Shadow of a Dead God: A Mennik Thorn Novel

by Patrick Samphire

  Shadow of a Dead God

  A Mennik Thorn Novel (Book 1)

  Patrick Samphire

  Five Fathoms Press

  For Steph

  For everything

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Author’s Note

  Coming in 2021…

  Nectar for the God

  Books by Patrick Samphire

  About Patrick Samphire

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  They called Missos the month of flowers. It was the first really hot month of the year, and the poppy anemones, clover, and waterclasp coated the slopes of the Erastes Valley with yellow, white, and red blooms — and, incidentally, set at least a quarter of the population of Agatos to fits of sneezing and streaming eyes. It was also the month when, traditionally, the young people of Agatos headed out into the valley for picnics, sports, and a whole lot of frantic, unfulfilling sex.

  Things were different for me. For the third night in a row, I was shut in a sweltering, dusty kitchen pantry watching out for ghosts that I was pretty sure didn’t exist. Ah, the glamorous life of a mage for hire. I couldn’t imagine why more people didn’t try it.

  On the plus side, if anyone wanted to know exactly where to find the lentils, onions, or various spices, I had memorised the location of every single one.

  It was possible I was going crazy.

  “Come on, ghosties,” I muttered to myself, more because I hadn’t heard a single human — or nonhuman — voice in the last seven hours than because I thought it would help. “Ghosty, ghosty, ghosties.”

  Nothing. I let my eyes drift closed. Just for a moment. I didn’t need my eyes to detect ghosts. We mages had other senses for anything supernatural. That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  I had just started to drift off when the door to the pantry burst open. I started up, banging my head on the shelf. Depths! That hurt.

  “Well?”

  My client, Galena Sunstone, stood framed in the dawn light. She was dressed in a white robe, belted at the waist, with geometric patterns picked out in gold thread around the hems, and thin slippers, but otherwise she looked like she’d just climbed out of bed. She hadn’t put her hair up nor applied the thick, gold eye-shadow and lip-paint that was all the rage this year. Not that I could criticise. I could feel the thick, black stubble on my chin and smell my own sweat.

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  Sunstone’s eyes narrowed. She was older than me by maybe fifteen years, and wealthier by a whole lot more. This wasn’t my usual line of mage work, and she certainly wasn’t my usual type of client. You would have thought that, being a mage, I would have had a good line on an attitude of effortless, unearned superiority, but most of my time I spent breaking curses, spying on cheating spouses, and magically locating lost knick-knacks. I was rusty at dealing with the entitled. This was my first job in the better part of Agatos. Or it would have been if there had been anything to these supposed ghosts.

  “Maybe, Mr. Thorn,” Sunstone said, “you are not hiding yourself well enough.” I had felt more warmth in an ice cellar. “Maybe they know you are there.”

  I suppressed a sigh. I had tried to explain to her that ghosts couldn’t care less if you were sitting out in full view snacking on cheese and olives and drinking good wine, but she had made me sit in the pantry anyway. More to keep me from making her house look messy than to help with the non-appearing ghosts, I suspected.

  Sunstone threw a glance behind her, then leaned forwards. “I have a dinner party in two days’ time. Everyone is coming. You need to find the ghosts.”

  When she had first employed me, I had thought she was worried that the ghosts might disrupt her precious dinner party. It hadn’t taken me long to decide that the explanation was much simpler. She wanted to have the presence of ghosts confirmed to titillate her bored friends.

  She was going to be disappointed. Not so disappointed that she refused to pay me, I hoped.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in ghosts. I just wasn’t sure I believed in these particular ones. Real ghosts were rare, even if half the people I met thought they had seen one. Human brains were great at picking out patterns. We only needed a glimpse of a face to recognise a friend across the street, and a good artist could suggest a whole scene in just a couple of strokes of charcoal. Our brains were designed to fill in the missing pieces.

  Unfortunately, when there really wasn’t enough information, our brains were prone to finding patterns that weren’t actually there. We filled in too many blank spaces with the wrong things, and we convinced ourselves we had actually seen them. A dragon in the shape of the clouds. A hunched figure that was just a robe thrown over the back of the chair in the dark. A whispered voice that was only the wind through a shutter. Or, if you were of a superstitious bent, you thought you saw ghosts.

  I stretched, feeling my joints pop. My left ankle flared, making me wince. I had injured it five years ago, and it had never properly healed. Being stuck in that pantry all night had been the worst possible thing for it.

  “I’ll do my best,” I muttered.

  A flash of irritation crossed Sunstone’s face. “I was told you were a proper mage. You came recommended.” I didn’t know who had recommended me, and I didn’t know whether I should be thanking them or cursing them right now.

  Galena Sunstone eyed me up and down, and her lip twisted. I couldn’t say I blamed her. My shirt was stuck to my chest and my back with sweat, and I stank. Most mages tried not to look like drunks kicked out of an inn and left to sleep in the gutter. But most mages didn’t have to earn an honest — or slightly dishonest — living like this.

