Upcoming release sample: LIARS' QUEST

Leena escorted Ashout of the castle. Lady Charlotte asked her to do it to protect her fromWinston’s few manservants who were loyal enough to try to harm her. Ashglimpsed one of them and wondered if the wrinkly, sour-faced man had some kindof magic that he would try to use against her. She couldn’t imagine any otherway he could best her.

“Hmm, they’re alllike that,” Leena said, when she caught Ash watching the man as they crossedthe main courtyard of the castle. “Only the desperate are willing to put upwith the pitiful wages my father offers, and they’re the only ones Lathiadoesn’t terrify.”

Ash didn’t feel anytingling or stinging in her two stars, but she suspected using her twobirthmarks to detect the presence of magic might be a dangerous kind ofmistake. When she asked if the manservants had any magic, Leena laughed underher breath.

“If they ever had any, theyforeswore it or stifled it, working for my father. He’s the sort who won’t allowanyone around him to be more powerful. People say my mother’s family has magicin their blood, but what fledgling magic she had faded away after she marriedhim.” She didn’t continue until they had crossed the dancing meadow that laybetween the castle’s outer walls and the first of the pastures for horses andcattle. “My patron fears that the leach potion still exists, and my father orperhaps his father obtained a large supply of it, and they erased what magic mymother had, and I might have had.”