The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick: Pre-Orders and a Sample Chapter!
Release date: February 27 2024!
Alright, folks! The release date draws nearer! VERY nearer!
Only ebooks are available for pre-order, as that’s the way things go on Amazon (and Kobo is ebook only.)
Physical copy fans, don't worry! The paperback, along with the full ebook, will be available February 27th!
Kobo (preview available up to chapter 3!)
And to read the reviews as they come in: Goodreads
You can adjust the Amazon link to your locale if you aren't in Canada or the US!
And remember, sharing is caring! If you like what you read, tell all your friends! Post wherever you like to talk about books: discord servers, forums, subreddits, image boards, your social media of choice—readers give legitimacy to a book, so please share!
Heads up: this book is quite Adult, and I make it pretty clear right off the bat there’s a lot of foul language—so, with that out of the way, here you go!
Update! The first substack review is now up, check it out:
Sample chapter below!
Framed for murder and horse theft, Tommy Fellham is stuck in Magelock Penitentiary, rotting like a bad pickle in too small of a crock. Capital punishment was banned, how convenient—instead of getting hanged he spends his time learning how to fight, steal, gamble, and drink. There isn't much else to do with himself until his best friend and teacher, the notorious highwayman Kennedy Thornwick, confides in Tommy his plans to escape.
When Tommy receives a visitor that promises fortune at the expense of a newly built bank, that settles it. He has to help Kennedy. But what Tommy doesn't account for is how much the prison has shaped him, and not only will he have to get used to magic outside the walls, but come to terms with who he has become . . . All while trying to avoid the mage hunters after the price on his head. Kennedy might have been too good of a teacher.
THE HIGHWAYMAN KENNEDY THORNWICK
PART I: THE PRISON
TOMMY FELLHAM
“To what do I owe the fucking pleasure of your face down here, Fellham?” A welcoming cleft in the man’s lip helped him enunciate his words with a fine spray of spit. Meaty hands gripped the front of Tommy’s waistcoat and shoved him hard up and into the staircase wall, a puff of tobacco smoke with the force.
“I’m here with a list,” Tommy said around his pipe, clay scraping his teeth.
“If it ain’t got Mr. Booker’s stamp, kindly piss off.”
Tommy sighed. This man was upset about something else and needed to vent—poor Tommy was just convenient. “I’ve got it right here you stupid bastard, if you cared to take a look. Would you like it in your ass or in your mouth, since you’ve got your hands busy?”
Fabric dropped, Tommy shrunk an inch. He held the note out for it to be snatched, illiterate eyes skipped the text to look for Mr. Booker’s stamp—once seen, the note was returned, and Tommy tucked it up into his sleeve.
“Alright then. Take anything else what’s not on the list and I’ll sic Bear on you.”
“Bear likes me.”
“I’m sure he fucking does. Now, get what you came for, and get out. Booker always knows.”
Yes, whatever.
Everything in the storeroom was lifted off the floor to avoid the periodic flooding. Built in a swamp and sinking more by the year, the bottom level of the monastery-turned-penitentiary was humid and heavy with musty damp, and every stone had a brush of green or white on the face. The foodstuffs were all seasoned with liberal doses of rat and mouse droppings, and the occasional half-cannibalized little corpse shed its fur—the living ones all scampered off as Tommy sauntered through with his unconcerned humming, to hide from his noise and his candlelight. At a pause in his song, he heard them squeaking and chewing where the light didn’t reach, the stink of the creatures enough to make his eyes water. Grain moths flew, beetles crawled. Ambiance—he was in prison, after all. No point lamenting the rodents. Someone in this place had to be happy about it, why not the rats?
He found the sacks of apples he was sent to fetch and slung the weight of them over his shoulders. A good forty pounds, by how they weighed him down. Leaving the candle, another small puddle of light at the watchman’s stool kept Tommy from losing his route.
“Seemed like a much longer list than just a bushel of apples.”
“I suppose Mr. Booker felt like waxing poetic about them. Have a good evening, Mr. Cooper.”
“Fuck off.”
It was a love poem, in truth, and it wasn't Mr. Booker's real stamp. But that was neither here nor there, not when the good Doctor needed his apples.
At the upper opening of the staircase, Bear sat hunched. To be technical, he was a werebear, but upon crossing the anti-magic threshold surrounding the penitentiary, the phase of the moon was an unlucky one for him, trapping him in the soft, furry, clawed body of a big ruddy bear. He couldn't speak with the mouth he had, but he made himself understood, huffing and scrunching his snout—an apple tossed with a cheer and Bear seemed quite content with that.
If there was one thing Tommy learned from his stay, it was how to get away with just about any affront to people’s good senses with enough confidence. Surely, he was meant to be walking through the commons with an entire bushel of apples, they convinced themselves upon witnessing his authoritative air. Bear didn’t seem to object. Not even the poxy guard outside the Doctor’s quarters stopped Tommy to ask what the hell he was doing with the sacks—once told the Doctor was waiting within and impatient, he stepped aside.
The Doctor didn’t suffer the accommodations like the cramped bunks Tommy’s class of folk got. His quarters had a separate bedchamber, with its own hearth and all, and he shared it only with a Miss Anna de Tangue, the luckiest woman in any prison, anywhere—or that’s how it was perceived by most. Tommy knew her better. Knew the Doctor better. Everyone considered her lucky only because Doctor Arnold Marshallam was not a physician, but an alchemist, holding a real doctorate in chemistry and frequently abusing it. He made good spirits, and a variety of other lively potions and pills, all sought after by the inmates so they could forget where they were for half a day. Too bad about the poisoning incidents, otherwise he’d still be a free man. Accidents—a matter of mislabelling. The label printers should be at fault.
