The Princess in the Tower (Schooled in Magic Book 15) Page 3

  But she also knew why the girl was wearing male guise. It would keep her safe in a world full of threats. Hundreds of people would be passing through the inn every day and some of them would be dangerous. A young girl might look vulnerable...she felt sick at the very thought. The Nameless World had its downsides too. Someone with enough rank or wealth or power–or magic–could get away with anything.

  She scrambled down to the cobblestones, slung one of the bags over her shoulders and followed the men to the main entrance. A handful of older men were sitting outside, swapping gossip and smoking something that smelled sickly-sweet. Emily had no idea what it was, but she doubted it was doing their lungs any good. Their eyes flickered over her as she walked past, then looked away. She wasn’t remotely surprised to see, as they walked into the inn, that a middle-aged woman was sitting behind the table. Greeting the guests was woman’s work. The flintlock lying on her desk, on the other hand, was a considerable surprise. She’d known handheld guns were starting to spread across Zangaria–everyone wanted one, no matter what the king said–but she wouldn’t have expected to find one here.

  And too many people won’t know what it is, she thought, wryly. A weapon wouldn’t deter anyone if they didn’t realize it was a weapon. Or maybe they’ll believe it has supernatural powers.

  Jade did the talking. “We want a single room for the three of us, with the proper facilities.”

  The woman looked at Emily with a hint of disdain before frowning up at the blackboard behind her. Emily felt her cheeks heat. Passing for a kept woman was embarrassing, even though she was fairly sure no one would be able to penetrate her disguise. Even if they figured out that she wasn’t some peasant girl who’d run off in search of adventure–or to escape an unwanted marriage–they’d never guess the truth. But it also meant dealing with society’s contempt. Prostitutes were right at the bottom. The innkeeper would feel free to look down on her.

  She turned away, allowing her eyes to roam around the hallway. It was dark, illuminated only by a handful of flickering lanterns. Someone had placed them very carefully, ensuring that the innkeeper could see her guests while making it harder for the guests to see her. The walls were cloaked in shadow, probably hiding the remnants of previous guests as well as the dirt and grime that was omnipresent in the Nameless World. Music echoed down one corridor: a man bellowing out a bawdy ballad, accompanied by something that sounded vaguely like a guitar. The lyrics were explicit enough to make her cringe.

  The innkeeper coughed, loudly. “Women are to eat in the upper hall,” she said, stiffly. “Men are to eat in the lower floor.”

  Emily nodded, keeping her face impassive. It was a wise precaution. The inn appeared to be bursting with guests, most of whom would probably be mercenaries. Better to try to keep men and women separate than risk a fight breaking out over one of the girls. She shifted her bag, then followed Jade and Cat through a low-hanging door and up a narrow flight of wooden stairs. It was so dark that she wanted to cast a night-vision spell. Someone was likely to have an accident if they had to sneak down in the middle of the night.

  And we’re going to have real trouble if there’s a fire, she thought, as they reached the top of the stairs. A pair of heavyset men with swords were standing at the top. Getting everyone out in a hurry will be difficult.

  She tensed as she saw Jade’s hand resting on his dagger. Drawing his sword in such a confined space would be difficult. Hell, the inn might have been designed to make fighting difficult. She’d been in castles built to make life harder for anyone trying to fight their way up the stairs. She touched her own dagger, hidden in her sleeve, as the two men looked at them, then stepped aside. Her skin crawled as their eyes wandered over her chest. She was showing nothing, but it didn’t matter. The men hadn’t seen a young woman in far too long.

  Her back itched as they made their way down the corridor, careful not to show any sign of fear. Jade and Cat had plenty of experience–she knew she’d never be a swordmaster herself–but fighting without magic was always chancy. The men were mercenaries, judging by their clothing. They had probably fought in wars where the rules of warfare were nothing more than sick jokes. They might well be experienced enough to make up for Jade and Cat’s youth.

  And if we reveal we’re magicians, we will draw too much attention to ourselves, she reminded herself. We must pass unnoticed.

