The Princess in the Tower

by Christopher Nuttall

  Cat leaned forward. “That doesn’t prove that Alassa is going to be executed.”

  “I know,” Jade said. “But Imaiqah might be beheaded at any moment. She might have already outlived her usefulness.”

  Or Alassa might have already miscarried, Emily thought. She didn’t think Randor would kill his only legitimate child as long as there was a chance she could give him grandchildren, but it was evident that Randor had been growing more and more paranoid for years. Or Randor might hope to substitute Alicia’s child for Alassa’s.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but once it had passed through her mind it refused to leave. No one could reasonably mistake an eighteen-month-old baby for a newborn, but...Randor might be able to swing it, with a little effort. He could come up with a story about an early pregnancy and a weakling baby who’d needed excellent medical care to survive...or simply announce the birth and keep the child under wraps for a year or two. The baby would be unusually large for his declared age, but why let that stop him? People would believe because they wanted to believe the succession was secure.

  And anyone who argues to the contrary would be accused of peddling conspiracy theories, she thought, recalling all the nonsense she’d read on the internet. Zangaria might not have an internet, but the rumor mill was completely out of control. Who’d imagine the king would substitute a bastard child for his grandchild?

  She smiled, despite herself. Just about everyone who didn’t think the king was the infallible father of his country.

  “So we finish the preparations and then we move,” Cat said. He looked at Emily. “How long until we have enough magic to proceed?”

  “Another couple of days should leave us with enough magic.” Emily frowned as a thought occurred to her. “Do we know how many other prisoners are in the Tower?”

  “No,” Jade said. “Witt didn’t know.”

  “Then we have to decide what to do with anyone else we find along the way,” Emily said, slowly. She wished that thought had occurred to her earlier. “Some of those prisoners might actually deserve to be in jail.”

  “And some might not,” Cat said. “Annoying the king isn’t a crime.”

  “That’s Randor’s problem, not ours,” Jade said. He cleared his throat. “We use the charmed parchment to take down the wards, we scan the building for Alassa and Imaiqah, we grab them and get out and run. Anything else is not our problem.”

  Cat snorted. “What about the ones who might help us?”

  “Our priority is Alassa and Imaiqah,” Jade said. His voice was very firm. “Anyone else can go through the portal, if they wish, but after that they’re on their own. We won’t have the power to teleport them away.”

  “Understood,” Emily said. It was a hard decision, but one she understood. Even if Jade had been willing to take the time to muster enough power to open a second portal, they’d be tracked the moment the portal was opened. “I guess we’re almost ready to move.”

  “Pretty much,” Jade agreed. He looked torn between eagerness and concern. “Did you check the equations?”

  “As best as I could,” Emily said. She wished, suddenly, for Professor Lombardi. Or even Yodel or Caleb or Aloha. Someone who actually knew what they were doing would be very helpful. “Didn’t you check them too?”

  “They appear to be perfect.” Jade sounded as though he’d bitten into a lemon. “But we might have missed something.”

  “We all checked them,” Cat said, lightly. “I don’t blame you for fretting, Jade, but there are limits to how many times we can check them. We’ll recheck one final time once we move to the townhouse and start preparations.”

  He clapped his hands. “I don’t want to be pissy about this,” he added, “but it is practically morning already. First light will be in an hour or two. And I want to hit my bed.”

  “Give it a punch or two from me,” Jade said, mischievously.

  “Certainly,” Cat said. “And then I’ll slice it to ribbons with my sword.”

  Emily forced herself to stand. It was hard to get her legs to move, but–somehow–she stumbled across the floor and into her bedroom. She nearly stumbled before she could reach the bed. Cat had wanted to share with her, once upon a time–it felt an eternity ago–and she’d been tempted, but she’d said no. Perhaps that had been a mistake, she told herself, as she hit the bed. A helping hand would have been very useful.

  She heard someone moving behind her. “Emily,” Cat said. His voice was studiously unemotional. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  Emily blinked. That was unlike Cat. He’d...her mind caught up a second later. Jade must have asked him to stay with Emily, if she wanted him. It wouldn’t be right for Jade to stay close to her, whatever the reason. It wouldn’t be right...

  “Just...just hold hands,” she said, slowly. She wasn’t in any fit state for anything else. Her vision was starting to blur. It crossed her mind that she’d never been so welcoming, so trusting, of anyone, even Caleb. Perhaps she was just too tired to care about the dangers of sharing a bed with someone. “And be there.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling him settling down beside her. She was so tired. She wanted to sleep. And yet it was a long time before sleep claimed her...

  ...And, once she was asleep, the nightmares began.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  EMILY DIDN’T FEEL MUCH BETTER THE following morning, although Witt’s memories were already starting to fade. She ate a big breakfast–she was amused to discover that Jade actually cooked when the sergeant wasn’t breathing down his neck–and then returned to the workshop, just in time to discover that Alicia had primed her side of the chat parchment and started to write to her. Her messages were short, nowhere near as helpful as she had hoped, but they were a start.

  “A shame we can’t ask her if anyone’s noticed Witt’s death,” Jade said. “She would probably reveal far too much just by asking.”