A laughingstock in his field, but a free man all the same, if it weren’t for the damn labels.
Anna languished happily on an old pink settee—the rodents cared not for your station outside the prison, the underside of the thing had the evidence of a nest in the stuffing—and Tommy wondered how much longer the Doctor would keep this suite if Mrs. Arnold Marshallam knew about his blonde, svelte mistress and stopped paying the Church to have the Doctor so well kept. So long as Tommy Fellham got paid.
“Ah, Tommy!” Anna’s voice was airy and honeyed. “Leave the apples there. Arnold is fixing up his press. Bugger the guards for taking the old one apart.”
“I’ll not be buggering any guards today, my dear. Just making a delivery, if that’s alright.”
She smiled at him. “I think the whole business is ridiculous, but he doesn’t listen to me. Your payment is in the writing desk. Enjoy it.”
He gave her a gracious bow, went to the desk, took the vial and tucked it in the secret pocket in his waistband. “Everything in this place is ridiculous. Why fight it?” and he was off to see a man about a pair of boots.
* * *
The love poem Tommy had used as a note for apples was written by Nancy Pinlace, a dutiful young lady, never late with her payments. He didn’t know what she looked like, had never met her, and only grew to know her through chance—but going by her handwriting and her descriptions, he imagined a pretty, wholesome, pink-cheeked, and fair example of good breeding. It was all his imagination, of course, and there was no harm in it. She was his sponsor, paid for his keep and food, and he enjoyed penning letters to her overflowing with romantic notions to retain her sponsorship. He embellished his appearance and no doubt she did as well. For all he knew, she was a ninety-year-old hunchback, but it didn’t matter one whit. She didn’t know about his crooked teeth, or his nose that was a little too thin for his liking, either.
The Church encouraged sponsorship of prisoners, and a fantastic charity scheme it was, but to choose Tommy out of the hundreds of other sorry occupants of Magelock Penitentiary, or the countless other penitentiaries dotting the country, was nothing but dumb luck. His own family was too poor—he was starving to death like half the miserable wretches sleeping in the halls, until he got the nice letter from the Church with her name on it.
His brother owed him dearly, but coin wouldn’t do.
Whatever else he needed, aside from his bed and food, he had to earn, which brought him to meet with Muggy Sorleen. Tommy waited in the hall outside Muggy’s room, finished his pipe, tapped the bowl against the side of his shoe while hearing, but not listening, to the chatter and low laughter coming from within. A conclusion to a game of dice. The group of men all exited with nods to Tommy, and he walked in.
“Got the boots?”
“Aye.”
Muggy got up from his little table—no evidence of gambling, very clean—and pulled his bookshelf from the wall of loose bricks. If the man didn’t trust Tommy, he would not be witness to the act. Muggy procured the boots and dropped them on the table as Tommy took his seat, still warm from the tough that just left. He turned a boot over, examined the heel.
Whispering fierce, his voice carried too well at a hiss. “I was an apprentice shoemaker, you hound, I worked my ass off for this vial and you get me boots that look like a blind child hammered them together, thinking I couldn’t tell?” Tommy was beside himself. He needed these boots to feel more human. Looking down at his current footwear made him distressed beyond reasonable measure. Muggy’s shoes were powder-blue silk, like what a gentleman might wear to a ball, shiny buckled and grotesque, and there was no doubt his own sponsor helped him acquire them. She paid conjugal visits, too, the lucky swine. Tommy’s toes were ready to burst through the tips of his old things and he only fantasized about visits. Muggy was a right bastard and deserved to be hanged like the previous scrounger.
“It’s the best I could get on short notice. Make your own damn boots, Sir Apprentice.” His brown eyes were too big. He wore his black hair natural and cropped, like a fighter. His fists could pound any man into the dirt, and his chest was the size of a whiskey barrel. But he was Tommy’s favourite scrounger, always there for a game of cards. Taught Tommy everything he knew about the fine art of gambling.
The best scrounger the prison had during Tommy’s stay died years ago, before social pressure swayed the king and he got rid of capital punishment. Just shy by a month and a half. Very poor timing. Everyone mourned him because he couldn’t get clothes or pillows or books very effectively swinging from the gallows.
Make his own pair of boots . . . Out of what—should he skin Bear and make a last out of hardtack? “Short notice? I’ve been asking for new boots for weeks.”
“Ask for shoes next time. They’re smaller.” Muggy was a gruff whisperer, his voice too deep for the sound of him not to reverberate.
“Nothing quite like a good pair of boots.”
“Then these will have to do.”
Men were shouting in Hyspierren down the hall—they ignored it. Muggy’s room was in a lively corner of the prison.
“I said good pair. I’m not giving you this fucking vial, you swindler.”
Muggy was ready to crack into laughter, his big eyes aglint.
“Half a vial.”
“It’s the stuff?”
“No, it’s swamp water.”
Muggy rubbed his jaw, showing off the ring he won in a boxing match and cloaking a smirk.
“I can keep the whole thing to myself and keep these ragged shoes. It’ll help me forget I’m wearing them.”
“Alright, half a vial.” They shook hands, and Muggy pulled out his deck of cards from somewhere.
Tommy lost the other half of the vial in the games. Even without magic, Muggy could play. Tommy had never been a magicker, not even a true-hand cheater. Whenever he lost it was honestly, like a cunt.
The boots were already broken in, taken off some cavalryman’s dead feet. Tommy returned to his room, his enthusiasm for honest work shrugged off, and fell on his bed with his feet propped up to admire his new footwear. They were actually quite nice. Supple black calfskin up to his knees, shiny. He could do no better back home.