The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

  She stared out across the secretive waters of the lagoon. “When you brought me here, I had no choice. But in Ardence, I did. And I made my choice then.”

  “What, the choice Ignazio offered you?” I shook my head. “To be his Falcon, instead of Raverra’s? That hardly counts.”

  Zaira snorted. “Do you think I’m an idiot? No, not his stupid offer.”

  “What, then?”

  “I could have burned everyone in that room, taken the jess, and paid some random brat too small to know what it meant to put it on me and say, ‘Exsolvo.’ I could have walked out of there a free woman.”

  I stared, aghast. “That … would have worked.”

  “Yes. It would have.” Zaira grinned. “I make good plans, don’t I?”

  Good was a relative term. “But you didn’t do it.”

  “No. And now I am here by choice.” Zaira turned to face the Mews, a challenge in her eyes. “It’s far from perfect, but it’s better than most of the available alternatives, I suppose. And the company isn’t terrible. I don’t promise I won’t change my mind, but I’ll stay here for a little while.”

  “I’m glad. And not just because the other way, I’d have had to die.” I held out my hand. “You’re a good partner, and an excellent friend. I have a lot to learn from you.”

  She took my hand with a grin. “About time you realized it.”

  We walked into the Mews side by side.

  The story continues in …

  The Defiant Heir

  Book 2 of the Swords and Fire series

  Keep reading for a sneak peek!

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my wonderful editor, Lindsey Hall, for feedback that’s always straight on the mark, and for giving my Falcon wings. I am deeply grateful to the whole Orbit team for all their hard work on this book, and to Emily Byron, my UK editor, for bringing it across the pond. Huge thanks to my amazing agent, Naomi Davis, for being my champion and co-conspirator, and for helping my dreams come true.

  Thanks to my dad for buying me my first copy of Writer’s Market in fourth grade, and for suffering through that terrible novel I wrote in middle school. And to my mom, a force to be reckoned with, for never leaving any doubt in my mind that women are powerful leaders. Celestial oceans of gratitude to my husband, Jesse King, for his unflagging support, and for the random geeky conversation on a long car drive that spawned the idea for this book. And thanks to my fabulous daughters, Maya and Kyra, for their patience, love, and understanding while I wrote it.

  A big shout-out to my awesome beta readers: Silvia Park, Lauren Austrian-Parke, Constantine Haghighi, John Mangio, Beth Sanford, Paul Saldarriaga, Nicole Evans, J. P. Orminati, and Amberleigh Orminati. And extra special thanks to Deva Fagan and Natsuko Toyofuku, for sticking with me through draft after draft and book after book. Your wisdom, insight, and enthusiasm are worth more than Cornaro gold.

  And finally, thank you for reading this book. It’s not a story until someone reads it; you have made it complete.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: Erin Re Anderson

  MELISSA CARUSO graduated with honors in creative writing from Brown University and holds an MFA in Fiction from University of Massachusetts—Amherst.

  Author Interview

  When did you first start writing?

  I “wrote” my first book when I was about four years old. I drew the pictures and dictated the words to my big brother. It was basically a field guide to different dragons, with descriptive text like “Gargor eats people!” (I still have it.) I haven’t stopped writing since.

  Who are some of your biggest influences?

  There are so many fantasy authors I really admire who shaped my writing during my formative years. I particularly always envied the snappy dialogue and brilliant plotting of Steven Brust, and yearned to write something with a heroine as wonderful as Aerin from Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown. I am also a huge Hiromu Arakawa fangirl, and learned a ton from her amazing manga Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s so good on so many levels—especially the amazing character relationships, fantastic world building, and stunning pacing in a medium where that’s a particular challenge.

  Where did the idea for The Tethered Mage come from?

  I was on a long car drive with my husband, who’s a video game designer, so we have all these marvelous, geeky, creative conversations together. We were talking about fantasy world building, and he said something about how if random people actually were born with powerful magic, there was no realistic way they wouldn’t wind up being the ones in power. I was like, “Yeah, unless the government identified them as children and controlled their power somehow.” And then I got the idea for the Falconer system, and started wondering what the relationship between a Falcon/Falconer pair might be like, and the story was off and running.

  What, if any, research did you have to do in preparation for writing this book?

  In early drafts, The Tethered Mage took place in a (very) alternate Venice. So I did a bunch of research on the Venetian Republic, and also some on the late 1600s, when it was loosely set. The world wound up diverging from history pretty thoroughly, and then became an original setting instead, but there are some remnants. For instance, Amalia’s last name is in honor of Elena Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman to receive a doctorate degree from a university. Even after I moved the story to an original universe, I still looked up certain things when I wanted to get a period flavor, or would do an image search for the type of landscape, fashion, or architecture I wanted to describe, for inspiration. I got so, so hungry researching historical and regional Italian food.

  Fire magic is such a cool ability. What made you chose this specific power as your hero’s foremost strength/weapon?

  I wanted unleashing Zaira’s magic to always be kind of an “Oh shit” moment—both devastatingly effective and also really unsafe for anyone around her. Fire seemed like the perfect match for something that’s instinctively alarming, yet fascinating and powerful, and can spread out of control easily.

