The Traitor Queen

Trudi Canavan The Traitor Queen

By Trudi Canavan

The Magician’s Apprentice

The Black Magician Trilogy

The Magicians’ Guild

The Novice

The High Lord

Age of the Five

Priestess of the White

Last of the Wilds

Voice of the Gods

The Traitor Spy Trilogy

The Ambassador’s Mission

The Rogue

The Traitor Queen

Copyright

Published by Hachette Digital

ISBN: 978-0-74812-862-4

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2012 Trudi Canavan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Hachette Digital Little

Brown Book Group

100 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DY

www.hachette.co.uk

PART ONE

Chapter 1 Assassins and Allies

There is a mistaken belief, in Imardin, that printing presses had been invented by magicians. Anyone unaware of the workings of presses and magic could easily gain the impression, from the spectacular noise and the convulsing actions of the machine, that some sort of Alchemy was taking place, but no magic was required so long as someone was willing to turn the wheels and operate the levers.

Cery had learned the truth of the matter from Sonea years ago. Prototypes of the machine had been presented to the Guild by the inventor and the Guild had embraced it as a fast and cheap way of making duplicates of books. A printing service was then offered to the Houses for free, and to anyone from other classes for a charge. The impression that printing was magical was encouraged to deter others from starting their own trade. It was not until people of lower-class origins entered the Guild that the myth was dispelled and printing presses began to appear in the city in significant numbers.

The downside to this, Cery reflected, was the boom in popularity of the romantic adventure novel. A recently published one featured a rich heiress rescued from her luxurious but boring life by a young, handsome Thief. The fights were laughably implausible, nearly always involved swords rather than knives, and the underworld was populated by far too many good-looking men with impractical ideas about honour and loyalty. The novel had given a portion of the female population of Imardin an impression of the underworld that was a long way from the truth.

Of course, he had said none of this to the woman lying in bed beside him, who had been reading to him her favourite parts of these books every night since she had agreed to let him stay in her cellar. Cadia was no rich heiress. And I am no dashingly handsome Thief. She had been lonely and sad since her husband’s death, and the idea of hiding a Thief in her basement was a pleasant distraction.

And he... he had all but run out of places to hide.

He turned to look at her. She was asleep, breathing softly. He wondered if she really believed he was a Thief, or if he simply fitted well enough into her fantasy that she didn’t care if it was true or not. He was not the dashing young Thief of the novel – he certainly didn’t have the stamina for the adventures described, either in bed or out of it.

I’m getting soft. I can’t even walk up stairs without my heart thumping, and getting out of breath. We’ve spent too much time locked away in cramped hiding places and not enough time in fighting practice.

A muffled thump came from the next room. Cery lifted his head to regard the door. Were Anyi and Gol awake? Now that he was, he doubted he’d sleep again for some time. Being cooped up always led to him sleeping badly.

He slipped off the bed, automatically pulling on his trousers and reaching for his coat. Slipping one arm into a