Fall of the Tower 2 Read online

  Two years ago during Alveas, they'd been in the garden that encircled the tower. She'd grabbed his hand and dragged him along in the shadows of the topiary so they could hex Lord Ali just as the firecrackers went off at the stroke of midnight. Spiders kept crawling out from his collar the rest of the night, and when he shifted to cat form to try to solve the problem, his coat was a violent shade of pink.

  Amadou had spent the next day dreading a confrontation with an apoplectic peer, but Ali seemed to realize he'd gone too far when he'd critiqued Sorcerer Obiad, and he never came to face the obvious suspects.

  Ursa did not beat around the bush. "You can ask Xavier."

  "Xavier the Red?"

  She nodded, took a sip of tea. Ursa wasn't from Carnate. Unlike him, who had grown up with stories of Xavier the Red. The memory made him shiver, which was silly. Amadou's powers had lifted him and his parents out of poverty. He didn't need to fear meeting Xavier the Red down some dark alley anymore.

  "I thought he was a proper businessman now."

  Ursa shrugged. "I worked with him to identify some uncategorized artefacts in the armory, just recently, remember?"

  Amadou remembered, though he hadn't crossed paths with Xavier at the time. "Hestia asked you to do that, correct?"

  "Exactly. I got the impression...well, Hestia told me to be careful. Seemed to be an open secret that he wasn't entirely clean."

  "He'd be a fool to think he could be I suppose. He might yet have old enemies. If he didn't keep a finger on the pulse of things, one of them might've taken advantage."

  "It's the only connection I have to the criminal persuasion." Ursa sat back in her chair. Her hair fell in poofy black waves over her shoulder.

  He hated how she was even more beautiful since the pregnancy. He hated that some other man got to tell her how beautiful she was. She had not yet revealed the father, and it drove Amadou crazy. He was jealous of a ghost.

  "I'll seek him out today. It's worth a try. Someone has to stop the unravelling of Carnate's magic core."

  "I wish I could join, but I've been summoned to my mother's."

  His lips turned up in a quirked smile. Ursa's mother sounded like a truly terrifying woman. Amadou's family had been poor until the revelation of his magical powers, and even though his younger siblings had grown up in comfortable apartments in the tower, his parents never got used to their new status.

  Ursa's mother, meanwhile, had already been a woman of means. She had taken a house in the city when Ursa had become a sorcerer of Carnate, and regularly called for her daughter. To meddle, as Ursa liked to put it.

  "I'll be sure to update you. Besides, I'm sure you're busy." He gestured to the workroom, which was covered in leather jerkins today.

  She pulled an exaggerated face. "I suppose it is better than a battle."

  That was the only good thing that could be said about a siege: it was better than a battle. Much as Carnate's citizens were restless, surely they must agree. It was better than the wolves breaking down the walls.

  He hadn't worked so hard to lift his family's status and future just to have the Hji take it away from him.

  ~*~

  "I should let you work."

  Ursa waved a dismissive hand at him. "Don't worry at all, I'm almost done."

  "Yes, but weren't you up all night on the wall?"

  He knew she had been; he made the schedules. Ursa smiled. "I told you not to worry."

  "Can't help it," he said, and then pushed off from the doorway and crossed the common room to his own workroom.

  She watched him go, and her smile faded. Should she have told him about her...experience... with Xavier the Red? It didn't seem strictly relevant, but she did not want to send him in blind.

  Then again, Amadou always got so uncomfortable whenever she mentioned the pregnancy. She’d told her fellow sorcerers a month ago, and there was no denying the change in Amadou. It annoyed her how he avoided the topic, as if it were something disgusting. He was her best friend. She wanted to squeal over everything with him.

  That being said, he probably did not need to hear every sordid detail of her romps.

  At first, she had not even known who the father of her baby was. She'd spent a long evening with a captain in the guard. They'd taken a room in a boarding house and had sex on the bed, the fainting couch, and the rug before the fire. Fueled by a strong wine, she hadn't been able to remember if she performed the birth control charm each time.

