The_Afterward_-_EK

DUTTON BOOKS
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Copyright © 2019 by E. K. Johnston
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Libray of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnston, E. K., author.
Title: The afterward / by E.K. Johnston.
Description: New York, NY : Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2019] |
Summary: In the aftermath of a successful quest, Apprentice Kalanthe and Olsa-the-thief-of-the-realm
must cope with their newfound fame and find a way to overcome the forces that would drive them apart.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018017857| ISBN 9780735231894 (hardcover) | ISBN9780735231900 (epub)
Subjects: | CYAC: Fantasy. | Heroes—Fiction. | Celebrities—Fiction. | Knights and knighthood—
Fiction. | Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. | Love—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.J64052 Aft 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017857
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,
companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Illustration by Sebastion Ciaffaglione
Design by Elaine Damasco
Version_1

To David and Leigh Eddings,
I really wish I had written you a letter.

Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I. Cadria
After
After
After
Before
After
After
Before
After
After
Before
After
After
Before
II. On the Road Again
Long After
After
After
Before
After
After
Before
After
After
Before
After
After
Before

III. The Mage Keep
Before & After
After
After
Before
After
After
Before
After
After
More or Less the Exact Moment Of
After
After
Before
After
Acknowledgements
About the Author

—I—
CADRIA

A
AFTER
nd so it was in the days before, when the Old God brought ruin to
every corner of the world. Great were His injustices and
mistreatments of all living things: the birds in the sky and the beasts
on the ground, and the humans who laboured in His service. He cared nothing
for their pain and suffering. Worse, it pleased Him to inflict horror wherever
He could. When He saw the bright wing of a cormorant diving towards the
sea for its dinner, He would send scalding water to burn bird and fish both.
When a horse pulled a plough behind it, He would strew the path with rocks,
to dull the blade and to pain the horse’s hooves. For humankind, He reserved
his most particular kinds of violence, but, ah, remembering those days causes
even the bravest of storytellers too much grief. Better to tell of what came
after.
Seven godlings, born of the Old God’s discarded human toys, found one
another in the ruin of the world. They knew that should any of them stand
alone, their small power would be instantly obliterated, but they did not give
up hope. They practiced working together, uniting in concert to increase their
chances, but still they feared it would not be enough.
When all seemed truly lost, the youngest of them found a green stone, the
sort that humans called emerald. It was of inconsequential size and not
particularly striking to behold, but the godling thought that it would suit their
purpose, and called upon the others to fill it with their strength. Over and
over, the godlings put their power into the stone, until it sang to them with the
promise of better days to come.
The Old God felt the stirring of this new power and came to find them, but
He was unprepared for their new strength. Godlings no more, they had only to
touch the Old God with their gem, and they undid Him. Thus peace came at
last to the world, with the Old God vanquished and the new ones much kinder
in their treatment of it.
But, alas, that was not the end. The Old God had fled, yes, but some of His
servants remained, and though they faced a long wait to restore their Master,
wait they did. Finally, after long millennia, one such servant took it upon
herself to bring her Master back, even though it would release ruination on
the world once more. To that end, the Old God’s Servant ensnared the King of

Cadrium, centre of the world and beacon of knowledge, in a spell so vile that
it ate away at the king’s very life.
Fearful that the loss of her king would bring about a war violent enough to
resurrect the Old God Himself, Sir Erris Quicksword went on a desperate
Quest to find the godsgem again, that same emerald the new gods had used,
lost all this time from history’s record. With her rode three champions, each
particularly skilled in multiple aspects of the knightly arts, along with the
greatest living Mage, and two others, so that their company might number
seven, the same as did the new gods.
Great were their trials and tribulations upon the road, yet through mastery of
themselves and of their surroundings they did manage, not only to find the
godsgem itself, but also to take it to the Old God’s altar, rebuilt in secret by
His cruel servants, and there destroy Him utterly.
It was in those final moments, when the Old God was at His most powerful
and the knights at their most vulnerable, that the wisdom of the new gods
showed itself. Sir Erris dealt the killing blow—yes, her sword was as quick as
her name foretold—but, without the aid of her companions, picked for their
skills but also for their number, she would have been overmatched.
At this most important time, the weight of destiny fell upon the shoulders of
a mere apprentice knight. Kept aside during the fighting to guard the Mage’s
back, the apprentice saw the battle unfold and knew when the moment for her
to act had arrived. As she watched her companions quail in the face of the Old
God’s rising, Kalanthe Ironheart did not falter. She was able to distract the
Old God, giving time to Sir Erris and allowing her to use the godsgem to put
to rest the Old God, once and for all.
With King Dorrenta unensorcelled and the world made safe once more, Sir
Erris and her six companions returned to Cadria and to the honours and
privileges they had earned. Erris herself was married to the king, as had long
been both their wish, while the other knights and the apprentice resumed their
duties in the palace. The Mage returned to the Mage Keep with the godsgem
under his protection, to consult with his fellows how best to conceal within
their sanctuary.
The seventh companion disappeared, and little is known about her. The
common folk say she was lowborn like them, and a thief besides, but it is far
more likely that she was, in fact, one of the seven new gods, keeping watch
over Sir Erris’s Quest to ensure no misuse of the godsgem.
In any case, with peace returned and the kingdom stabilized, it seemed that
the time for great tales was done. The horror and grief of the past was gone,
driven out by the light and goodness of the new gods; and under the
protection of the knights who served them and the king both, it seemed
unlikely that such darkness would ever return.
And they all lived happily ever after.

