C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 191

Covers Created in January 2014

Here is the cover I created for my anthology this month:


An Anthology of Blades is available from Smashwords, Kindle, Kobo, iTunes, and DriveThruFiction

And here is the cover I created for Ellie Moonwater's next release on behalf of C.M. Simpson Publishing:

Blogs that Made me Stop in January 2014

Here are the blogs that grabbed me enough for me to read to the end:

Writing Craft: http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/2014/01/... Writing Business: http://kriswrites.com/2014/01/22/the-... - about setting up as an independent writer and publisherhttp://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=11312 - about publishing production and scheduling Writing Industry:  http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2... about the below conversation with Steve Zacharius.http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2014... http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2014... Other Writers and Their Experiences: http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b... Just Because I Liked It:  http://www.lifebuzz.co/they-went-for-...

Books Read in January 2014

Here are the books I've managed to read this month. Two that will become classics - if they haven't already -  and two that are already classics. Give them a whirl!

An Anthology of Blades: First Pages - Blood and Iron

Blood and Iron has been incorporated into An Anthology of Blades.

When a murderer follows the barbarian from one city to the next, he knows sorcery is afoot and that he must defeat it. With the help of his roguish friend, Stanislau, he begins his investigations.

Blood and Iron is a short tale of sword and sorcery.
It is available as a free read on this site or as part of An Anthology of Blades .
First Page: Blood and Iron

“The difference is not that he kills, but how and why he kills,” Stanislau said. “Every woman he touches. The only thing they have in common is you.”Haft knew where this conversation was going. He’d had it before. Next Stan would be telling him they had to leave another city and Haft had his eye on the prettiest wench yet. Stan did not know about her; Haft could keep his secrets better than the petty sneak gave him credit for.At least Haft did not have to make his living by sneaking. He only had to do that when wenching, sneaking and sometimes running. Angry brothers should be the only reason Haft had to leave a city… and maybe angry tavern owners. Haft did not care. The little people should not make their things so breakable. He glared at Stanislau.Stanislau was a tall man, dark-haired and bronze-eyed, handsome and smart enough to turn his hand to anything. Smart enough to know an irritable Westlander when he saw one. He caught Haft’s look and raised his hands. He was not smart enough to back down.“You know I’m right, Haft,” he said, and the Westlander wondered if it would one punch or two to make him stay down.Stanislau was not a small man, but he was not as big as Haft. Haft curled his lip in a snarl. He knew no such thing. They had left the last city because of the killings, and Haft had been blamed for them. Stan seemed to have forgotten that, or maybe that was something the sneak did not know.“Haft will be blamed,” he said. “Like before.”The depth of his voice made it a pronouncement, the words rang like a truth. The bar stilled.Stanislau looked surprised, and Haft suspected the sneak had known, but had chosen not to share. He reached for the wine bottle and clenched his hand around it, contemplating whether or not to tighten his grip so that the clay shattered or to raise it to his lips and drink. Drinking was the better option, but not too much. Haft was going hunting. He would rather wench, but he would not be blamed when he was innocent of the worst harm done.“Be gone, wizard,” he said, looking past Stan’s shoulder.“Our problems are aligned.” The wizard stalked up to the table and reached it as Haft swigged a mouthful from the bottle. Quick as light, the wizard reached across, took the bottle from Haft’s hand and tossed back a mouthful just as big.“There,” he said, handing the bottle back. “We have drunk together. Now, we will speak.”Haft had grasped the bottle instinctively. Part of his head wanted his sword, and part of his head reminded him the wizard was right.“So, speak,” he said, his face like thunder.“You’ve been seeing my daughter,” the wizard replied. “I do not want the Garitzik to kill her.”“Garitzik?” Stanislau asked.“You speak Westlander,” Haft said to the wizard.To Stanislau, he explained, “The people of stone and shadow.”He lifted the two, heavy-bladed, short-axes from the table. When he called their names in battle his voice sounded like thunder and rockfalls. He had told Stanislau the words meant ‘Blood’ and ‘Iron’ but they meant much more. The great sword he carried over his back was called ‘Justice’, but Haft had never told Stan that. The sneak might ask him to use it more often.

END OF FIRST PAGE
If you would like to read more, Blood and Iron is available in  An Anthology of Blades, which can be found at Smashwords, Amazon, CreateSpace, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit, Kobo and Smashwords partner platforms such as iTunes, Nook and Sony.

My January 2014 Release

The following anthology was released in January 2014.