  “A pity,” Emily agreed.

  She read Alicia’s message again, wondering if Randor was watching over her shoulder. The chat parchments were charmed to ensure that only the users could read what was written, but there were ways to get around that for at least one end of the conversation. There was no way to know if Alicia was alone or not, no way to know which side she was really on. Her messages made it sound as though the courtiers were waiting for something to happen, as if they were waiting for an imaginary axe to fall...

  Except it isn’t imaginary, she thought, grimly. She disliked politics, but she wasn’t blind to the implications of what she’d been told. Refusing to attend court when summoned by the king was a declaration of war, to all intents and purposes. Randor was hunkering down, readying for the storm, while his opponents plotted their first move. Something is going to happen. The only question is what.

  “Anyway, we have to move,” Jade said. “Do you have everything bottled up?”

  “It’s all packed and ready to go,” Emily said. She put the parchment in her pocket, then followed him into the workroom. “I’ll take one bag, you and Cat can take the others.”

  The bag felt heavier than she’d expected, but she told herself–firmly–that she was imagining it. It hadn’t been that hard to put the spare ingredients, the items she’d purchased to confuse any potential investigators, to good use, brewing everything from strengthening potions to healing salves. The Levellers could use them, when the time came. She wished they’d had more time - she could have crafted a great many more wards - but Jade was already chomping at the bit. It wouldn’t be long before he wanted to move.

  Mouse met them downstairs and escorted them through the streets. The air felt tense as they walked past a row of soldiers, their weapons clearly visible. Emily could taste the anger, hanging in the air like a cloud. The population was angry, spoiling for a fight. It wouldn’t be long before something happened to spark off an explosion. Emily wondered, as she looked at the castle, if Randor realized how bad things had become. Aristocrats rarely understood the mood of the common folk
until the pitchfork-armed mobs started swarming the streets, crying for noble blood.

  “Thank you for the supplies,” Tam said, once they dropped them off. “I think I found you a suitable place.”

  “As long as it’s big enough, it will do,” Jade said. “And our assistants?”

  “They’ll be ready too,” Tam assured him. “Coming?”

  He led them through a maze of streets, quietly pointing out places where material was being stockpiled to make barricades. Emily doubted most of them would stand up to a real offensive, but combined with the weapons that had also been stockpiled...the soldiers were going to take a beating. She hoped Tam would have the sense to time the uprising properly, although she knew it was going to be difficult. The mood on the streets was ugly. Tam would have very real problems keeping his cells under control.

  “This warehouse originally belonged to a combine owned by a multitude of people, including Lord Nightingale,” Tam said, as they stopped outside a large building. The smell of fish hung in the air. “They ran into financial trouble and offloaded it to one of our front companies five months ago. We were...shall we say pushed...into buying it.”

  Jade frowned. “Nightingale owned the warehouse?”

  “He was one of the backers,” Tam said. “I don’t know how invested he was in the building.”

  Emily braced herself as Tam opened the door. A gust of dead air, carrying with it the scent of rotting fish, wafted across her nose. She started breathing through her mouth as Tam entered the building, plucking a torch from the wall and lighting it with a firestarter. Emily breathed in smoke, rolling her eyes as she cast a night-vision spell. The warehouse was huge, easily large enough to hold a small fleet of carriages...

  ...And empty, completely empty.

  “Check the front of the building,” Jade ordered. His voice echoed oddly in the air. “Make sure we’re alone.”

  Cat hurried off while Emily surveyed the giant compound. It was easy to see why it had been abandoned, although she was surprised it hadn’t been knocked down and replaced with something more efficient. The warehouse was too large for anything other than the biggest merchant companies to use–or the military, she supposed–and it wouldn’t be easy to divide it into smaller units that could be rented out to a number of different merchants. She wondered, absently, why Nightingale hadn’t tried to turn it into a garrison. The air was thick and unpleasant, but Nightingale wouldn’t give a damn. He wasn’t the one who had to breathe it.

  She looked down, noting the layers of dust on the stone floor. No one had been in the warehouse for months, perhaps ever since it had swapped hands. Once they set up a layer of protective wards, they could do a few spells to get rid of the dust. There was just too much of it to remove the old-fashioned way. Ideally, she would have opened the hatches and allowed fresh air to roll into the building, but that wasn’t a possibility. Attracting attention to the building would have been a deadly mistake.

  “The office is empty.” Cat sounded amused. “They even took the desk and chairs.”

  “It was barren when we purchased it,” Tam informed them. He sounded more like a real estate agent than a rebel. “Is it suitable?”

  Emily looked around. It was bigger than they needed, she thought. There was plenty of room to set up their tools, with additional space for a few dozen workbenches and equipment to charge additional batteries if necessary. Her mind started to run away with itself as she thought of a dozen ideas for using the space, before she reminded herself that they’d have to abandon the warehouse in a hurry. The king’s sorcerers might not know what they had in mind, but they’d have no trouble tracing the portal once it opened.

  “It will do,” she said. “We’ll start setting up here.”