A
AFTER
s a rule, Olsa Rhetsdaughter avoided breaking into a house through
the nursery. More generally, she avoided housebreaking, especially
now that she operated without protection, but as the rain poured down
on the city of Cadria, she was almost grateful to escape the soaking cold. She
was used to sleeping rough—had slept rougher, as a point of fact, than she
would tonight. But she hated the wet—how it permeated everything from her
clothes to her hair to the slick stone of the wall she was scaling—and hated it
all the more now that she didn’t have reliable access to a good fire. There
would probably be several of those inside the house, as the wealthy owners
warded off the damp.
Once she reached her destination, she paused halfway over the sill and
surveyed the layout of the room as best she could in the dark. Her preference
for a job of this sort was a musty attic or, in a pinch, an unoccupied guest
room. There were just so many obstacles in a nursery: toys strewn on the
floor; more than the usual number of beds; the family cat; and, of course, the
children themselves. Children were restless sleepers. Children required lamps
left lit in case they woke up in the dark. Children asked questions.
“Are you Olsa-thief-of-the-realm?” The voice was high enough and young
enough that she couldn’t tell whether it was a lad or lass who spoke, but the
question froze Olsa in her tracks halfway across the room. Dammit, she’d
done such a good job of opening and shutting the window too.
“No,” she hissed. “I’m a demon that preys upon waking children in the
night. Go back to sleep.”
“I think a demon would be taller,” said a second voice. This one was almost
certainly a girl. “Also, demons are usually on fire.”
Olsa sighed. All she wanted was a quick, easy job, and those were
increasingly hard for her to come by. She’d taken this one because it had been
a slow week, because her percentage of the take was high, and because the
family she’d be stealing from employed one of the best cooks in the city.
She’d been planning her detour through the kitchen on her way out in almost
as much detail as she’d been planning the actual heist.
“Yes,” she said, flopping gracelessly into the chair by the fire. She was
probably destroying the fine upholstery with her soaked tunic and hose, but
the fire was warm enough that she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I’m Olsa.”

“Oh, tell us about the godsgem!” said the little one, a girl after all, bouncing
across the room to sit in front of her, as though Olsa were her nurse. “Papa is
a gem merchant, so I’ve seen lots of pretty stones, but they say the godsgem is
the prettiest.”
“She knows Papa is a gem merchant, Ildy,” said the older girl. She was at
the age where she felt it imperative to remain dignified at all times, so she
didn’t bounce, but she did come closer and take a seat. “Why do you think
she’s here?”
“Be quiet, Mina,” the little one, Ildy, said. “I want a story.”
“If you’ll both be quiet, I’ll tell you,” Olsa said.
It wasn’t the best plan she’d ever had, but short of diving out the window
right now and making a run for it, she couldn’t think of anything else. She
was caught, but it was better to be caught by these two than by their parents or
whatever burly servants they had kicking about the house. Also, it was a very
good fire. Olsa decided it was worth the risk.
The girls settled in front of her, their white nightgowns tucked neatly under
their legs. Soon, they would be too old to sit on the floor. Their skirts and
stays would require chairs. Olsa wondered if either of them had ever sat
cross-legged in their lives. She’d had to teach Kalanthe how to do it, and
Kalanthe wore trousers half the time anyway. Money made a person very
strange, and Olsa was more aware of it now than she had ever been.
“The first time I saw it,” she began, “I thought to myself ‘I could see a
roomful of gems, all piled up on top of one another, and be able to recognize
this one immediately.’”
“What does it look like?” asked Ildy.
“Hush,” said her sister.
“It’s not large and it’s not cut very well,” Olsa said. “From the stories, you’d
imagine an emerald the size of my fist, cut with so many facets that the
reflected light goes off in all directions at once. The truth is that the godsgem
is much smaller, and almost raw.”
“That doesn’t sound very special at all,” said Mina.
“You hush,” said her sister.
In spite of herself, Olsa smiled.
“It doesn’t look like much,” she continued. “It doesn’t have to. As soon as
you see it, you know it’s special. It sings, you see. Imagine the most beautiful
hymn you’ve ever heard at the temple. The kind they sing on festival days,
where the different sections of the choir layer their voices over each other’s in
more than four parts. Now, imagine that, but a hundredfold. The most
complicated and the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard, so much so that
you can barely stand to listen to it, because you know that once you start,
you’ll never want to stop.”
“That sounds dangerous,” said Mina.