Axes, swords, knives, cursed, blessed or from the Otherlands, this anthology is all about things that cut, slice, dice or amputate. From a buried blade housing one of the protagonists of an ancient battle, to axes wielded by a barbarian at the crossroads of destiny, all the short stories and poems contained in this anthology have one common theme—they are some kind of blade.
An Anthology of Blades is the sixth volume in The Simpson Anthologies and is available from Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, CreateSpace (in both large and small print), DriveThruFiction, and OmniLit, as well as all outlets to which Smashwords distributes, which include Barnes and Noble Nook and iTunes. While Smashwords, DriveThruFiction, and Kobo had scheduling options, there may be a short delay before CreateSpace, Kindle and some Smashwords distributors list this title.

An Anthology of Blades: First Pages - The Buried Blade

The Buried Blade has been incorporated into AnAnthology of Blades.


When the grass in one of her uncle's fields starts to die, Amanda tries to work out why, but her uncle only sees stones, where she sees fragments of pottery. In a war as old as time, will Amanda convince her uncle of the truth, and remain unscathed, or will she fall under the control of an old and subtle power?

The Buried Blade is a short tale of dark fantasy, which will later be incorporated into An Anthologyof Blades.

The Buried Blade is available from Smashwords and Kindle, Kobo, iTunes and Nook.

First Page Excerpt: The Buried BladeThe sword sang in the darkness. It sang through the rubble that buried it. It sang through the bones of skeletal fingers that had wrapped themselves around it.The song could not be heard through the muffling shroud of earth covering the sword although it echoed throughout the ancient citadel that was imprisoned with it. The song seeped through the earth for an age, pushing upwards and infecting the soil as it went. It was inevitable that, where the song forged the way, the ghosts would follow.Nature tried to sound a warning but its guardians were gone, driven out or sleeping or unaware of their powers—and the responsibility that went with them.Animals fled the mounded earth beneath the grassy field. At least, they fled it where they could. The wild ones forsook it with the freedom that only they possessed, while those of domesticity's prison could only show their reluctance for the field, before their masters forced them into it.
*   *   *
“Durned beast!” Willis Harran cried, bringing his willow switch down upon the milk cow's rump.She was the last of the herd to be forced through the gate and, though she had been the easiest of them all, Willis was ready to send her to the knackery. He waved his switch at her once more as his niece closed the gate behind her.“Don't know what's got into them,” he muttered, as he climbed the fence beside the field. “They've been right skittish of late.”Amanda looked at her uncle. The cattle weren't the only ones who'd been skittish about the field. She'd watched the rabbits forsake their warren, and the morning fox skirt cautiously around the fence instead of cutting straight across the field as he usually did.Even the birds had stopped hunting for worms within its bounds. Amanda said nothing of this to Willis. He wouldn't have believed her. He might even have laughed. She followed his broad no-nonsense back towards the small house that served him and her aunt as home, the smell of breakfast driving the field's strangeness from her mind.The sword's song kept upwards until the cattle began to lose their milk, and Willis's threats of both knackery and willow switch were no longer incentive enough to goad them through the gate.The field's grass began to fade. Willis moved the cattle to another field and watched their milk improve. Amanda, interested by this unseasonal change, began collecting soil samples to...

END EXCERPT
If you would like to read more, The Buried Blade is available in An Anthology of Blades or as a stand-alone title from Smashwords and Kindle and will soon be available from Kobo, iTunes and Nook. 

Progress Report: Week 4, January 2014

Made the base word goal for the week—for the first time this year. My main two projects are progressing nicely, and a minor project is also advancing. OverviewNew words produced: 8294Old words revised: 0Works completed: 11 (all for inclusion in a larger work)Works revised: 0Covers created: 0 (1-3 variations)Works published: 1 (5 release platforms)Works submitted: 0Competitions Entered: 0Tier 1 Tasks
Annual14—Added 5,740 wordsAnnual13—Added 569 words
Publishing Tasks
Created 15 blog posts for this blog;Created 17 blog posts for the C.M. Simpson Publishing blog;Released An Anthology of Blades to Smashwords. Joined the Smashwords Affiliate Program.
New ArrivalsThe following ideas arrived this week:

