The Princess in the Tower (Schooled in Magic Book 15)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Don’t get too empathetic, a voice whispered in her head. It sounded like Lady Barb. These men will happily rape or kill you if given the chance.

  A chill ran down her spine as they walked past the Tower. There were more guards at the gates, their eyes following her as if they thought she was a potential threat. The wards buzzed against her mind, pushing her away; she found herself picking up speed, no matter how hard she tried to resist. She hoped the guards had found a way to shield the prisoners from the wards, even though she could see how they might be used to keep the inmates under control. A person who was helpless to resist–or avoid–the wards would be steadily driven into a constant state of fear.

  Maybe that explains why there are so few stories of what it’s like inside the Tower, she thought, morbidly. The wards are designed to interfere with memories.

  “There,” Jade muttered. “You see them?”

  Emily followed his eyes. A pair of guardsmen were hurrying towards the Tower, hurrying in a manner that suggested–quite distinctively–that they were desperately trying not to hurry too obviously. They must have been out on the town, she guessed; they wouldn’t have had the slightest idea that the balloon was about to go up. She felt a stab of pity, remembering what military justice was like. Their commanding officer might force them to run the gauntlet if their absence had embarrassed him in front of his superiors.

  “Follow my lead,” Jade ordered, as he took her arm. “And don’t do anything to resist.”

  “Understood,” Emily muttered, thinking of the dagger in her sleeve. Jade seemed confident, but she thought there were too many things that could go wrong. She’d liked the original plan more. “I’ll be here.”

  Jade stumbled slightly, pretending to be drunk. Emily gritted her teeth as she felt his weight suddenly pressing against her, pushing him back as hard as she could. She heard the soldiers laughing as they approached, Jade staggering from side to side until he stumbled, started to fall...and crashed into one of the men. He let out a mighty oath and punched Jade in the stomach, hard. His companion laughed so uproariously as Jade landed in a puddle that Emily found it hard to believe it was real.

  “Idiot,” the lead soldier snarled. His gaze moved to Emily, but didn’t travel up to meet her eyes. “Had a bit too much to drink, had he?”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said, feeling a flicker of alarm. She knew from grim experience that a blow to the stomach could make it impossible to continue the fight. “We were at a party and...”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” the soldier said. He kicked Jade, then looked back at her, his eyes leaving trails of slime over her breasts. “He won’t be in any state for...”

  His companion grabbed his arm. “Come on,” he said. “We’re already late.”

  Emily watched them go, then helped Jade to his feet. “Are you alright?”

  Jade snickered. “Slipped it into his armor,” he said, as they stumbled onwards. She had to half-carry him down the riverside. “He’ll have to take his armor off to find it.”

  “Let’s hope they’re not going to be ordered to stand guard in the nude, then,” Emily said, dryly. She’d seen that a couple of times, back during the war. “Did he do any permanent damage?”

  “No,” Jade said. He seemed to be regaining his strength rapidly. His breath came in harsh gulps as he drew on his magic to speed the process. “The blow was hard, but I’ve taken worse.”

  Emily said nothing as they headed away from the river, crossing the Royal Mile and slowly making their way back to the warehouse. There were more soldiers on the streets near the Royal Mile, chasing civilians back to their homes as they surrounded a number of baronial mansions. The mansions had a form of diplomatic protection, rendering them immune to search without permission. Randor was effectively declaring war, then. She wondered, absently, if Randor would search Alicia’s mansion too. It wasn’t as if Alicia could effectively resist.

  “Randor will be mounting an offensive as soon as possible,” Jade commented. “He’ll probably strike at the closest target first–Baron Silversmith–and then move on to finish the other rebels. Crushing one will weaken the others, particularly if Randor is smart enough to offer Silversmith’s vassals a place in the new order. That will suggest that anyone can switch sides and survive...”

