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  She came out of the forest near the crossroads just outside Wooding and realized that it hadn’t been just bad luck. There had been an execution today.

  Her village of Wooding saw a lot of executions, because it was on the direct road from Carlion to the warlord’s fort at Thornhill. For centuries the South Domain warlords had used the crossroads just outside Wooding as the site for their punishments. There was a scaffold set up for when the warlord felt merciful. And for when he wasn’t there was the rock press, a sturdy wooden box the size of a coffin, but deeper, where the condemned were piled with heavy stones until their bones broke and they suffocated, slowly.

  Today they had used the rock press. There was blood seeping out of the box at the corners. The condemned often bled from the nose and mouth in the final stages of pressing. Bramble slowed as she walked past the punishment site. Did she want to know who they had killed this time? What was the point?

  She went over to the box and looked in. No one she knew, thank the gods. Some stranger—the Domain was large, and criminals were brought to the warlord from miles away. Then she looked closer. A stranger, but just a boy. Fourteen, perhaps. A baby. Probably accused of something like “disrespect to the warlord.” Her heart burned again, as it had in the woods. Anger, indignation, pity. She would have to make sure she was nowhere near the village the next morning, when the warlord’s men rounded up the villagers to see the boy’s corpse removed from the box and placed in the gibbet. She doubted she could applaud and cheer for the warlord over this execution, as the villagers were expected to do.

  Some did so gladly. There were always a few who enjoyed a killing, like the crows that nested in the tree next to the scaffold and descended on the corpses with real enthusiasm. But the rest of the villagers had seen too many people die who looked just like them. Ordinary people. People who couldn’t pay their taxes, or hadn’t bowed low enough to the warlord. Or who had objected to their daughter being dragged away to the fort by the warlord’s men. It was important to attend the executions, and to cheer loudly. The warlord’s men were always watching. Bramble had cheered as loudly as anyone, in the past, and had been sick later, every time.

  So the warlord’s men would have done their job today and gone home as soon as the boy stopped breathing. The blond had probably taken the shortcut through the woods and had seen the wolf by accident. He couldn’t resist tracking it a little way. Couldn’t resist killing again.

  A hunter who didn’t care if the animal he shot suffered deserved nothing but contempt. He certainly didn’t deserve the hide of the animal he had abandoned to pain and slow death.

  But the sensible thing to do would be to take the skin to the warlord’s fort, say it had one of the warlord’s arrows in it when she found it, and let the blond claim it. Let him have his prize for killing.

  Bramble looked at the boy in the box, whose face was still contorted in pain. “Well, no one ever said I was sensible,” she said.

  She skirted the village and came to the back of her parents’ house, through the alders that fringed the stream. She dumped the wolf skin behind the privy, then went the whole way back so she would be seen to come home through the main street with nothing in her hands but rabbit and greens.

  Table of Contents

  Front Cover Image

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Extras

  Meet the Author

  A Preview of THE CASTINGS TRILOGY

  The Eleven Domains

  The Deep

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  Mountainside, the Ice King’s Country

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The Last Domain

  The Last Domain

  The Last Domain

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  Mountainside, the Ice King’s Country

  The Great Forest

  The Last Domain

  The Great Forest

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The Great Forest

  The Great Forest

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The Road to Foreverfroze

  Northern Mountains Domain

  The Road from Foreverfroze

  Starkling

  Starkling

  Starkling

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The Last Domain

  Starkling

  The Foothills of the Eye Teeth Mountains

  Timbertop, the Last Domain

  The Ice King’s Country

  The Ice King’s Country

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The Ice King’s Country

  Mountainside, the Ice King’s Country

  The Last Domain

  Mountainside, the Ice King’s Country

  Timbertop, the Last Domain

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  Mountainside, the Ice King’s Country

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  The Ice King’s Country

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  On the Ice

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  On the Ice

  On the Ice

  Fire Mountain

  Palisade Fort, the Last Domain

  Fire Mountain

  Above the Ice

  Epilogue

  By Pamela Freeman

  Praise for Pamela Freeman

  Copyright

  BY PAMELA FREEMAN

  The Castings Trilogy

  Ember and Ash

  Praise for Pamela Freeman

  “With magic, murder, adventure, and mystery, Blood Ties is an exciting beginning to a brand new fantasy epic.”

  —scifichick.com

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Pamela Freeman

  Excerpt from The Castings Trilogy compilation copyright © 2010 by Pamela Freeman

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Orbit

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  First eBook Edition: May 2011

  ISBN: 978-0-316-17548-7