Anthology47: themed flash fiction.Poem277—The Fey in Two Lands: about the fey in two lands;Poem278—The Dead and the Feather of Ma’at: An exploration of Egyptian mythology;Poem279—A Pixie’s Last Request: About a dying pixie;Poem280—The Unicorn Dichotomy: a poetical look at the different unicorn types;Poem281—Pixies in the Wood: a poem about pixies in a wood;ShortStory196—The Swarm on Idragor Five: flash science fiction about a swarm on another world;ShortStory197—A Hunter is Born: flash science fiction about the birth of a hunter;ShortStory198—The Storm Father: flash fantasy fiction about a storm father;ShortStory199—Cinnamon Pixies and Bridge Trolls: flash paranormal urban fantasy fiction pixies and trolls;ShortStory200—Show-Down at the Shadow Lake: sudden paranormal urban fantasy fiction about trolls, the fey and treachery;ShortStory201—Mermaids take the City: flash paranormal urban fantasy fiction about mermaids; ShortStory202—The Man from the Juniper Tree: flash speculative fiction set in the world of spies.

Flash Fiction Challenge Result: The Man from the Juniper Tree

The Man from the Juniper Tree

This week’s terribleminds flash fiction challenge was to rewrite a fairytale—one we chose ourselves. We had one thousand words to do it in, and one catch. We had to rewrite the fairytale in a randomly rolled genre. Well, I love randomness, so I let the fairytale choose itself. I opened up Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales,running with the story on that page. In this case, The Juniper Tree. I had to rewrite it in the spy thriller genre, which I’ve read, but never written. It was pretty hard with the main components being, a miracle child, a step-mother’s betrayal, cannibalism, a step-sister’s rescue, a magical transformation and the gathering and giving of gifts. Well, this retelling is close, but I don’t think it wins a cigar: I missed the gift gathering and blurred the gift giving, the miraculous birth isn’t obvious, and I missed the rule of three, and the song. I did manage the transformation, but I’m not sure I entirely captured the spy thriller genre. I hope you enjoy it none-the-less.

Cassidy stared at the gleeful smile on the Burman’s face, tried to lift a hand and break the connection between his head and the mainframe. Failed. He looked to Marlena for help, but the girl stood silent, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes flicked between his entrapment and Burman, helpless in light of the gun pressed up hard under her diaphragm.“Cass,” she whispered, her voice helpless and awash with grief.Cassidy heard her, but felt the deadly lethargy spreading through his limbs. Where he had felt shocked into immobility, he now found he was numb, his body a leaden weight pinning him to the chair. There was a picture on the wall above the desk, one taken on the open day at a foreign embassy.It gave nothing of the embassy away, but framed the juniper tree perfectly, reminding him of the day he’d first encountered the agency. The chief had found him, standing in the juniper tree’s shadow trying to keep a dark-clad woman on her feet, weeping as he held her tight to his side—his boss’s partner. He’d pleaded with her not to die, but his pleas had been in vain, and the boss had dragged them both out before the security guards could reach them.Cassidy fought to bring his mind back to the present, but the desk swam before his eyes and his memory pulled him through the years of training and living under the chief’s roof, the missions, the funeral, his adopted father’s ever-present sadness.“You’re just like her,” Hillier had said at the graveside. “Same fire.”Fire Burman was now putting to good use. Cassidy could feel it drawing the life out of him, could see only the Burman’s malicious smile as she shifted the pistol down and put a bullet through the top of Marlena’s thigh. Cassidy didn’t see her leave the office, but he heard the door close, heard Marlena sobbing as she dragged herself over to the chair.Cass wanted to tell her it would be all right, that he’d hacked his way from one system to another, raiding drug-supported corporations, weapon-smuggling front companies and taken on service deniers and info-nappers. He wanted to say this system would be no different, that the company interface was his friend, but the paralysis that stopped him moving wouldn’t let him. It held his jaw locked tight.Dammit! Should have seen this coming. Should have… Cassidy’s mind wandered back over the project’s progress reports, and remembered he could join the data-stream. He wondered if he could save himself, and wished he’d managed to get the treacherous Burman to tell him how it was done, wished he’d asked more questions about how the computer tapped the excess energy produced by each person hooked into it—just a little, she’d said. Yeah, right.“Where’s Cassidy?” The sound of the chief’s voice made Cassidy jump, jolting him out of the exploration he’d been making of the interface, making him remember Burman’s promise. She’d make his adopted father kill him, cause the head of the agency to drain every last drop of life from his protégé so that she could rise, and Marlena’s place in the succession was assured. Marlena had protested too soon to save him.Thinking of Marlena reminded Cassidy of the female agent’s presence. He became aware of the pressure on the arm of the chair, of Marlena’s scrabbling attempts to reach the jack plugged into his head, became aware of her expletive, just before she seized the chair with both hands and toppled it and him to the floor.“Sshh, sshh, sshh,” she whispered, as though she wasn’t the one who had cried out in pain and caused the crash. “Sshh.”Cassidy noted the way he’d caught his feet under the lip of the desk, and felt ridiculously relieved they’d stopped his rag-doll legs banging his knees into his face. He tried to re-focus on the interface, only to have the chief’s voice pull him back to his predicament.“What’s this?” Hillier asked.“The latest from the labs,” Burman responded.Cassidy heard the scrape of something being pushed across a table.“The laptop,” whimpered Marlena. “Got to be quick. Quick. Quick.”Cassidy wished she’d shut up.“Why don’t you try it out?” Burman suggested. It’s got the latest software. There’s even a mission simulation.”“I have a report to write.”“No problems, just log in from here. Come on, Jon, give it a go.”“Anything for an iota of peace,” Hillier grumbled, and there was a click. “Nice.”Cassidy felt a pull at his insides, a sudden tiring tug.“No, no, no,” Marlena said, her voice tearful. She patted Cassidy’s cheek. “It’s wireless, Cass. Wireless. You’ve just gotta get into the mainframe. Please…”Wireless. Which means…Cassidy found the port and leapt for it. Why does she want me in the mainframe?“Holy Hell! Cass is going to love this!” It was the highest compliment Hillier could pay, but Cassidy doubted Burman would appreciate it. Truth was, he did love the new system. He flipped and swirled and wondered how he could save himself. Tried to think like a hacker instead of a man whose mind was trapped in a machine. He didn’t need to find the datalink to his body to know it was growing weaker by the minute.Cassidy studied the data-stream, noted the security cameras’ feed, dived in, found the alarms, alerted the guards. Twisting, he fed the image to the laptop, bringing Hillier at the run. He shut the laptop down.The chief took one look at Marlena and dialled the ambulance. Cassidy flashed the interface telltale, catching Burman’s attention. He had a surprise for her, was relieved when her fingers seized the connection.Rummaging through the databanks, he’d found the power commands. Laughing, he tweaked them, feeding the mainframe’s power-feed into Burman’s fingers, frying her from fingertip to toe. Laughing, he returned to his head in a wireless leap, hoping the medics made it on time.