  The idea of freedom versus protection is a major theme in The Tethered Mage—what drew you to focus on this?

  Once I came up with the idea for the Falcon/Falconer bond, it arose naturally from there. I wanted the individual characters and the world as a whole to be struggling with the issue of how to handle mages, and I didn’t want there to be an easy answer that would solve all the potential problems. Freedom versus protection is a trade-off we face all the time in real life, in everything from parenting to legislation, so I think it’s something we can all identify with.

  Being a Strong Female Character sometimes seems to translate to being a gun-wielding, ass-kicking heroine, but The Tethered Mage has a wide range of female characters, all of whom are strong in their own unique ways. What were your inspirations for these characters?

  I have so many strong women in my life. My mom is an unstoppable force, and I have amazing friends and family who are all different kinds of badass. But really, what it comes down to is that probably two-thirds of my characters just pop into my head as female. I used to feel kind of bad about it, like, “Oh no, I should make more of them boys, to be fair!” But then I looked around at how often you get these big teams of cool characters with just one or two token females, and I went, “You know what? Nah.” When you have a lot of primary characters who are female in the same story, you naturally get more variety in the types of strengths they show.

  The Tethered Mage has a phenomenal cast of characters. If you had to pick one, who would you say is your favorite? Which character was the most difficult to write?

  Oh, wow, it’s really hard to pick a favorite. I adore both Zaira and Amalia, of course, but I might have to go with La Contessa for both my favorite and the most difficult. She’s especially hard to write because she’s supposed to be so smart and such a skilled political player; every line of her dialogue needs a point and an edge. For both her and Zaira, in very different w
ays, I had to go back in revisions and make sure nothing they said was bland—I wanted to give them their own special flavors of extra punch.

  What’s one thing about The Tethered Mage, either about the world or the characters, that you loved but couldn’t fit into the story?

  I keep trying to write scenes that take place in a courier lamp room, because I have this strong atmospheric sense of what they look like, and what it feels like to be in there with important messages flashing back and forth. But so far I haven’t been able to keep any of those scenes, because no matter how cool the lamp chambers look in my mind, it’s still basically just people sitting around texting each other, which is hard to make dynamic and exciting.

  The Tethered Mage is the first book of the Swords and Fire series. What’s in store for us in future books?

  It’ll probably come as no surprise to anyone who’s read The Tethered Mage that we haven’t seen the last of Prince Ruven, and that Vaskandar will become more of a problem for the Serene Empire in general and Amalia and Zaira in particular. Amalia also has some hard choices in her future now that she’s stepping up and taking on more responsibility as her mother’s heir.

  If you could spend an afternoon with one of your characters, who would it be and what would you do?

  Probably Amalia, because then I could ask her to show me around Raverra, especially her favorite libraries and places to eat. I’d love to meet Zaira, too, but I suspect she’d think I was pretty boring!

  Lastly, we have to ask: if you could have any superpower, what would it be?

  I’d want to be able to shapechange into any animal, because that way I can get a whole bunch of powers for the price of one: flight, stealth, super senses, super climbing and jumping, you name it. Plus, I think it would be really fun to get to try out different shapes and see what they were like. If that’s cheating and I have to pick only one animal to change into, well, it probably won’t surprise anyone that I happen to think falcons are pretty cool.

  if you enjoyed

  THE TETHERED MAGE

  look out for

  THE DEFIANT HEIR

  Book 2 of the Swords and Fire Trilogy

  by

  Melissa Caruso

  CHAPTER 1

  It seemed a shame to burn a place so green.

  The tiny island floated in the path of the prevailing current from the Serene City, and trash collected along its curving inner shore. It was a mere mound of rock and sand, a navigational hazard without even a name. But flowering bushes edged the narrow strip of beach on which we stood, giving way to an improbable clutch of young trees and brush in the center. A salty breeze off the lagoon coaxed sighs from the spring leaves.

  The whole place appeared far too flammable. Not that it mattered much, with balefire.

  I calculated angles and took three steps across the sand. It couldn’t hurt to stay upwind. This might be a training exercise, but it could still kill everyone on the island if things went wrong.

  Zaira lifted her brows beneath the windblown tangle of her dark curls. “Are you done dancing around? We’re not here to practice the minuet.”

  I judged the space between us. Three feet, perhaps. Not nearly enough for me to make it to safety if she lost control.

  But I nodded. “All right.”

  “I won’t set you on fire,” Zaira promised. “This time.”

  “I trust you.”

  She cast a glance at Marcello, who waited a good fifty feet away along the gray stretch of sand. He stood at apparent ease, his black curls loose against the collar of his scarlet-and-gold uniform, the Mews looming watchfully over his shoulder across the calm lagoon waters. But his hand, hooked so casually into his belt, touched the grip of his pistol. Just in case.

  “Are you ready?” Zaira called.

  Marcello nodded.

  Zaira held out a hand to me, palm up, as if she expected me to put something into it. The jess gleamed golden on her stick-thin wrist.

  My mouth went dry as blown sand. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “No, I came out here for a picnic. Of course I want to do it. Release me.”

  I drew in a breath of damp sea air, then let it go again, shaping it into the most terrible word I knew.

