Magic caused the war. Magic is forbidden. Magic will save us. The Relic Guild is the award nominated first book in The Relic Guild trilogy.
It was said the Labyrinth had once been the great meeting place, a sprawling city at the heart of an endless...
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By the time he caught up with the whore, some amateur assassins already had her trapped in a courtyard. Samuel crouched behind the rampart wall and furtively peered down at them through the crenellations.
The mark was clearly exhausted. She was dressed in clothes so oversized they barely stayed on her waiflike frame. Her large eyes were round with fear, and her short hair, streaked with red dye, was lank from rain. Fatigue and panic creased the pointed features of her gawky face.
Down to Samuel's left was the mouth of an alley. It was the only way in or out of the courtyard, and an assassin guarded it. He wore a priest's cassock and a wide-brimmed hat covered his face. His body was clearly deformed beneath his dress; his arms were so spindly they barely looked strong enough to carry the silver pistol in his hand. Away from the assassin, closer to the girl, stood a short, grubby man whose clothes were scarcely better than rags. Samuel recognised him and a twinge of anger flared in his chest.
Charlie Hemlock: perhaps the most venal, untrustworthy bastard in Labrys Town. More than once this snake had crossed Samuel, but lived to tell the tale. His involvement came as no surprise.
Samuel slipped his short rifle from the holster on his back, its power stone covered for stealth.
Down in the courtyard, Hemlock made a grab for the girl, but, despite her obvious exhaustion, she clearly wasn't ready to give up the fight. She screeched, clawing at Hemlock's face, dragging her fingernails down his cheek. As she broke free of him, Hemlock clutched his face and stamped his foot, uttering a stream of curses.
'Bitch!' he shouted for a finale.
The girl backed away.
The assassin remained by the alley mouth offering no help to his friend. Motionless, almost statuesque, he seemed content to watch Hemlock struggle with his lacerations. Why were they toying with their victim?
Suspicious now, he looked back to the mark.
Samuel's employer had told him a rumour about this girl – that she was a magicker, a human born with a specific magical gift. She was a changeling, and could shift her form into that of a wolf. Samuel was sceptical of such tales – nothing like a changeling had been seen in the Labyrinth for a couple of generations at least. But that Hemlock and the assassin had not yet killed the girl got him thinking: changeling blood was a potent catalyst in the art of spell-craft, and any mundane magic-user would give his right arm to procure it, however much damage his lackey took in the process. But there weren't supposed to be any magic-users left.
Whoever had employed Hemlock obviously wanted the whore captured alive, for some reason. Even if the rumours were true about her, she was clearly too exhausted to defend herself with any metamorphosis into a wolf. Samuel guessed that the assassin's pistol was loaded with some kind of magical ammunition designed to incarcerate her, and that was what triggered his suspicion. The assassin had a clear view of the whore, the power stone on his weapon was primed and glowing, yet he hadn't taken the shot. Even a child couldn't miss from that distance. Why was he waiting?