New Release: An Anthology of Blades

An Anthology of Blades releases today!
  Axes, swords, knives, cursed, blessed or from the Otherlands, this anthology is all about things that cut, slice, dice or amputate. From a buried blade housing one of the protagonists of an ancient battle, to axes wielded by a barbarian at the crossroads of destiny, all the short stories and poems contained in this anthology have one common theme—they are some kind of blade.
An Anthology of Blades is the sixth volume in The Simpson Anthologies and is available from Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, CreateSpace (in both large and small print), DriveThruFiction, and OmniLit, as well as all outlets to which Smashwords distributes, which include Barnes and Noble Nook and iTunes. While Smashwords, DriveThruFiction, and Kobo had scheduling options, there may be a short delay before CreateSpace, Kindle and some Smashwords distributors list this title.

Flash Fiction Challenge Result - Show-Down at the Shadow Lake

Show-Down at the Shadow Lake

I started writing this piece on January 18, 2014, and completed it on January 23, 2014. It was written for Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds blog flash fiction challenge for this week. This time we were allowed 2,000 words, instead of the usual 1,000 words, and I found this a more difficult target to meet than the shorter lengths. As with all the word maximums for these contests, I used it as the end word count goal. For this contest, we had to roll on three tables to discover the Who, the Where and the Uh-Oh of our story. I rolled ‘7’ earning an accountant as the story’s protagonistic ‘who’. This was followed by a ‘10’, which meant my account was to be found in a casino, facing down the besiegement of supernatural enemies, resulting from a second roll of ‘10’. The story was due by noon on January 24, 2014, EST US.