  “If they trust Randor to keep his promises,” Emily countered. She wouldn’t trust Randor unless there was some guarantee he’d keep his word. A hostage exchange was traditional, but Randor was dangerously irrational. He might deliberately write off the hostage in the pursuit of his long-term goal. “They might be left with nothing, but empty titles.”

  “They’ll certainly be caught between two fires,” Jade agreed. He sounded darkly amused by the thought. “And they’ll have to time their betrayal very carefully.”

  Emily nodded. The vassals would have to switch sides while they still had something to use to bargain with the king, but–at the same time–they’d have to do it when their former overlord was no longer in a position to extract revenge for treachery. Breaking one’s feudal bonds was, perhaps, the worst crime in the book. No one would fault Baron Silversmith for slaughtering his treacherous vassals, burning their lands to the ground and then sowing the ashes with salt. The vassals would have to be very careful indeed.

  “I’m sure they’ll pick the right moment,” she said. Randor probably already had messengers out, testing the waters to see who could be lured into betrayal. “If nothing else, they’ll have something to bargain with for quite some time.”

  The warehouse looked empty from the outside, but–as they stepped into the building–they saw fifteen armed men, carrying muskets, flintlocks, swords and wands. It was an odd weapons mix, Emily thought, but it made a certain kind of sense. Reloading a musket or flintlock in the middle of a battle wasn’t easy. Sir Roger’s men had fought in rows, one row reloading while the other fired, but the Levellers didn’t have anything like enough guns or soldiers. They might have to rely on their swords for close-quarter fighting. Thankfully, the guards would probably have the same limitations.

  Their wands should even the odds a little, she told herself, firmly. We charged them with stunning spells.

  Cat stood in the center of the group, issuing orders. Emily felt a flicker of relief mingled with irritation, knowing that the Levellers would be happier taking orders from a man than a woman...even her. The Levellers spoke of sexual equality, but it would be a long time before society regarded women–at least women without magic–as equal to men. Even female aristocrats were a step down from their male counterparts.

  But you wouldn’t be happy giving orders anyway, a voice reminded her. Lady Barb had told her off for that, more than once. You prefer to work alone.

  Jade nudged her. “We’d better get changed,” he said. “Make sure you have everything you need.”

  “I’ll stick everything we want to keep in the carryall,” Emily said, as they walked into the office. Mouse was sitting on the floor, looking nervous. “Grab it before we teleport out.”

  “Of course,” Jade said.

  Emily stuck Alicia’s chat parchment in the carryall, checked her small collection of equipment and then hastily changed into a shirt and trousers. It was loose enough to hide most of her curves without impeding her movements in any way. She wished she’d had more time to charm the cloth to provide a little extra protection, but they’d just have to make do with what they had. Besides, too many charms would interfere with her spellcasting. She didn’t want to accidentally cripple herself.

  She met Jade’s eyes. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah,” Jade said. He sounded worried. There were plenty of ways the plan could go spectacularly wrong and they both knew it. They’d worked out a handful of contingency plans, but they’d reluctantly concluded that they’d have to play it by ear. “I’m ready.”

  Emily squeezed his hand. “Let’s go,” she said. “Time is not on our side.”

  Chapter Thirty

  SILENCE FELL.


  Emily was barely aware of it as she held the charmed parchment in one hand and reached out with her mind, trying to peer down the link towards the parchment’s twin. The magics seemed to flicker around her, as if they were somehow in one place even as they were actually in two places. She was aware of the warehouse, and of the wards surrounding it, but she was also aware of the Tower of Alexis. The Tower’s wards seemed to blaze in her mind, a glowing series of walls...strikingly simple, but also brutally effective. There didn’t seem to be any living mind attached to the wards, as far as she could tell, yet it hardly mattered. The wards did what they were designed to do and did it very well.

  “I should be able to take them down from the inside,” she said, as she felt out the exact limits of the wards. It was a curious design, although she’d seen something like it before. A sorcerer would want his wards to be as close to impregnable as possible, but he’d also want to be able to take them down himself in a hurry, if necessary. “When that happens, we’ll have to move.”