  Xavier had been the next week. They'd had an instant chemistry that lasted each time he'd come to the tower to consult. Combined with the suave confidence of older age, and the slight dangerous quality of a reformed criminal, she could not get him out of her head. That day, she'd volunteered to go to his residence in the city to deliver thanks on behalf of the tower. A courier could have done it.

  A courier wouldn't have looked so good in that dress, she thought to herself with a smirk.

  Yes, she'd worn something much more flattering, and revealing, than the usual black sorcerers’ robes.

  And after a while, he'd taken her hand and led her to the dark behind the bookshelves in his sitting room. Sliding the straps off her shoulders, they'd finally given in to their attraction against the bookshelves.

  She shivered at the memory of his beard scratching her neck.

  Little did she know, it would be the end of her little diversions, at least for the immediate future. She did not regret it though. She was excited for the future.

  And she decided Amadou didn't need any of this information. She did not need his judgement.

  ~*~

  Ursa set off for her mother's after completing her charm work, and part of Thisbe's too. Thisbe and Obiad were at the wall, and there was nothing worse than having to stay up and finish charming after a shift on the wall.

  For the guard, a shift on the wall might offer long stretches of boredom. They walked their routes, they talked amongst themselves, they played cards surreptitiously. While she had no doubt the guard were brave—many in the city had joined even after the siege had begun—the wall did much of their work.

  Sorcerers did not have the same luxuries. The war was fought by magic now. They were constantly running from one end of the city to another, shoring up the Great Dome, which was what they called the shield of magic protecting the city.

  It did not protect against physical attacks. It would have been extremely taxing to maintain something like that. They made physical charms for the guard, but even those were more like nets than shields, and they were made to trap people, or prevent movement, not take heavy fire.

  But the Great Dome was useful nonetheless. It blocked and weakened magic that tried to get through it. It sent information to the guard whenever anyone did try to breach it. It reported on the state of the physical wall.

  They had determined the Hji only had two sorcerers in their army. The empire, of course, commanded a great many more than that, but this army had only been given two.

  Ursa shuddered at the thought that to the Hji, Carnate was not something to waste resources on. She did not like the idea that they were only an afterthought. If the Hji did break through, her people would not be treated as valuable.

  They weren't actually her people. She'd been born in the realm of Xitl, in one of the great hive cities. Her mother and father had moved them north soon after, to a backwater of Kadis. And finally, when her powers had manifested, they'd gone straight for the glittering seaside city of Thassalo, where she'd studied at the Hoshea University.

  Her father had passed away while she was in school. Her mother had never taken to the seaside, and she'd been happy to move eastward to Carnate.

  Because of all this, Ursa had a fondness for Thassalo, and the growing she'd done there, but considered herself a nomad. Usually, sorcerers spent their lives in the service of one realm or city or royal family. She was not yet sure of her own plan. It was hard to plan anything whilst under siege.

  She crossed her legs as the carriage trundle
d slowly through the busy city. Being pregnant hadn't slowed her down in the slightest. But having an actual child—well, she'd have to confront that very soon.

  Little Nomad, she thought, rocking against the back of the carriage during a particularly bumpy stretch. At least I don't have to make any life-altering decisions right now.

  ~*~

  "Do not be mad, but I've found someone to marry you."

  Ursa's jaw dropped. "Mother—!"

  "I said don’t be mad!" her mother interrupted, as if if she could prevent Ursa from speaking, the problem would be solved. "Now, take off that horrible robe."

  Ursa almost laughed. People the world over would kill for a chance to wear the black robes of a fully-trained sorcerer, and she'd studied for years to earn the right.

  That being said, she was her mother's daughter, and loved a new outfit. Her mother's servants produced a luxurious kaftan and trouser set, made of a rebellious shade of pink and embroidered with dark blue flowers.

  The servants were helping her out of her robe. Ursa sighed. She wished she'd never sent her mother her measurements. She'd thought it was for a gift for Alveas, not a trap.