Never do the books when you haven’t had enough sleep – no matter how much the client threatens to do you bodily harm. They’ll do much worse to you if you screw up because you didn’t take the zees you needed. So, here I was, sitting in the Shadow Lake Casino and hoping no one found me.The Shadow Lake was one of the few places I had sworn never to go. And because I had sworn it, I was hoping it would take my enemies longer to find me. I could have gone to the casino in the middle of town, but that was a place for humans… for people like me. And I was human, so I had come to the Shadow Lake, booked into a room, turned my hundred bucks worth of chips into ten thousand and retired to the bar.I’m an accountant, a reputable accountant, and I never frequent casinos, betting shops or bookies. That kind of behaviour makes clients nervous. And nerves in clients like mine would see me dead.I stared into my drink, trying to work out where I’d gone wrong. I don’t make mistakes, not dyslexic ones, not fatigue-based ones, not number ones—not ever. For the life of me, I couldn’t work out how one of my client’s tax returns had been submitted with a mistake.I checked each one before sending them off, going over each receipt, and every figure on the pay sheet. There hadn’t been any mistakes on that return. There had been nothing but a clean, correct set of numbers that should have seen the client with a healthy tax return. Instead, he’d received a visit from the tax squad and been indicted for fraud. Not my doing, but you try to explain that to a fairy prince.I should have known the foot of a hill—any hill, no matter how large—was a bad place to hide. The fey live in the Otherworld, but do business in this one. They travel between the two via portals set in mountains. Shadow Lake was built on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, in the shadow of Black Mountain. Who was I kidding? Especially since the nixies knew where I was.I watched as one of the blue-skinned water maids waited tables, and I picked up my beer. It might be better if I sat this one out in my room. The minute my butt left the seat, I saw him.Eight-foot tall, green-skinned, be-tusked and beady eyed, the war troll was hard to miss, but I’d been sitting with my back to the door leading to the foyer. Dumb. Here I was, trying to avoid the supernatural, and I’d walked right into one of their strongholds. I hadn’t even checked the ownership.Like, I said, dumb.I watched the troll turning his head, scanning the room. There was little hope he was looking for someone else. Teloriel’s insignia was emblazoned across his breastplate. I leaned back, resting an elbow on the bar. As the troll’s gaze found me, I raised my glass, taking a provocatively long sip from my beer.The war troll strode over, brushing past tables and silencing a waiter’s protest by covering the man’s face with one great hand until he had passed. He didn’t sit, just towered over me.“Boss wants to see you.”I peered around him, as though searching for his boss.“Not here. Outside.”I took another sip of beer, looked up at him.“No.”“I could drag you out.”“I claim guesting rights,” I said, loudly enough for my voice to carry to the far edges of the dining room, hoping the right person would hear, hoping my words would have some effect before the troll decided to just pick me up, tuck me under one arm and leave the casino.“I wish you hadn’t said that.”I shrugged—he could wish all he liked.“Beer?” I asked, returning the troll’s glare with a look of bland indifference. In reality, my heart was doing triple time, and sweat prickled my armpits. I was pretty sure the troll could smell my fear, but he sure as hell couldn’t see it. In the end, he nodded, settling his bulk on the stool beside mine. It creaked, protesting as I signalled the bar nixie.She’d heard my claim of guesting rights, and knew what trolls preferred to drink. I guess you could call it beer. This was going to cost me, but if it stopped the troll from dragging me out to the fate Teloriel had promised, I didn’t care. No doubt, his princeliness was waiting in the foreshore parkland on the other side of the highway.I sipped my beer. The war troll sipped his brew. We waited.Footsteps clattered down the stairs leading from the casino’s inner sanctum.“What is that thing doing in here?” a sharp voice demanded, ringing off the decorative pillars and double-plate glass windows looking out over the lake.The troll and I glanced up.“I think he means you,” I said.“Nope.” The troll’s rumble was too confident to ignore.The casino owner was marching directly towards us, and his angry glance wasn’t directed at my oversized drinking companion. The troll was right; the fury in the owner’s expression was all for me. I set my beer on the bar.“I claim—”“You bloody well dare!”It’s hard not to flinch from the snarling face of an angry hobgoblin-elven crossbreed, but I managed it. I stared into his coal-dark eyes, noting the port-wine touch to their depths. I also noted his creamy yellow fangs, and the leathery finish to his khaki-brown skin. He still looked damn fine in his hand-crafted suit.“I bloody well do.”“Guesting rights?” he asked, with a sneer.“Guesting rights.”