  Jade stopped outside a wooden door and inserted a large iron key into the lock. Emily wasn’t remotely impressed. She could have picked that primitive lock with her eyes closed, without magic. The smell of...something...wafted out as the door opened, forcing her to breathe through her mouth. Inside, it was dark and uncomfortably warm. Cat stumbled into the room and opened the shutters. It didn’t look as though anyone had bothered to clean the room before renting it out again.

  “It could be worse,” Cat said, as light streamed into the room. “At least we have some air.”

  “And we’re trapped, if we need to get out in a hurry,” Jade said, pointing to the iron bars covering the windows. “Are we guests or prisoners?”

  “They probably don’t want people running off without paying,” Cat said. “Emily? What do you think?”

  Emily looked around the room. Two wooden beds–she rather suspected the innkeeper had thought she would be sharing with one of the men–covered in sheets that looked decidedly unclean. Chamberpots under the bed, as she’d expected; a bucket of water in the corner, clearly an afterthought. The New Learning included plenty of warnings about how diseases spread, and how even something as simple as boiling water or washing one’s hands could keep them from spreading, but not everyone believed it. There were places on the Nameless World–particularly near cities–where drinking the water was a good way to commit suicide.

  “It will have to do,” she said, as she put her bag down. There was no point in complaining about it. The innkeeper had no reason to think they needed a better room, assuming one was available. They might have been given the best room in the inn. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah,” Cat said. He winked at her. “Shall we go down for dinner?”

  “We can’t go together,” Jade reminded him. His expression darkened. “I don’t like leaving our stuff here.”

  “Put up a very basic ward,” Cat suggested. “We should be able to get away with it.”

  Emily had her doubts. No one would think twice about a mercenary carrying a wand, or a handful of protective amulets, but a ward would be far too revealing. If, of course, someone dared try to search the room. A thief would be risking everything if he were caught. No one would bat an eyelid if a would-be thief was killed by his victim. She’d seen mutilated criminals wandering around towns in the past. None of them had any hope of a better life.

  “Rig the door, instead,” she suggested. “A charm to keep it closed unless one of us is turning the key should be workable.”

  “Good thought,” Jade said. “Give me a moment.”

  Emily watched as he set up a handful of tells to alert them if someone managed to enter and search the room anyway, then hurried back down the stairs to the upper hall. It was bigger than she’d expected, given that women wouldn’t be that common on the roads; women crammed the tables, while a grim-faced waitress moved from table to table, taking orders and bringing food from the kitchen. Emily felt her stomach churn–she knew how grimy inn kitchens could be–but there was no alternative. The only consolation was that the men wouldn’t be having anything better.

  A middle-aged woman waved to her. “Just passing through?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, taking the implied invitation and sitting down. She would have preferred to eat alone, but that wasn’t a possibility either. “We’re going to Alexis.”

  “I hear the roads are clogged there,” the woman said. “We’re heading away from Alexis.”

  Emily ordered food–rabbit stew and bread–then leaned back in her chair and listened to her dining companions as they talked. Sharing stories and rumors was a tradition
, she’d heard, but it wasn’t something she’d done before. The last time she’d been to an inn, it had been with Lady Barb, deep in the Cairngorms. There just hadn’t been enough people traveling to keep the tradition alive. Here, it was different. She said as little as she could as they talked.

  “The king is supposed to have locked up the princess,” one woman said, when the conversation turned to politics. She looked to be a merchant’s wife, although she could easily have been the merchant herself. “She’s somewhere in the castle.”

  “Rubbish,” another woman said. “She’s dead.”

  “Or leading an army against the king,” a third woman said. “The rumors keep growing.”

  “I heard she was caught in bed with a footman,” the second woman said. “Or even a maid.”

  The women giggled. Emily felt a hot flash of anger on Alassa’s behalf, even as she tried to work out who might be spreading the rumors and why. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard awful stories about Alassa, stories that would make her seem unsuitable for the throne...the mere suggestion that Jade might not have fathered Alassa’s child would call the baby’s legitimacy into question. But there were plenty of paternity spells to make sure the child was truly his...

