasheff, author of Saint Vidicon to the Rescue
“Inventive, irreverent, and fast-paced, strong on both action and humor.”
—The Green Man Review
“[An] original and outstanding debut…McCullough handles his plot with unfailing invention, orchestrating a mixture of humor, philosophy, and programming insights that give new meaning to terms as commonplace as ‘spell-checker’ and [as] esoteric as ‘programming in hex.’”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This fast-paced, action-packed yarn is a lot of fun…weaving myth, magic, IT jargon…into a bang-up story.”
—Booklist
Ace Books by Kelly McCullough
The WebMage Series
WEBMAGE
CYBERMANCY
CODESPELL
MYTHOS
SPELLCRASH
The Fallen Blade Series
BROKEN BLADE
BARED BLADE
CROSSED BLADES
BLADE REFORGED
BLADE
REFORGED
Kelly McCullough
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.
BLADE REFORGED
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2013 by Kelly McCullough.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-59250-2
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / July 2013
Cover art by John Jude Palencar; dragon © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.
Cover design by Judith Lagerman.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
Maps by Matthew A. Kuchta.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
For Laura, without whom I would be lost.
And in loving memory of
Michael Matheny,
one of my oldest writing friends and coconspirators.
Acknowledgments
Extra-special thanks are owed to Laura McCullough; Jack Byrne; Anne Sowards; my mapmaker, Matt Kuchta; Neil Gaiman for the loan of the dogs; and cover artist John Jude Palencar and cover designer Judith Lagerman, who have produced wonders for me.
Many thanks also to the Wyrdsmiths: Lyda, Doug, Naomi, Bill, Eleanor, Sean, and Adam. My Web guru, Ben. Beta readers: Steph, Dave, Sari, Karl, Angie, Sean, Matt, Mandy, April, Becky, Mike, Jason, Todd, Jonna, and Benjamin. My family: Carol, Paul and Jane, Lockwood and Darlene, Judy, Kat, Jean, and all the rest. My extended support structure: Bill and Nancy, Sara, James, Tom, Ann, Mike, Sandy, Marlann, and so many more. Lorraine, because she’s fabulous. Also, a hearty woof for Cabal and Lola.
Penguin folks: Kat Sherbo, Anne Sowards’s wonderful assistant; production editor Michelle Kasper; assistant production editor Jamie Snider; interior text designer Laura Corless; publicist Brad Brownson; and my copy editor Mary Pell.
Table of Contents
Maps
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Terms and Characters
Currency
Calendar
Days of the Week
1
The present is the past. Every today is built atop the mounded corpses of a thousand yesterdays. Mine was no exception. Broken furniture and filth surrounded me in what had once been the tavern known as the Gryphon’s Head. A place that had once been my home was now a shattered ruin, empty save for myself, my partner, and trouble. The past calling the present to account, as it always does.
Trouble wears a thousand faces and comes in a million shapes. In my case, trouble had herself a new dress. It looked damn good on her, too, and no surprise there. My trouble had a name: the baroness
Maylien Dan Marchon Tal Pridu, and she always looked good. Tall and lithe, with long brown hair and a lovely set of curves that she’d sheathed in green velvet. My sometime lover, sometime client, and the unacknowledged heir to the throne of Zhan was a beautiful woman…and trouble. Lots and lots of trouble.
“Have a seat.” I gestured to the open chair across from me with the half-empty bottle I’d found in the wreckage, and whiskey slopped out over the cracked lip. “Let me pour you a drink.”
“I don’t think either of those would be such a good idea, Aral,” said Maylien. “In fact, I was rather hoping I could convince you to leave with me so we could have this conversation someplace else. Someplace safe.”
“But I like it here.” I swung the bottle around to take in the whole of the dark and empty bar, with its boarded-up windows, tumbled and broken furniture, and thick layers of dust over everything. “It’s one of the few places I’ve ever felt at home.” I was slurring my words. Not a good sign, but I didn’t care. “Or at least, I used to, before whatever the hell happened here happened. Speaking of which, I’m guessing you showing up here right now, means you know something about that.”
Maylien sighed and directed her attention to the dim shadow I cast across the table in front of me. “Triss, is there any chance of you talking some sense into Aral? Or do I need to play this out here?”
The shadow shifted, transforming itself from a darkened mirror of my own form into the silhouette of a small winged dragon.
It, or rather, he, flicked his wings angrily. “If I could talk sense into Aral, would he be sitting here drinking and waiting for the fucking Elite to show up and nail his hide to the wall and mine with it? No, of course not. But why would he listen to me? I’m just his familiar. It’s not like I’m right nine times out of every ten that we disagree. Or, wait…no, it’s exactly like that.” Triss shook his head. “He’s hopeless.”
“There you may have a point.” Maylien pushed her dueling blade to one side and sat down on the dusty chair across from me, doing untold damage to that fancy dress. “What do you want, Aral?”
That was a good question. What did I want? Once upon a time, I could have answered that question with ease: I wanted to be the instrument of Justice. That was back in the old days, when they had called me Aral Kingslayer and I was among the most feared assassins in the world, one of the fabled Blades of Namara, the goddess of justice. But that was before the other gods murdered her and ordered her followers put to the sword.