“From a hobgoblin fey lord?”My mouth went dry. I was not an expert in fey law, but I was pretty sure there was an extra layer of meaning wrapped around his question. He was part fey. There was always an extra layer meaning wrapped around their words. I swallowed, not raising my glass.“If that is who can grant them in this place.”He smiled, and nerves formed a lump at the back of my throat, an icy stream to my stomach.“And only I.”“Then I claim them,” I said, and he gave a short bark of laughter.“You are altogether too forward,” he said, cupping my cheek in a long-taloned hand.I waited, wondering who was being too forward, now. The troll gave a derisive snort, and heaved himself off the stool, finishing his beer in one long swallow.“What should I tell my prince?” he asked, setting down his glass.“Tell him?” My host withdrew his hand, turning it to trace my cheekline with a single, black talon. “Tell him my latest guest is paying her board.”The troll bared its fangs in a troll grin.“Board?” What had I gotten myself into?“Board. No guest stays for free,” the half-hob said.From his smile, I could tell what kind of payment he would prefer.“My room is paid up for a week.”He shook his head.“That is not sufficient,” he said. “You claimed guesting rights, and that assumes protection from the host. Nothing in the Shadow Lake is for free.”I should have known that a hobgoblin cross wouldn’t live by the laws of the elven fey, should have known to check who—and what—owned the casino I wanted to hide out in. Hadn’t had time.“I have more money.”“Human money has limited value,” he said. “I have enough of it of my own. You want shelter from a fairy prince, and he isn’t happy.”“I can do your books.”“What books?”“Your accounts.”A slow, sly smile spread across his features and he looked at me from under thick fringed eye lids.“I’ve heard about your accounting skills,” he said. “I’m afraid your reputation is a little tarnished.”His response floored me, and then I knew. I had no proof, apart from that sly little grin, the smirk of self-satisfaction. I knew if I ran, I wasn’t likely to reach the door, and, if I did, I’d be running out into a carpark in full sight of the riders waiting for me in the park. I took a step back from him, noting the movement of suited figures on the stairs and by the doors leading to the foyer.He watched me from under his lashes, smiling quietly to himself. I returned his gaze, keeping my face carefully bland as I picked up what was left of my beer.“You did this,” I said, taking a sip.The smile grew more pronounced.“You can’t prove that.”“That sounded like a yes.”“A host doesn’t lie to his guests.”“So, you did do this?”“You have no proof I was involved.”“I don’t make the kind of mistake found in those books.”“Apparently, you do.”“No.” I fought to keep my voice even, heard overtones of my British ancestry as fury roiled within. “Those mistakes were made for me.”I noticed his eyes dart to a corner of the bar, turned slowly, raising my glass for another sip as I surveyed the room, noting who sat, half-obscured, at a table of her own. Smiling, I turned back to my host and raised my glass. He watched me, half smiling in return.I wiped the smile from his face when I up-ended my glass over his head.“That is no way to treat the one who gives you shelter,” he snarled.But I was already sprinting towards the door.“I withdraw my request,” I shouted, ducking under the reaching arms of a hobgoblin guard, and shoving the other one so he tumbled backwards over a potted pine. “A guest would never insult her host.”“Indeed, not!” he snapped, then, “Take her!”Take me where? I wondered, charging through the foyer and slamming through the glass door that stood to one side of the more genteelly revolving entrance. I heard it bounce back off the wall, with a resounding clatter, heard the crash and tinkle as someone ran full-tilt into it. By the fey gods that had been close—too close for comfort.I spotted Teloriel and his cohort, waiting patiently in the park and darted between two parked cars and an open stretch of gravel to reach them. I did not stop, did not dare glance at the highway to ensure it was clear, struck it lucky for the first time since I’d received Teloriel’s summons at eleven o’clock that morning. Two cars turned into the Shadow Lakes car park and one rushed past on my heels, tooting its horn in alarm in my wake.I threw myself up onto the verge and scrambled up surprised to find strong hands on my arm, pulling me forward, surprised, too, by the arcing shield that interposed itself between me and in pursuit. The war troll grinned into my face before drawing me past him and knocking the Shadow Lakes security goblin off the embankment and into the path of an oncoming car.“Oops,” he said, his voice shaking with laughter.I focussed on the angry face of the elven prince, said the only words that would stay his hand.“You were right, my lord,” I said, gasping for breath as I threw myself to my knees. “The Shadow Master sabotaged your accounts.”“Who?” he asked, knowing full well he had said no such thing.“Your sister, my lord,” I said, raising my head to add, “I am sorry.”He smiled, cold and tight.“Don’t be,” he said. “You get to be my accountant a little longer.”Thinking on the fury in the half-hob’s voice, I reached up and touched his stirrup.“I claim right of refuge,” I said.“Then you’ll do my accounts for free.”“Agreed,” I answered, and let him pull onto his horse.