  Tam bowed and left. Emily grinned at the boys, then started to draw out the first set of protective wards. Jade and Cat would have to do the second set, meshing them together carefully so the warehouse appeared empty when–if–an enemy sorcerer took an interest in it. The illusion wouldn’t last long–and certainly not when the portal opened–but it might buy them some time. She added a set of early-warning spells hidden under the first set of wards, then let the boys do their work while she sauntered into the office. Cat had been right, she noted. The office was really nothing more than a barren room. The only thing separating the office from the rest of the warehouse was a wall so flimsy that Emily thought she could put a fist through it with minimal effort.

  “That’s the wards in place,” Jade called. His voice echoed in the immense chamber. “Do you want to wait while we get the supplies?”

  “You just want to get out of cleaning,” Emily said, dryly. “You’d better bring a cleaning cloth with you when you come back.”

  She watched them go, then started to cast a series of cleaning spells. The mischievous part of her mind wanted to animate brushes and buckets, even though she knew it would be a colossal waste of magic. It would be fun...she considered it for a moment, then cast more practical spells instead. The dust started to move, billowing up like waves on the ocean as her magic pushed it into the far corner. She walked after it, drawing a handful of runes on the floor. They wouldn’t last long–Alexis wasn’t a high-magic environment–but it would keep the dust from contaminating their workspace. She made a mental note to see if there was a way they could get rid of the dust...

  Not that it matters, she told herself, firmly. We’re not going to stay here forever.

  She walked back to the center of the warehouse and started measuring out distances. If they put the focusing stone in the exact center, she could attach it to the compressed portal spell and then run the power from the batteries into the spellwork. It should work; there would be some power loss, if her calculations were correct, but they’d still have more than enough power to keep the portal open for five to ten minutes. And, if her second set of calculations were correct, she wouldn’t have to worry about the spellwork collapsing. It would last more than long enough for them to complete the mission.

  We’ll just have to make sure we can collapse our wards as soon as we’re ready to leave, Emily thought. She had no illusions about how long the warehouse would last if it was attacked. Jump out and go...and go where?

  She sighed. It was something they were going to have to discuss before they started the rescue mission. Where could they go? Swanhaven or Cockatrice were the obvious possibilities, offering bases for Alassa to make a bid for the throne...but Randor would know it too. Emily dreaded to think what might happen if the king’s armies headed into her barony, even though she’d walked away from it.

  The boys returned, carrying the supplies. Emily checked each of the batteries carefully–she’d made sure to prepare more than strictly necessary–and then placed them on the floor, protected by an aversion ward. Jade set up the focusing crystal while Cat altered the wards, programming them to destroy the entire warehouse if someone unfriendly broke into the building. It was harsh, Emily knew, but necessary. They didn’t dare let an enemy sorcerer get a good look at the batteries.

  Although the surge of raw magic will be enough to tell them that something happened here, she thought, as she checked the equations one final time. And they may call in advisers from the White Council.

  She scowled at the thought. Magic surges weren’t unknown near nexus points, or places so isolated that no humans could be found for miles around, but here? In the middle of a city that had been settled for hundreds of years? People would ask questions and...and perhaps some of them would come up with the right answers. Or perhaps there would be a panic over raw magic surges instead. She’d heard horror stories about what happened when humans were caught up in powerful surges, although no magic surges had been reported in heavily populated areas for nearly a hundred years.

  “I’m setting up the tracking spell now,” Jade said. “Tam was kind enough to give me a little of his blood.”

  Ouch, Emily thought. “Let’s hope he’s close enough to Imaiqah for us to use his blood to find h
er.”

  “Yeah,” Jade said. “He should be close enough, particularly as he’s the only member of his family remaining in the city. We should only get one false positive.”

  Emily stood and surveyed their work. It looked like an interstellar portal from a science-fiction movie, although there was something unmistakably steampunkish about it. The batteries seemed to be glowing, pregnant with possibility; the focusing crystals were humming, slightly, as the spellware waited to be activated. Professor Lombardi would throw up his hands with horror, she was sure, if he saw their ramshackle work, but it didn’t have to last forever. She’d settle for ten minutes.

  Cat stood next to her. “What time are we going?”

  “Tam said he’d have his people ready by tomorrow,” Jade said. “They don’t know the exact target, of course. We didn’t dare tell them.”

  “Of course,” Cat agreed. He winked at Emily. “Why don’t we go out on the town? Just the three of us?”

  Jade glared, then realized he was being teased. “I think it would be better to get plenty of sleep. We’ll be jumping soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow evening.”

  “Perhaps we should go at night,” Cat said.

  “Alassa will be in bed,” Jade reminded them. “There’s no way to get a message to her, is there?”

  Emily shook her head. “No.”

  “Timing will be a pain,” Jade agreed. “Ideally, I’d prefer to attack at dawn, but you know...”

  “Everyone attacks at dawn,” Cat agreed.

  Emily wasn’t sure that was actually true–the sergeants had taught their students to be awake at dawn, just in case something thought it was a good time to attack–but she saw the logic. The guards would expect an attack at dawn...if, of course, they expected to be attacked at all. Witt hadn’t been stupid and he clearly hadn’t expected an attack...Emily considered it for a moment, then dismissed the thought. There was a difference between a raid on a defended installation and an all-out attack on the city.