For a long time after that, what I most wanted was to turn back time to the days when Namara yet lived, to restore the temple, and to return my friends and fellows to life. To undestroy my world. Some days I still wanted that more than anything. But life wasn’t as simple as I’d once thought it was. Or, maybe, I wasn’t as simple. These days I couldn’t even mourn the me I’d once been without second-guessing everything.
Fuck it. I took another drink, careful to avoid the jagged edge. The whiskey tasted of smoke and honey as it burned its way down my throat. Damn but it was good. Even so, I sighed and set the bottle down, because I didn’t really want to drink myself unconscious either. Not the way I would have a year or two ago.
I snorted, then looked Maylien square in the eyes. “I honestly have no fucking idea what I want, but why don’t you start by telling me what happened here.”
The Gryphon’s Head was a sleazy tavern in the depths of one of Tien’s worst slums, or it had been anyway. Now it was a boarded-up ruin. For years after the fall of the temple I’d lived in a rented room over the stables. I worked out of the taproom then, paying my bar bill by playing the shadow jack—a freelancer on the wrong side of the law. But that me, Aral the jack, was gone, too. Not as dead as the Kingslayer maybe, but definitely sleeping.
“Well?” I prompted, when Maylien didn’t answer me right away.
“My uncle happened here,” she said finally, her voice bitter.
Maylien’s uncle was Thauvik Tal Pridu, current king of Zhan and successor to the one I’d slain for my goddess all those years ago. Not one of my biggest admirers. Despite shedding no tears over the assassination of his half brother, Thauvik had set the largest price on my head of any of my enemies. He seemed to feel that letting me live after I’d removed his predecessor from the throne might set a bad example. His involvement told me all that I needed to know about the destruction of the Gryphon’s Head.
“What you mean,” I said, “but are entirely too polite to say, is that I happened here. The king would never have even known this place existed if I hadn’t made it my home.”
“My uncle did this, not you—” Maylien began hotly.
But I cut her off. “He did it because of me, because he wanted to punish those who’d once given me shelter, whether they knew who I was or not.”
She shook her head. “He did it because he’s a monster, Aral. Just like my father and my sister. In case you hadn’t noticed, the poisoned apple doesn’t often fall far from the Pridu family tree.”
The shadow of a dragon suddenly rose up between us, flapping his wings angrily. “How about we actually do something about the problem instead of sitting here and playing guiltier than thou until the king’s men show up to cart us all off to the headsman? I know that’s less dark and brooding and ‘oh the world is an awful place’ than either of you like to do things, but I’ve had about all I can take of that shit for the moment.”
Maylien’s answering grin was pained but genuine. “You sounded just like Heyin there.”
I didn’t smile, but I had to admit that Triss might have a point. Heyin, too. The chief of Maylien’s baronial guard and her oldest friend, Heyin didn’t like me much at all. That didn’t make him one bit less wise. Quite the contrary. He disliked me because he felt I made a wholly inappropriate bedmate for his baroness. He was absolutely right. Maylien had more than enough strikes against her in the eyes of her fellow nobles without adding a broken-down ex-assassin to the list.
First off, she was a mage, which meant she had certain advantages that undermined the entire central structure of the Zhani hierarchy—the formal duel of precedence by which anyone of noble blood could challenge any relative for their titles. Secondly, her brand of magery was particularly scandalous. She’d once been a member of the Rovers, a traveling order dedicated to keeping the roads free of brigandage. She’d spent most of her formative years as a homeless wanderer rubbing elbows with the sorts of people most Zhani nobles wouldn’t deign to spit on.
Just then, a harsh squawk sounded from the kitchen—where both Maylien and I had entered. It was followed a moment later by the advent of a miniature gryphon by the name of Bontrang. The little tabby-patterned gryphinx was Maylien’s familiar and he flew straight to his mistress. Landing on the thick pad sewn into the shoulder of her dress, he mrped worriedly in her ear.
She nodded and rose from her seat. “The guard is on its way, Aral. We have to leave. Or, I do, at least. I can’t draw the shadows around me like a cloak the way you can.” She looked pointedly at Triss. “Will you come with me? I can tell you more of what I know about what happened here if you give me the time.”
“Is Jerik dead?” I asked. The owner of the Gryphon’s Head was…well, not exactly a friend, but I owed him.
“Not the last I heard.”
“Will you help me find him?”
She nodded. “I know where he’s being held.”
“I’ll come.”
* * *
Jerik looked terrible, sallow and pale with loose skin on his cheeks and neck where he’d lost weight, and red blotches all across the old scar tissue where his left eye and much of his scalp had been ripped away by a gryphon. The fact that he was upside down, or rather, that I was and he wasn’t, didn’t help things. No one looks good that way.
There’s just no getting him out of there, I mindspoke to Triss.
Not from here, no. We’ll have to try another route, but why don’t we talk about it later, someplace a bit less hazardous?
Point.
I bent double and caught hold of the rope looped around my right ankle, hand-over-handing my way up the few yards that put me in the shadow of the overhang. I’d set a pair of spikes into the gaps between blocks there. Anyone watching from a distance would have seen little more than the merging of one shadow into another, larger one. That’s if they saw anything at all in the dim light of the waning moon.
