Shadow Magic Read Free

Could do with something to wet my gullet before the long trek back down. What d’you say, Master Tyburn?”
    “Get lost,” replied Tyburn.
    Lukas hesitated, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
    “You still here?” asked Tyburn, not even looking up from his own meal.
    “Yeah, you heard him,” added Thorn. “So just hurry up and get lost. Now.”
    Lukas’s eyes darkened, then he left, slamming the door behind him.
    Tyburn glanced at Thorn. “I said, sit. Eat.”
    Thorn sat. The gravy was chocolate dark and thick, and the chicken’s skin was thinner than pastry flakes. The smell made him dizzy. He picked up his fork, trembling with excitement.
    Then he put the fork down. “Why? Why all this food?”
    “You’re not hungry?”
    “You’re trying to fatten me up, ain’t you? Make me round and plump so you can feed me to your masters, the Shadows. Am I gonna be served with gravy, too?”
    Tyburn frowned. “You think the Shadows eat boys like you?”
    “Don’t they?”
    “Of course not.” Tyburn tore off a strip of chicken. “The Shadows have delicate palates. You’d only give them food poisoning. Now eat.”
    That wasn’t the answer he wanted, but hunger won over caution. Thorn grabbed a drumstick and bit into the juicy white meat. His taste buds, overwhelmed by the first decent food in months, burst with fire, and he gulped down a mug of watery mead. His tongue swam within the honey-flavored drink.
    Thorn shoveled in peas and wedges of turnips, barely drawing breath between mouthfuls. As soon as he emptied his mug, it was refilled, and he guzzled that down, too. When he finished one plate, another landed, just as mountainous with hot food. Thorn attacked it like a wolf at winter’s end.
    His belly ached, but that didn’t stop him. Gravy dripped from his fingers, and he licked them clean.
More
food arrived—a raspberry and apple pie with pastry thicker than his thumb and coated in custard. He broke the pie apart with his spoon, and his eyes followed the steam rising out of the cracks before he scooped a large bite into his mouth. The pie burned, but he didn’t care.
    “Where’s Merrick?”
    “Gone.”
    Thorn gulped. “Gone? Where’s he…gone?”
    Tyburn smirked. “You want to know if he’s gone or…
gone
? Do I have that right?”
    “Yeah. Gone to get some bread, or gone to rest in the dirt for a real long time?”
    “I haven’t killed him, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
    Thorn shook his head as he kept downing peas. “Don’t you want him as your minstrel?”
    “Have you heard the man sing?” asked Tyburn.
    Thorn smiled. “Sounded like a bag of cats.”
    “Then you know why I don’t want him as my minstrel.”
    As he ate, Thorn cast sidelong glances at Tyburn, sizing up the man who had bought him.
    Tyburn didn’t look like much. Stringy hair, a scarred face, and a cropped gray beard over a hard, bony jaw. He stood not much higher than Thorn—Thorn’s dad was taller—and had a wiry build. He was old, too—over forty. Where Thorn came from, that was graveyard old.
    But there was a saying back home, one his grandpa used a lot:
There’s a bit of wolf even in a mongrel.
    “Seen enough, boy?” asked Tyburn. “Or d’you want to stare some more?”
    “I ain’t staring,” snapped Thorn. He lowered his gaze and went back to the serious task of stuffing his face.
    He only stopped after his third helping. He groaned as he tried to give his belly room to stretch out.
    The executioner’s own plate was empty, and he sat, pipe lit, watching.
    “How old are you?” asked Tyburn.
    “Twelve, Master.”
    Tyburn pointed to the amulet around Thorn’s neck. “What’s that?”
    Thorn slapped his hand over it. “It ain’t worth nothing.”
    “It looks like a carpenter’s mark. Is it?”
    Slowly, Thorn lowered his hand. Tyburn didn’t want it; he was just interested in it. “Yeah. My dad carved it for me. Me and the rest of our family.”
    “Your father a carpenter,