Renegade’s Magic

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperVoyager 2007

Copyright © Robin Hobb 2007

Cover illustration © Jackie Morris

Map by Andrew Ashton

Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007196203

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007283446 Version: 2017-06-30

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

One: Soldier’s End

Two: Flight

Three: Lisana

Four: Mage Work

Five: The Other Side

Six: Confrontations

Seven: Epiny’s Ultimatum

Eight: Quick-walk

Nine: Journey in Darkness

Ten: Dream-walker

Eleven: The Wintering Place

Twelve: Trade Goods

Thirteen: Hoarding

Fourteen: The Trading Place

Fifteen: The Invitation

Sixteen: Kinrove

Seventeen: Treachery

Eighteen: Boxed

Nineteen: The Summoning

Twenty: The Warning

Twenty-One: Massacre

Twenty-Two: Retreat

Twenty-Three: Tidings

Twenty-Four: Resolutions

Twenty-Five: Decisions

Twenty-Six: The Dance

Twenty-Seven: The Tree

Twenty-Eight: Emergence

Twenty-Nine: Dead Man’s Quest

Thirty: Reunion

Thirty-One: Lives in the Balance

Thirty-Two: Decisions and Consequences

Thirty-Three: Face to Face

Thirty-Four: Retrospection

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About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

I never spoke up for myself at my court martial.

I stood in the box where they put me, and tried not to think of the agonizing bite of the leg irons around my calves. They were too small for a man of my flesh, and the cold iron bit deep into the meat of my legs, burning and numbing at the same time. At the moment, the pain mattered to me more than the outcome of the hearing. I already knew how it would end.

That pain is chiefly what I remember of my trial. It hazes my memories in red. A number of witnesses spoke against me. I recall their righteous voices as they detailed my crimes to the assembled judges. Rape. Murder. Necrophilia. Desecration of a graveyard. My outrage and horror at being accused of such things had been eroded by the utter hopelessness of my situation. Witness after witness spoke against me. Threads of rumour, hearsay from a dead man’s lips, suspicions and circumstantial evidence were twisted together into a rope of evidence stout enough to hang me.

I think I know why Spink never addressed any questions directly to me. Lieutenant Spinrek, my friend since our Cavalla Academy days, was supposed to be defending me. I’d told him that I simply wanted to plead guilty and get it over with. That had angered him. Perhaps that was why he didn’t ask me to testify on my own behalf. He didn’t trust me to tell the truth and deny all the charges. He feared I’d take the easy way out.

I would have.

I didn’t fear the hangman’s gibbet. It would be a quick end to a life corrupted by a foreign magic. Walk up the steps, put my head into the noose and step off into darkness. The weight of my falling body would probably have jerked my head right off. No dangle and strangle for me. Just a quick exit from an existence that was too tangled and spoiled to repair.

Whatever I might have said in my own defence would have made no difference. Wrongs had been done, ugly, evil things, and the citizens of Gettys were determined that someone had to pay for them. Gettys was a rough place to live, a settlement half military outpost and half penal colony on the easternmost boundary of the Kingdom of Gernia. Its citizens were no strangers to rape and murder. But the crimes I was accused of went beyond the spectrum of passion and violence into something darker, too dark even for Gettys to tolerate. Someone had to wear the villain’s black cape and pay the toll for such transgressions, and who better than the solitary fat man who lived in the graveyard and was rumoured to have doings with the Specks?

So I was convicted. The cavalla officers who sat in judgment on me sentenced me to hang, and I accepted that. I had shamed my regiment. At that moment, my execution seemed the simplest escape from a life that had become the antithesis of every dream I’d ever had. I’d die and be done with disappointment and failure. Hearing my sentence was almost a relief.