  They hustled her into the outfit.

  Her mother, Sodumo, clapped her hands together at her daughter's reflection. "Absolutely divine!" She snapped her fingers at the servants. "Now her hair."

  It was no doubt a flattering selection—everything her mother chose was. The slight bump from her belly was highlighted by the flowers. Ursa stood up a little straighter.

  Then she recovered her senses. "Mother! I told you, I'm not getting married."

  "Ever?" Sodumo asked in a mock-serious tone.

  Ursa crossed her arms.

  "Just meet him, doll. I know you said you wouldn't marry the father, and I respect your decision—" Ursa rolled her eyes. Her mother had not respected her decision. She seemed to think Ursa, one of the richest people in the city, would fall into destitution at the burden of a baby with no partner to support her. She'd begged Ursa to consider marrying the father. Ursa had told her, flat out, that he was a criminal, but Sodumo had gotten angry and told her to stop lying, and Ursa hadn't brought up the subject again.

  "—but think of what's best for the child! We're in a war, and you've barely grown up from the irascible creature you became at University—"

  Another half-truth. Ursa had always been a mischief-maker. The freedom of University, and the heady power of being a young sorcerer, had only increased that, to her parents' despair.

  "—don’t know the value of a partnership, and all your galivanting has only proved that. Why, if your father were here—"

  The servants had tamed her hair into position with a few glittering clips, and were now adding some makeup.

  "That's enough." Ursa jerked back from their hands. "It's afternoon tea, not Alveas night." And I haven't decided if I'm staying.

  But her escape was thwarted by the footman announcing the arrival of the gentleman in question: a Mister Cyrus Xia.

  Her mother pulled her to the drawing room, inexorable.

  When they entered, an older gentleman rose from his seat.

  Thankfully, Mister Xia was alone. If he'd brought his whole family, Ursa would have begun to worry. He wasn't bad-looking. Her mother wasn't so desperate she'd foist her daughter on anyone who came along. His black hair grayed at the temples. He was tall but slight, and well-dressed.

  She knew why he was here. Courtship was hard for a sorcerer. Plenty of people would overlook her flaws, her personality entirely, for a chance to marry someone of her status. She did not want to be callous, but doubted Mister Xia would care much for her or her baby once he'd secured his position.

  The servants served tea and cakes, and the three of them sat around the small table.

  "So good to see you, Mister Xia. I know you're a busy man, generously donating your millinery’s resources to the fight."

  This last was directed pointedly at Ursa. Huh, maybe he didn't need her money after all.

  "I'm happy to take the time," he said, with a rather obvious look in Ursa's direction.

  The pleasantries went on. The actual idea of their union stayed in the background. Everyone knew what they were there for, and they didn't pretend that, but they did not touch upon it. Mister Xia even alluded to her pregnancy once, but in a polite way, and her shoulders relaxed when she realized no one would be calling it "her situation" with pitying looks.

  Ursa learned his entire family was gone, the last having been his brother, who died during the first assault on the wall.

  "My apologies," he said hurriedly to her, when she closed her eyes to the memory of that battle.

  "Not at all," she managed. "It is I who should be consoling you."

  Everyone always forgot she was a soldier as much as anyone else. That first battle...they'd known the Hji were coming. They'd prepared for weeks. But nothing could match that first time—the roar of sound, the blood in her mouth, bracing Amadou's body as he performed a final spell before collapsing, the retreat back behind the walls.

  Mister Xia turned the conversation to other topics.

  Then, the moment she'd been dreading. Her mother brushed at her skirts and declared she ought to check on Cook. She rose, and left the two of them alone.

  Sodumo must have been feeling confident, to give Mister Xia a chance to propose already. Or maybe she knew Ursa would have evaded any other attempt.

  The damn man wasted no time. He took her hand. She hated how earnest he looked. It was one thing to reject a social climber, another an honest man.

  The kindest thing will be to do it quickly.