  “We’re ready,” Jade said. “Go.”

  Emily concentrated, trying to reach through the charmed parchment to scan the building for Alassa and Imaiqah. But she sensed nothing, nothing at all. She wasn’t sure if the wards were interfering with the search or not–there appeared to be a number of internal defenses woven into the stone–but it didn’t matter. Unless they weren’t there...she gritted her teeth at the thought. Everyone believed Alassa and Imaiqah had been sent to the Tower, but what if they were wrong?

  We have to try, she thought, grimly. And if they’re not in the Tower...at least we’ll know they’re not in the Tower.

  She felt out the wards, braced herself...and struck. The wards shuddered, then shattered like glass. Emily sucked in her breath as the secondary wards collapsed too, knowing that it was just a matter of time now. Everyone in the building who had even the slightest sensitivity to magic would know the wards had failed. They would realize they were under attack, even if they didn’t understand how. They’d be rushing to their defensive positions, grabbing weapons and–perhaps–preparing to move or execute the prisoners. Time was definitely not on their side.

  “Got them,” she said, as she repeated the blood magic trace. Alassa and Imaiqah were clearly visible in her mind’s eye, both on the fifth floor of the building. She had no idea if that was a good sign or not, but at least they were alive. “I’m opening the portal...now.”

  She touched the focusing crystals gently, willing them to come to life. The spellware activated as she started to channel magic from the first battery into the portal spell, hastily fine-tuning the spell to open the portal as close to their targets as possible. She jerked back instinctively as space started to warp in front of her, far too close for comfort. Light twisted right in front of her eyes, bending out of shape as the portal slowly opened. She felt a wave of pain and rapidly tightened her mental defenses before it was too late. She’d forgotten how unpleasant it could be to stand close to a portal.

  “By all the gods,” Jade breathed.

  Emily nodded, slowly. She’d expected a square of light, just like the portals she’d seen as she explored the Nameless World, but this portal looked like a spinning disk of glowing blue fire. She couldn’t help thinking of a wormhole as it expanded rapidly, tearing a hole through space to reach its destination. Her mental defenses didn’t seem enough, somehow, to keep it from hurting her. The pain wasn’t going to force her to stay behind–she was determined it wouldn’t force her to stay behind–but it was thoroughly unpleasant.

  The portal flared, then stabilized. Emily peered through and saw a stone corridor, lined with portraits and tapestries. She felt a flicker of disappointment that they hadn’t managed to open the portal right into Alassa’s bedroom, but it couldn’t be helped. They’d done something wonderful and she knew it. No one could have expected them to tear down the defenses and open a portal right into the middle of the building.

  “We have to move,” Jade said. “I’ll go first.”

  He ran forward before Emily could say a word, jumping through the portal and landing neatly on the far side. Emily saw him stagger, just for a second, then look around. The portal had to be hurting him too, she realized. It felt odd to realize that their magic–a combination of magic from all three of them–could be hurtful. But then, she’d never been quite sure precisely why portals hurt strong magicians. Perhaps it was the awareness that local space was twisted and bent out of shape.

  “Go,” Cat ordered.

  The Levellers moved forward, jumping rather than stepping through the portal. Emily didn’t blame them. The portal wasn’t precisely at floor level and she suspected the edge of the portal would cut a careless man in half. It wasn’t something she’d had to worry about before, but this was new. They’d changed the world...

  She braced herself, then jumped through too. Cat followed her a moment later. There was an odd moment of disorientation, as if the gravity had suddenly stopped working, then she landed on the stone floor. The Tower of Alexis looked...odd. Emily had been expecting shadowy corridors and iron doors, like the dungeons under the castle, but instead...the building was more like a comfortable guardpost than anything else. It wasn’t as comfortable as a mansion, she supposed, yet...it was more comfortable than any prison she’d ever seen. But then, most of the prisoners were aristocrats. Randor wouldn’t want to keep them in chains, fed on bread and water. They were too high-born for common prisons.