  “Baron Gaillard has been taxing all caravans that pass through his territory,” the merchant woman said. “He’s even been putting the squeeze on the free towns.”

  “He isn’t the only one,” the second woman said. Emily had no idea what she did. Her clothes suggested a middle-class life, but they were curiously bland. “Baroness Winter Flower has demanded more taxes too.”

  Emily frowned. Alicia? King Randor’s former mistress? Or had her husband taken control of the barony? Lord Burrows wouldn’t have been married off to a baroness if the king hadn’t been sure of his loyalty. Who was really in charge? And why were they raising taxes?

  They want a fighting fund, she thought, grimly. And who knows what side they’ll take?

  “I hear there’s trouble in Cockatrice,” the merchant woman said. “We were hoping to go there, after visiting Callable.”

  “Cockatrice?” Emily leaned forward, interested. “What’s happening there?”

  “It depends who you believe,” the merchant woman said. “But most of the stories agree that the king’s man in the castle is shitty.”

  “The baroness should go back,” the second woman grumbled. “My husband isn’t going to invest any monies if he doesn’t trust the baron to repay him.”

  So your husband is a banker, then, Emily thought. Or a loan shark.

  The third woman looked at Emily. “What is it like, traveling with two sellswords?”

  Emily lifted her eyebrows in surprise, then realized the woman must have seen Jade and Cat when they’d walked her down to the hall. Their forelocks made them instantly recognizable as mercenaries. And...she met the woman’s eyes, reading the challenge there. She wanted to put Emily down, to put her right at the bottom of the table hierarchy...Emily almost laughed at just how petty it was. It wasn’t as if any of them were in school.

  And if you knew who you were talking to, she thought wryly, you’d throw yourself on the ground so fast you’d crack your head against the stone.

  “It’s never boring,” she said, choosing to pretend she wasn’t supposed to be ashamed of herself. Most of the kept women she’d seen in Farrakhan had looked downtrodden, all too aware that they could be replaced at any moment. “And I’ve seen things you would not believe.”

  The merchant woman smiled, a little weakly. “Why don’t you tell us about them?”

  Emily shrugged and launched into a story about the battles in and around Farrakhan. She had been there, after all. And even if they doubted her, they’d never be able to prove she was lying. Halfway through the story, her meal arrived. She picked at the rabbit stew and bread as she talked, enjoying their attention. It might make them see the world a little differently.

  “So you won the war,” the merchant woman said, finally.

  That was truer than she knew, Emily reflected. “Yeah,” she said. “And then we were told to move out of the city before the end of the month.”

  “Because sellswords are unpopular,” the third woman said. “No one wants you around when there’s no risk of war.”

  Emily nodded. No one liked mercenaries, not even the noblemen who hired them. And a mercenary who was badly wounded would be lucky if he received anything in the way of medical attention. Even a chirurgeon would be reluctant to treat a mercenary.

  “Which is why you’re going to Alexis,” the banker woman said. “What do you think will happen there?”

  “We’ll find work, of course,” Emily said. “I’ll spend my days washing their clothes and shining their swords, then we’ll move on.”

  “And they call you Emily,” the merchant woman said.

  Emily had to fight to keep the surprise off her face. The woman must have overhead Jade or Cat addressing her by name.

  “My name is Millie,” she said. “They just like the sound of Emily.”

  “They like the thought of sleeping with the sorceress,” the banker woman said.

  Emily didn’t have to fake embarrassment. The cover story would ensure that no one would connect her with the real Emily, but it was still embarrassing. She looked down, allowing them to draw their own conclusions. They’d believe those more than anything Emily might tell them.

  The merchant woman sniffed, then changed the subject. Emily listened as she finished her stew, enjoying it more than she wanted to admit. It had taken her a while to get used to eating rabbit, when the sergeants had caught rabbits to feed their students on overnight forced marches, but the meat tasted good. And selling the pelts was apparently a good way for country boys to earn a little money.