  By now, Sunstone had undoubtedly been expecting chanting, purple smoke, and ghastly apparitions, or whatever other nonsense would make her the centre of attention for the length of some gods-awful dinner party. Instead, I had provided her with three nights of sweaty mage in a cupboard, which was hardly going to impress her friends.

  “You’re not trying hard enough,” she said.

  What did she think I was doing in her bloody pantry?

  If I’d had any self-respect, I would have told her she was wasting her time and money and washed my hands of the whole thing. Only, self-respect didn’t last beyond the next overdue rent and the associated large, hairy men with clubs. Don’t judge me. I could think of a dozen temples that would happily provide an exorcism with all the bells, whistles, and purple smoke she desired, regardless of whether there were any ghosts here, and that would charge a hundred times as much as I did. If you thought about it right, I was doing her a favour.

  I cleared my throat. “About the pay?”

  “At the end of the week,” she said coldly. “As we agreed.”

  The end of the week. Four more nights in the pantry.

  Big men. Big clubs, I reminded myself.

  With a tight smile, I stepped past Galena Sunstone and headed for the front door.

  If I had known that within five hours I would be arrested fo
r murder, I would have stayed in the pantry.

  The streets and plazas of the Upper City were still quiet this early in the morning. Within an hour, the heat of the early summer sun would be oppressive and relentless, but for now, the last remnants of the night’s coolness were refreshing after my imprisonment in the pantry.

  I made my way from the Sunstones’ grand house on Heliodore Plaza to the Royal Highway, then turned south towards the docks and the lower city. In the distance, I could see a caravan already forming up at the foot of Matra’s Needle, ready to begin the long trek north through the Erastes Valley, along the Lidharan Road to the cities beyond the mountains. Gulls complained loudly overhead.

  I followed a single cart as it squeaked its way down the Royal Highway, collecting the waste that had been raked into piles. Eventually, the whole lot would be dumped into the Erastes River to be washed out to sea, where a good chunk of it would be caught in the nets of irritated fishermen and returned to the city. It was the circle of life.

  The stink of the cart joined with the rich salt smell of drying seaweed and the stench of tanneries, soap makers, and sewage to give that signature smell of the city of Agatos.

  Luckily for my sore ankle, I didn’t have to walk all the way to the docks. Two thirds of the way down, I took a left turn onto Feldspar Plaza where my small office and apartment were located.

  People called Agatos ‘the White City’ because of its whitewashed walls. Seen from the Erastes Bay as you approached Agatos harbour, the city glowed in the sunlight. In an excess of honesty, the local residents also called my part of Agatos ‘the Grey City’. The houses around here had been whitewashed, but it had been so long since the whitewash had been renewed that it was more like grey wash now.

  The Grey City hadn’t been built for the likes of me, of course. Once, it had been a desirable location for the merchants, bankers, factory and mine owners, and the rest of the on-the-up classes. But as Agatos had flourished and wealth had concentrated itself ever more into ever fewer hands, the rich had moved up the valley, away from the worst of the stink and the summer heat, to where they could build grander and grander houses, leaving their former residences to decline and be divided into apartments. Whatever glamour the Grey City might have once possessed had decayed and peeled.

  Which was where I came in. Now, the Grey City was occupied by the working poor, the artists, poets, and scribes, and, of course, one impoverished mage.

  A rickety wooden dais stood in the middle of Feldspar Plaza, surrounded by a cluster of enterprising, if not strictly legal, stalls. Sometimes the dais housed a bar, sometimes it acted as a bandstand, and once or twice it had boasted an impromptu wrestling arena, before the City Watch had turned up and chased everyone off. This early, the plaza was mostly quiet. I raised a hand in tired greeting to the few stallholders who were setting up for the day then trudged up the short flight of steps to my office.

  I pushed the door open, tossed my jacket onto my desk, and came to a dead stop. I wasn’t alone.

  I had set wards on my apartment to keep out unwelcome visitors, but not on my office. It was hard enough finding clients without knocking them senseless when they called around. But I was certain I had left the door locked when I left last night.

  I turned slowly, pulling in raw magic in readiness.

  Benyon Field was sprawled out on my couch like a weasel that had lain dead in the sun for too long, thin, whiskery, and dried out. I released the magic harmlessly.

  “Benny. What the Depths are you doing here?”

  It must have taken something urgent to drag Benny away from his sleep. Benny was more of a night person; he preferred it when people couldn’t see what he was up to.

  “Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?” Benny said. “I come all this way…”

  I wasn’t buying it. “You’re never up this early. What’s happened? Is everything all right?” Sudden tension constricted my chest. “Is Sereh all right?”

  Sereh was Benny’s daughter. Pity, she and Benny were the closest thing I had to family these days. If something had happened to her…

  “Yeah, Nik, mate. She’s great.”

  I let out a puff of breath. Not Sereh, thank any god who was listening. What, then? I gave Benny a quizzical look. He returned it blandly.