  “Secure the stairwells,” Cat ordered, as Jade performed a series of searching charms. “Don’t let anyone come up or down the stairs.”

  Emily looked around carefully, noting the oddities of the building’s design. It was...it was something nagging at the edge of her mind, something subtly wrong about the whole thing. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but...but it was there. The building was more than a little disconcerting.

  “This way,” Jade ordered. “Hurry!”

  Emily followed him down the corridor, magic at the ready. The building only became odder the further they moved from the portal, the corridors elongating in all directions. A large-scale labyrinth charm? Emily doubted anyone could make it work on such a large scale without a nexus point, but she was living proof that someone could come up with a new way to do something. The angles seemed odd, as if the building had been put together by someone who didn’t quite know what they were doing. And yet, it felt reassuringly solid.

  And big, Emily thought. She’d known the Tower was large, but she hadn’t realized just how large it was on the inside until they’d forced their way into the building. She would have wondered if it wasn’t another pocket dimension if she wasn’t certain the power requirements would be impossibly high. Where are they?

  They turned the corner and ran into a pack of guards. Jade growled and lashed out with his magic, slamming an overpowered force punch into their bodies. Emily winced as they were picked up, thrown down the corridor and smashed against the far wall. Charmed armor or not, she doubted any of them had survived the experience without broken bones. A handful probably hadn’t survived at all. She gritted her teeth, again, as she heard shouting in the distance, followed by the distinctive sound of flintlocks. Cat and the Levellers seemed to be engaged with the enemy.

  And there may be a second way up to this level, Emily thought. She’d never been in the Tower before, but she’d never seen a castle–or a fortress–that didn’t have more than one way to move between levels. The guards will have plenty of time to get up the stairs and take us in the rear.

  Jade cursed. “They’re scrambling my spells,” he said. “Give me a hand.”

  Emily closed her eyes and concentrated. Subtle magic...there was subtle magic woven into the stone. She studied it for a moment, cursing under her breath. It was a very impressive–and vile–piece of work. Jade’s spells were working, but his ability to perceive what they were telling him was being twisted. They would have stayed walking in circles if they hadn’t realized what was going on.

  �
�Subtle magic,” she said. She looked down at her chest. The rune was quiet. “I...I don’t know how we missed it.”

  “Lots of real magic going on,” Jade said. He cast the spell, again. “This way.”

  Emily followed him, feeling uneasy. Subtle magic was, by nature, hard to detect...but her rune should have been burning brightly, making it impossible for her thoughts to be carefully manipulated. Whoever had designed the Tower had done a very good job of making use of the limited resources at their disposal. Unless...no, there couldn’t be a nexus point anywhere near Alexis. Randor wouldn’t have hesitated to use it to turn his castle into an impregnable fortress.

  “She’s in there,” Jade said. “I can feel her!”

  “Then let me go first,” Emily said. The door looked harmless–it looked more like a fancy wooden door than something out of a medieval prison–but that only made her more suspicious. And yet, they didn’t have time to hesitate. “I’ll check the lock.”

  She tested the door carefully, then frowned. The lock was very simple, so simple she could pick it with her eyes closed. There didn’t seem to be any charms holding it closed either, save for a ward designed to sound the alarm if the door was opened without the key. That was no longer a problem, she was sure. The guards would have to be deaf and dumb as well as blind if they didn’t know they were under attack by now. She probed further, expecting to sense a trap hidden on the far side, but sensed nothing. The door didn’t appear to be very special at all.

  We are inside their defenses, I suppose, she thought. But still...

  “Watch me,” she ordered, as she picked the lock. It was surprisingly easy. “Here we go...”

  She pulled the door open, expecting something to snap out at her at any moment. Instead, she found herself staring into a comfortable suite. It was empty...no, she jumped back, just in time, as a chamberpot nearly brained her. Alassa appeared–she’d been hiding behind the door–and stared at her.