The Impossible Knife

Snowshoeing is hiking in god-mode

Ice crunched as it shattered beneath Marianne's thigh-high boot. She nearly stumbled face-first into the river beneath her, but managed to stay standing. Her feet were too numb to tell if water had soaked through the leather.

"Damn," she whispered. The ice had been her best hope of hiding her trail from the Swordwulfen hunting her, but she didn't dare risk it any longer. No healer would help her if she blued and blistered from the cold, not with the magi so eager to fuel their rituals with the power ripening in her blood. This close to the mountains, villages were sparse and untrusting — and filled with guards.

Without training as either a mage or a soldier, all Marianne had to rely on for her escape was the woodcraft she'd learned as a child in the southern oaklands. Once, she'd dreamed of discovering a powerful patrimony, of living in a lord's house in the capitol. Now, she mourned the simple hut of her youth, burned in the war. She might never grind acorns again, and the thought did not fill her with the joy it might once have.

The palace was a trap, her father's legacy reduced to a battered old knife, and everyone she cared about was dead.