  "You know why I am here, I gather, Sorcerer."

  She inclined her head, wondering when to cut him off.

  "The matchmaker spoke highly of your accomplishments, and after meeting your mother last week, and now you, I am confident of the correctness of our match."

  Great Eye, her mother had hired a matchmaker? A nightmarish thought. Ursa wondered if she should fake some sort of illness. Buck up, she thought. Get it over with.

  "Forgive me, sir, but I do not want to take up any more of your time. I love my mother but she has an enthusiasm for marriage that I do not. This is not a slight against you or your person. But, for now, I have no interest in an attachment of any sort."

  His face fell, she thought. But he maintained a perfectly cordial attitude as he expressed his regret, and excused himself from the house.

  Her mother appeared as soon as the front door closed.

  "Ursula el-Kine! By the tower, I never—"

  Ursa jumped from her seat. "A matchmaker?"

  Sodumo had the good grace to blush. "I only—"

  "Don't." Ursa had had enough. Why was she the one to have an awkward conversation and trying afternoon when her mother was the one who'd gotten her into this? "I won't come to tea again until you've gotten this out of your head. You'll have to come to me at the tower. Alone."

  "But do you not want to be married?"

  Ursa threw up her hands. "I'm not against it in the slightest! But you pushing me toward it out of desperation for my respectability—"

  Another blush from Sodumo. She'd had her mother pegged all right.

  "—is quite the turnoff. I'm leaving or I'll be late for supper. Good evening."

  A servant held her black cloak out, and she swung it gratefully over the pretty pink outfit.

  ~*~

  In the carriage, Ursa looked down and realized her embroidered flowers were moving.

  This was Ursa’s spell. She had invented it at University. The buds and blossoms wafted as if touched by a gentle breeze. Ursa rolled her eyes when she realized Sodumo must have paid a gentlewitch to charm the kaftan. Ridiculous, when she could have had her own daughter do it for free. Nevertheless, it was a thoughtful touch.

  Her annoyance with her mother faded. Ursa was lucky she did not need to marry, when so many in the world did. Her mother came from that world, and only wanted what was best. In time,
she'd realize Ursa was going to be fine.

  No, the real problem was what had been said right at the end. She did want to be married, some day. But to someone she truly knew, cared about, and connected with.

  What if that person was Mister Cyrus Xia? Should she have given him a chance? Not to marry immediately, but just to see?

  The carriage rolled to a halt. She assumed they waited at a crossing, but then the door opened, and Mister Xia stood there.

  Behind him, her disgruntled driver had leapt from the bench and was reaching forward to restrain him.

  "It's fine, Rolf," she said, more surprised than anything.

  "If I may, Sorcerer Ursula?"

  With a gesture, she indicated he join her in the carriage. She arched her eyebrows when he closed the door behind him.

  "I feel I did not get the chance to adequately state my case at your mother's home," Mister Xia said. "I wanted to be sure you knew all that I could provide you."

  He leaned forward and placed a hand on her knee. Then he slid it upwards.

  She gaped. Mister Xia was not what she'd expected. Why, this was far more fun than someone who only wanted her for her position in society. Perhaps her mother really did know her taste...

  For a moment, she considered having sex with him. Carriage sex always required a bit of maneuvering, but once her trousers were off she could easily straddle him on the padded bench, or maybe the floor. Maybe she could have a good roll with every gentleman her poor mother sent her way.

  Ursa shook her head to clear it. The idea was too ridiculous. She leaned over and opened the carriage door.

  "Rolf, please assist Mister Xia out."

  She rode home, comfortable she'd made the right choice, about Mister Xia and about remaining single. She did not have time to waste with men. She did not have time for marriage. There was a war on after all.

  ~*~

  Despite the time he spent defending Carnate, Amadou did not cross paths with criminals very often. Carnate had the guard, which functioned as both army and police, and the sorcerers supported both aspects. During peacetime he focused on what would make the city flourish. There was little time for that question lately, what with the Hji knocking on their door.