Spellbreaker by Blake Charlton

Claude thrown over his right arm and a massive book pinned to his side by his left. With little ceremony, John let the book drop. It clanged softly on the ground. Then John laid the knight onto his back.
    Sir Claude DeFral—highsmith of Lorn, knight of the Order of the Oriflamme, veteran of the Goldensward War, spy, and assassin—was a thin spellwright in his sixties. His skin was dark brown, his head shaved, his goatee silver. Presently his head lolled back and his mouth fell open. The very picture of coma.
    Nicodemus cast a disspell onto the highsmith’s head. John was muttering something about slime, snow, and brains when Sir Claude calmly opened his eyes and looked with puzzlement at Nicodemus, John, and the human shadow that was Rory. “Let me guess, my lord,” Sir Claude said, “last night we drank too much?”
    â€œEveryone’s a joker tonight,” Nicodemus muttered.
    Sir Claude propped himself onto his elbows and looked at Rory. “Druid, such a surprise to meet you here. At least I assume it’s you; no one else but you would produce quite such a corpulent shadow.”
    â€œDon’t you two start,” Nicodemus growled. “Listen, we haven’t much time. Somehow the River Thief snuffed our watch. He’s taking our boats out on the river to loot them one by one. I still don’t know what he is—a water god I’ll wager—but for all we know he could be a wind neodemon or a ghost from the Floating Island. Whatever he is, he might flee downriver at any moment. So Rory, Sir Claude, and I are going to play a Wounded Bird infiltration game.”
    John frowned. “What about Doria?”
    Magistra Doria Kokalas was Nicodemus’s envoy from the hydromancers, a senior clerical physician, and the party’s only native Ixonian. Therefore she was—Nicodemus realized too late—the only one who could have judged this plan’s feasibility. “There’s no time to get Magistra.”
    â€œShe’s not going to like that,” Rory said.
    â€œNor will she like you two bungling our only chance to take down the River Thief,” Nicodemus replied as he cast a shadowganger spell first on Sir Claude and then on himself. “Here’s the game: The three of us stow away on the third boat. Once they take her out and board her, Sir Claude will play the Wounded Bird to get the River Thief’s complete attention. I’ll hop in the water and play a Papa to the Rescue. The neodemon will either try to kill me outright—if so, Rory, set the boat on them—or more likely the neodemon will spellbind Sir Claude and me and set off downriver. You two give me an hour to proselytize. If the River Thief converts, great. If not, I play spellbreaker while Rory kills everyone and keeps the boat afloat until Doria catches up with us. Understood?”
    â€œHow will Doria know to catch up with you?” John asked.
    â€œYou’re going to tell her,” Nicodemus replied. “As soon as we stow away, disspell the godspell around Doria’s mind. Tell her about our infiltration game and that she’s to come after us.”
    Rory coughed. “She’s not going to like that.”
    â€œYou already said that,” Nicodemus replied. “Other comments?”
    The shadowganger subtext had transformed Sir Claude into a shadow. He picked up the massive book, which John had dropped next to him. This was one of Sir Claude’s copies of the Canticle of Iron, a tome of thin metal sheets upon which the Lornish holy texts and many highsmith spells were written.
    â€œMy lord,” Sir Claude said as he rose to a crouch, “are you sure you want to place your honored life, not to mention my own humble existence, in the hands of a tulip gardener?” He nodded toward Rory. “I am, of course, deeply impressed by the druidic art of cultivating pansies, but forgive me if I’m just a bit queasy about playing Wounded