  Fine. Don’t tell me. He would get around to it eventually. He hadn’t dragged himself out of bed this early because he liked looking at my face.

  “I thought I locked the door,” I said, turning away from him.

  “You did.”

  I sidled behind my desk and leaned over to check the safe. It was still closed.

  “You don’t have anything in there,” Benny said.

  Of course he had taken a look. He wouldn’t steal from me, but he wasn’t big on respecting my privacy, and an unpicked lock was an insult to him.

  “I know.” It was humiliating. “They told me the safe was uncrackable.”

  Benny ignored that. “Thought you must have been robbed or something.”

  When I’d started this business, the safe had been the first thing I’d bought. I had thought I would need it, but in the five years I’d been working as a freelance mage, it had rarely seen much more than the odd lost moth.

  A wave of exhaustion rolled over me, and I dropped into my chair.

  “What do you want, Benny? I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m tired, I’m hungry, and my ankle aches.”

  “You should do something about that.”

  I gave him my most weary look. It slid right off his leathery face. Benny was only a year older than me, but I had seen corpses dragged out of buried temples that had aged better.

  “This is a right nice couch you’ve got here.”

  The couch was tatty, stained, and worn — much like Benny himself, in fact. It had one broken leg and a tendency to sag. I had bought it last month from Senator Breakwater’s major-domo. It wasn’t strictly legal, as Senator Breakwater had no idea he’d sold it to me. But he would never miss it, he would never have used it again, and there was no point in it going to waste.

  “This is at least the third time you’ve seen it.” Whatever Benny was here for, he didn’t want to tell me, and that wasn’t like Benny at all.

  “Yeah, well. Sometimes you don’t stop to appreciate things. Know what I mean?”

  “You wouldn’t be seen dead with it in your house.”

  He shrugged.

  “Benny…”

  Benny swung his legs over the side of the couch and sat up. He looked uncharacteristically nervous. “Fine. You owe me a favour.”

  I grimaced. Benny was a lowlife thief most people wouldn’t trust with a dirty handkerchief, but we’d been friends since we were little kids. Oddly, for a man who spent so much of his life stealing, Benny had little time for money. Instead, he operated by a complicated system of obligations, favours, debts, and promises.

  I rubbed a hand across my eyes. Things were swimming in and out of focus.

  “Later.” I waved an exhausted hand. I needed a meal, I needed sleep, and I needed a clean shirt.

  “Nah. It’s got to be now. You owe me.”

  He was right, and Benny took his favours seriously. I knew, although I tried not to, that Benny could do nasty things to people he thought were trying to renege on a debt. He wouldn’t hurt me. We had been close friends for too long. It would be our friendship that would take the hit, and I didn’t have many friends. For some reason, I pissed people off.

  “Fine,” I said, trying not to fall asleep where I sat. Galena Sunstone’s pantry had not been a good place for rest. “What is it?”

  Benny straightened, running his fingers over his collar like he was adjusting his shirt for dinner. “I’ve got a job.”

  That sounded … unlikely. I couldn’t remember Benny doing a single honest day’s work in all the years we’d known each other.

  “What? A real job? With a salary and everything?”

  “Don’t be daft. Why would I do that? Nah, I’m moving up in th
e world, see? Not nicking stuff for myself. I’m doing it freelance, like you.”

  “Well, not exactly—”

  He cut me off with the wave of a hand. “This way I don’t have to worry about offloading it. I just nick what I’m paid for. No fences, no City Watch catching you with your pants down. Honest work.”

  I couldn’t imagine even the most desperate watchman wanting to see Benny with his pants down.

  “You’re a regular saint, Benny. What’s it got to do with me?”

  He looked extra shifty, which for Benny, who made a career of looking shifty, was some achievement.

  “This thing I’m being paid for. It might be a little … cursed.”

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair. It creaked and sagged. Kind of like me. As favours went, this could have been worse. Half of my work involved dealing with curses of one type or another. I had my lines that I wouldn’t cross. I wouldn’t lay a curse. That wasn’t what I was in this for. And you couldn’t pay me to hurt someone with magic. I would defend myself if I had to, but I would never be so desperate as to sell my talents in that way. You also couldn’t pay me to raise the dead, but there were completely different reasons for that. In my job, I had to be clear about my lines, because one step led to another, and soon you couldn’t even see the lines you’d left behind you. But break curses? I could do that in my sleep.

  Curses weren’t hard to lay. It only took a scratch of magical talent and a bit of a bad temper to place a curse. Most weren’t particularly sophisticated or robust — boils, sour milk, clumsiness, that kind of thing — and most would pop spontaneously after a while. A curse laid by a properly trained mage could be a lot more dangerous and have more severe consequences, but it wasn’t much more difficult to deal with. The magical structures that sustained a curse were delicate. Use a scalpel of magic in the right place and the curse would collapse like a cut spider’s web.