  “Exsolvo.”

  Zaira closed her hand. When she opened it, a pale blue flame licked up from her fingers.

  It was a small thing, for now, but wicked as a hooked knife, lovely and fatal. It clawed the air with hungry yearning. Balefire.

  The slim twist of flame leaned toward me, against the wind. I took a step back.

  “Hold your ground, Lady Amalia.” It was Balos’s voice, deep and firm. He stood twenty feet down the beach in the opposite direction from Marcello, one thickly muscled brown arm lying lightly across the shoulders of Jerith, his Falcon and husband. “You need to get used to it. You can’t let it distract you in an emergency.”

  “It’s hard not to get distracted by something that wants to kill you,” I muttered.

  “It’s nothing personal.” Zaira grinned, but the corners of her eyes showed her strain. “It wants to kill everyone.”

  “Now light something on fire,” Jerith called. Somehow, he sounded more like a child daring a schoolmate to cause trouble than an older warlock instructing a young one.

  Zaira flicked her wrist at a squat bush with shiny, round leaves. A spark leaped from her hand, searing a bright path through the air, and landed inside it. Blue-white flames sprang up from within the bush, crawling hungrily up its blackening branches, withering every leaf to ash.

  “Keep it contained,” Jerith said. The mage mark gleamed silver in his eyes as he watched Zaira’s face. “Don’t let it spread.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Zaira snapped.

  “Oh? Then what’s that?” Jerith jerked his chin at the fire.

  Only a jutting charred stick remained of the bush. But the blue flames reached higher than ever, straining for the tree branches above. Thin lines of flame meandered outward, searching, following the bush’s roots under the ground.

  One slithered along the sand’s edge—thin, powerful, and rapid as a snake—heading toward Marcello. I sucked in a breath, but held back the word to seal her power again, though it strained behind my teeth. I had to trust her to handle it. That was half the point of this exercise.

  Zaira sliced her hand through the air. The balefire went out, fast as a blink, leaving a smoking black smear on the ground.

  “See? Fine. Completely under control.”

  Thank the Graces. “Revincio,” I sighed, sealing her power.

  Jerith shook his head, a diamond glittering in his earlobe. “Control will be much harder when it’s a company of Vaskandran musketeers or some Witch Lord’s pet chimera coming at you with venomous claws.”

  I shifted my feet uneasily. “We’re not at war with Vaskandar.”

  Jerith laughed. “Oh, don’t be coy, my lady. Your Council secrets are safe with me. Anyone who’s heard word of their troop movements knows they’re preparing for an invasion. It’s only proper we afford them the same courtesy in return.”

  Marcello approached, a frown marring his brow. I couldn’t help but appreciate the flattering lines of his uniform doublet, despite all my efforts to remind myself over the past six months that we weren’t courting, couldn’t court—at least not yet. I wasn’t ready to throw away the power of political eligibility. But this uninhabited speck of an island he’d picked for our practice lay far beyond the prying eyes of gossips and rumor sheet writers; so when he stopped almost within hand-holding range, I edged a step closer to him instead of moving away.

  “We should try that again,” he said. “For longer, this time.”

  I eyed the tangle of brush and overhanging branches surrounding the charred spot where Zaira’s flame had burned. “Maybe in a place where it won’t spread quite so easily.”

  Marcello scanned the beach. “How about there?”

  He gestured to a line of barnacle-crusted rocks tha
t extended into a thin spit a short distance down the beach, at the point of the island’s crescent. Balefire could burn on stone—or water, for that matter—but at least a chance breeze wouldn’t dip a tree branch into the flame.

  Zaira shrugged her indifference, so we started over in that direction. She seemed in no hurry, and though I’d worn breeches, my city boots turned awkwardly on the soft, sliding sand; we soon fell back behind the others.

  It was just as well. There was something I needed to ask her, a gnawing unease I had to face.

  “Jerith’s right,” I said quietly. “It’s no feint, this time. Vaskandar is preparing for war. And you know what the Council will ask you to do.”

  “Yes, I heard. Musketeers, chimeras.” She tugged gently at the jess on her wrist, as if testing whether it might come off at last. “Should be easier than burning some scraggly old bush, frankly. Small is harder.”

  “Are you …” I tried to think how to phrase my question. “How do you feel about this?”

  “Why does everyone ask about my feelings? Graces’ tits, you and Terika …” She clamped her mouth shut.

  “Perhaps we care about you.”

  Zaira snorted. “Must be nice to have the luxury to worry about bilge like that. In the Tallows, you learn feelings are worthless. They’re what drunkards piss away the morning after.”

  Some things were worth arguing with Zaira about, and some weren’t. “I don’t want to see you put in a position where you’re forced to use your fire to kill.”

  “As opposed to what? Roasting meat skewers in the market? There’s not much else it’s good for.” She shook her head. “I’ve heard the stories of the Three Years’ War from the wrinkled old relics in the Tallows. Grandfathers strangled in their beds by bramble vines, children fed to wolves—the Witch Lords don’t know mercy. If Vaskandar invades, I’ll show them they’re not the only demons in the Nine Hells.”