  She knew she should stay longer and see what other rumors she could pick up, but she suspected it would be useless. No one knew anything for sure. The civil war was about to begin, the civil war was underway, the civil war was already over or never going to happen or...there were just too many contradictory rumors. Instead, she bid her dining companions farewell and left the room. Her thoughts were a muddle. She knew she needed to lie down and sleep.

  And wake up tomorrow covered in insect bites, she thought. It had happened before and would no doubt happen again. They’d run out of insect-repelling incense long ago. Surely we could cast a ward against insects.

  The inn felt oddly quiet, although she could hear music in the distance. Someone would have hired an entertainer to keep the men quiet, she was sure. It might save the inn from being torn apart if the mercenaries got bored and started a fight. She walked along the wooden corridor, suddenly unsure of the way back to her room...

  ...And then she heard someone grunt in pain.

  Chapter Three

  EMILY HESITATED, TORN BETWEEN THE urge to run forward to investigate and the need to keep her head down. Someone was in trouble, someone needed help...and yet, she didn’t dare draw attention to herself. Getting kicked out of the inn would be a disaster, but...

  “Let go of me,” a voice pleaded. A girl’s voice. “Please!”

  Emily was moving before her mind had quite caught up. She had an awful feeling she knew what she was about to see, even before she rounded the corner. A man–a mercenary, judging by his hair and leathers–was pushing the young girl Emily had met earlier against the wall, his face so close to hers that he was practically forcing her to kiss him. Emily felt her stomach churn with rage, a rage so strong she had to put solid blocks on her magic to keep from accidentally incinerating the entire inn. How dare he?

  He dares because he knows no one will stop him, her thoughts answered. And no one will believe her if she complains.

  She slipped the dagger out of her belt and moved forward, as quietly as she could. The man didn’t seem to hear her, too intent on forcing the younger girl into submission. Emily walked up behind him and held her dagger to his throat, barely resisting the urge to butcher him like a hog as he froze
. She could do it...but there would be too many questions, too much attention from the local authorities. And if someone had already hired the would-be rapist, he’d have questions too.

  “Let go of her,” Emily ordered, sharply. “Now!”

  The man seemed to hesitate, just for a second. Emily braced herself, ready to slash his throat if necessary. Sergeant Miles and Lady Barb had warned her, more than once, that some men would sooner die than allow themselves to be dictated to, particularly by a woman. And mercenaries were not known for allowing anyone to push them around. They had a habit of pulling up stakes and leaving if regular payments weren’t forthcoming.

  He stepped backwards, dropping his hands to his side. The girl shot Emily a grateful look, then slipped away from the wall and hurried down the corridor. Emily hoped she’d have the sense to stay out of sight for the rest of the evening. The mercenary would be keeping an eye open for her, hoping for a chance to try to rape her again. God knew the girl’s parents wouldn’t be much help. They’d be in worse trouble if they tried to stop him.

  She gritted her teeth. What now? She had a knife to his throat, but...if she tried to take it away, he’d have a clear shot at her. And if she used magic...she kicked herself, silently, for not having thought to bring a wand of her own. It would have explained any traces of magic without revealing her power, let alone her true identity. Perhaps if she stunned him, then hastily made a fake wand...the locals probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Or if she...

  The mercenary moved, suddenly. One hand caught Emily’s arm and shoved it–and the knife–away from his throat, even as he slammed his other elbow into Emily’s chest. She stumbled back, gasping for breath; her fingers opened, involuntarily, dropping the knife to the floor. She barely heard it as he slammed her into the wall, one hand pressing against her throat. He was going to suffocate her! She reached for her magic desperately, cursing her own mistake, then had a better idea. The virgin blade slipped out of her sleeve and into her palm; she pressed it against his groin, as hard as she could without actually cutting his leathers. He froze, clearly terrified. Emily knew how men like him thought. Losing his manhood was almost worse than losing his life.