Shadow Magic Read Free Page A

then?”
    “Woodcutter. Does a bit of carpentry. Doors, wagons, and the like. He puts this acorn design on ’em so folks know who made it.”
    That wasn’t Dad’s only trade, but Tyburn didn’t need to know about the
other
one.
    “D’you earn enough just chopping down trees?”
    “We got a few animals,” said Thorn. “Chickens and swine and such. We help the local farmers a bit. Picking apples, gathering hay. Clearing the ground for the plow. It ain’t hard work, and it puts bread in our bellies.”
    “That all? Nothing on the side?”
    “No,” lied Thorn.
    “Show me your hands.”
    Thorn laid open his palms. Tyburn held each, pressing his thumbs against the hard calluses. “So you’re used to axes—that’s obvious. And these. Archers have similar lumps.”
    Thorn didn’t like these observations. They were too close to the truth. “And so does every person who uses a shovel.”
    “What about a quill? You know your letters?”
    “Never had no need. Trees don’t write and pigs don’t read.”
    He wished he did, though. His sisters had learned to read and write, but Thorn hadn’t been interested, not when there were trees to climb and streams to fish in. Now? If he had his letters, he’d be able to write back home. And hear the news. News he
needed
to know.
    Thorn pulled his hands back. “What do you want from me?”
    “This and that.”
    “That ain’t no answer.”
    Tyburn dug his thumb into his pipe, raising a glow from the smoldering tobacco. “Do you know what an executioner does, boy?”
    “Is this a trick question?”
    “I deal with threats to House Shadow, the family I’ve sworn to protect. Some are easy to spot; others are hidden. So I ask questions and listen to answers. I listen
very
carefully. That’s how I know what’s a threat, and what’s not. You understand what I’m saying?”
    “That you think I’m a threat?”
    “That I know when I’m being lied to.” Tyburn stood up. “Get some sleep. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.”

    They went northwest along the Cliff Road, above the crashing waves and below a sky dripping cold drizzle. Tyburn high up on his saddle, and Thorn tagging along on a donkey. The boy buried his chin deep into the fur of his coat. By his reckoning, it was late September. Back home, the heat of summer would still be lingering in the breeze. Here, farther north, the wind already carried the bite of winter. They traveled, one day into the next, in silence.
    Thorn understood silence. He and his dad would sit in the forest, waiting, not saying anything from dawn till dusk.
    But Tyburn’s silence was different. It weighed on Thorn, making him want to fill it. He kept his mouth firmly shut the first few days, but by the fourth, he needed to speak, just to hear a sound between them. So, as he and Tyburn were having breakfast at a roadside inn, Thorn spoke.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    “Home.”
    “Home?” Thorn blurted. His heart jumped. “To Stour?”
    “Stour? Is that where you come from?”
    You fool. He’s not talking about
your
home; he’s talking about his.
    “Yeah, Master,” said Thorn cautiously. “It’s a village in the Free Duchies. It ain’t big.”
    But it had everything Thorn wanted. Trees with the reddest, juiciest apples in the world. A river to swim in during the summer and skate on when the snow fell. A pond he and his brothers would spend whole days at catching frogs, and his home: a small, two-room timber house with a straw-thatched roof built by his dad when he’d married his mom.
    “Near Herne’s Forest, isn’t it?”
    Why was Tyburn so interested? “I suppose.”
    “Best you forget it,” said Tyburn. “You’ve a new home now. Castle Gloom.”
    “Is it far?”
    “We take the old road into Raven’s Wood. After a fortnight or so, we’ll cross the River Styx, and we’re in Gehenna.”
    Gehenna. A country of misty forests and craggy mountains, where the sun never shone and the dead walked.
    Why