Dead Country


 Contents
 
 Title Page
 Copyright Notice
 Dedication
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Acknowledgments
 Also by Max Gladstone
 About the Author
 Newsletter Sign-up
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Contents
 Chapter 1
 Acknowledgments
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Pagebreaks of the print version
 
 Cover Page
 v
 vii
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
 12
 13
 14
 15
 16
 17
 18
 19
 20
 21
 22
 23
 24
 25
 26
 27
 28
 29
 30
 31
 32
 33
 34
 35
 36
 37
 38
 39
 40
 41
 42
 43
 44
 45
 46
 47
 48
 49
 50
 51
 52
 53
 54
 55
 56
 57
 58
 59
 60
 61
 62
 63
 64
 65
 66
 67
 68
 69
 70
 71
 72
 73
 74
 75
 76
 77
 78
 79
 80
 81
 82
 83
 84
 85
 86
 87
 88
 89
 90
 91
 92
 93
 94
 95
 96
 97
 98
 99
 100
 101
 102
 103
 104
 105
 106
 107
 108
 109
 110
 111
 112
 113
 114
 115
 116
 117
 118
 119
 120
 121
 122
 123
 124
 125
 126
 127
 128
 129
 130
 131
 132
 133
 134
 135
 136
 137
 138
 139
 140
 141
 142
 143
 144
 145
 146
 147
 148
 149
 150
 151
 152
 153
 154
 155
 156
 157
 158
 159
 160
 161
 162
 163
 164
 165
 166
 167
 168
 169
 170
 171
 172
 173
 174
 175
 176
 177
 178
 179
 180
 181
 182
 183
 184
 185
 186
 187
 188
 189
 190
 191
 192
 193
 194
 195
 196
 197
 198
 199
 200
 201
 202
 203
 204
 205
 206
 207
 208
 209
 210
 211
 212
 213
 214
 215
 216
 217
 218
 219
 220
 221
 222
 223
 224
 225
 226
 227
 228
 229
 230
 231
 232
 233
 234
 235
 236
 237
 238
 239
 241
 iii
 243
 vi
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 About the Author
 Copyright Page
 
 Thank you for buying this
 Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
 
 To receive special offers, bonus content,
 and info on new releases and other great reads,
 sign up for our newsletters.
 
 
 Or visit us online at
 us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
 
 For email updates on the author, click here.
 
 The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.
 Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
 
 
 To my family
 
 
 
 1
 
 Tara walked out of the Badlands to her father’s funeral, trailing memories and dust.
 The last stars failed and the sky hung blue above her and the ground cracked underfoot. She kept to the path, a sunbaked runoff trench left by the thunderstorms that scoured the land each season. Black-green moss clustered in the shade of the rocks beside the trench. The moss grew slowly and did tender work, turning the bones of the world to something livable. One false step could erase a century of progress, so Tara followed paths already destroyed.
 Years ago, after the Hidden Schools kicked her out, she had followed this same path, half-blind and half-dead, caked with sand and her own blood and the blood of the carrion birds she’d caught and killed to make it through the desert, home, to Edgemont. Home to the town she’d run away from, years and a lifetime before.
 She had left an eager angry witch-girl, drunk on sweet hope and intimations of power that would have soured if she stayed. She had returned a sorceress and a shell, betrayed by her teachers and by the world of Craft she’d hoped to master. They used her and cast her out, but she refused to die.
 She had walked across the flats for weeks, alone. Each step hurt. She’d remembered that walk many times in the years since, in the life she’d built back east in the great metropolis of Alt Coulumb as a necromancer and counselor to gods. There, on the sidewalk, in her small apartment, in boardrooms and at cocktail bars, the memories felt safe, like a story that was over. She had told dates about this walk over drinks—she was bad at dates—told them how many miles she’d crossed, how she dealt with blisters, how she used to fake death to lure scavengers in reach of her hands and knife. Two Aviations into the night, she was tipsy enough to laugh about it all. She held the story as lightly as a student might hold the answer to a thaumaturgy problem she’d memorized off flash cards. Bloodless.
 Her dates didn’t take it the same way.
 Here, now, with dirt shifting underfoot, the memories did not feel safe, did not even feel like memories: the agony of her raw throat, her cracking skin, her swollen tongue. In pain there had been a clarity of purpose. The desert was not dead. It was honest. Everything here—the cactus, that circling vulture above, the dune rat whose tracks she passed, the bugs that sang at dusk—moved to survive. Just like her.
 Forward. Farther. In the end she’d made it home. To her family, who did not understand her but pretended they could. To a life she never understood, either.
 Then the world took her up. The job offer came through. She left again.