Child of Destiny
	
(Schooled in Magic XXIV)
	
Christopher G. Nuttall

	

	

	

Child of Destiny
This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 Christopher G. Nuttall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
First Edition, September 2021
Cover art by Brad Fraunfelter

Contents
Author’s Dedication
Prologue I
Prologue II
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six

Author’s Dedication

I’d like to take this moment, as the series comes to the end of the originally planned arc, to thank those who assisted with the project. Lida Quillen, who took a chance on publishing the first volume; Barb Caffrey and Christine Amsden, who did the editing that made the books work (both good authors in their own right); Brad Fraunfelter, who produced the wonderful cover art, and last, but not least, my beta readers:

Paul Howard
Shawna McClanahan
Garry A. Ritchey
Alicia E. Manolas & "TIBERIUS"
Rachel K. Bicknell
John Blackford
Michael White
Jason Nader
Emma Carter
Bill Hunteman
David W - DarkLight
Michael Proctor
Darrell LeRoy Gehlsen
Daniel Hutnicki
Rudi Pittman
Billy McCorkle
Clarke Ferber
Randall Berger
Jack Hudler
Kostja Spiegel
Ben Bailey
“Lubaf”
Juan Suros
Dave Rhodes
Kris S.

(And the remainder, who didn’t want to be listed.)

Thank You.

Prologue I

Frieda felt... unsettled.
She could not, try as she might, put her finger on why she felt unsettled. Nothing had changed. She was a student in Whitehall, finishing up her final year before serving an apprenticeship to gain her mastery or joining Emily or one of her older friends in the formerly Blighted Lands to build a life of her own. She woke up in the morning, she ate breakfast, she went to classes, she ate dinner and went straight to bed. It was the typical life of a student preparing frantically for her final exams, the life she’d wanted before and was finally within her grasp. She wanted - desperately - to prove to Emily and Hoban and everyone else that she was worthy of the attention they’d lavished upon her. She wanted to make them proud.
And yet, she felt uneasy.
The world itself was... strange. She felt as if she were staring at the school around her through a plane of tinted glass, as if her vision were both blurred and warped. Things moved at the corner of her eye, only there when she wasn’t looking at them. They were gone when she turned her head. She soon forgot they were there at all, except... every time she saw them the memories returned. Strange things shifted, little hints that something wasn’t quite right. She served as detention monitor, yet no one had detention; the students looked forward to the weekend, but no one went to Dragon’s Den; she missed her friends and her lover dreadfully, yet she couldn’t muster the energy to so much as touch the chat parchments to write them a quick note. She wanted to see Emily again, if only to compare notes on the sheer strangeness around her, but the urge to send her a message was gone almost as soon as she registered it... as if, in truth, it had never been there at all.
She made her slow way through the school, feeling sure something was wrong and yet unable to articulate it in a manner that made sense, even to her. Her arms and legs and mouth seemed to move of their own accord. She sat in classes and gave answers by rote - a flicker of remembered pain shot through her mind, to vanish before she quite registered it had been there - and stared at textbooks without ever quite reading them. She walked past the snobbish little brat who’d tried to hex her two years ago, without feeling as though she ought to watch her back. The brat - Frieda had never bothered to learn the younger girl’s name - had a habit of trying to hex older students, yet... she did nothing. She didn’t even make a rude gesture as Frieda turned the corner. 
Something was definitely wrong.
The thought nagged at her, battling a tidal wave of lassitude that threatened to suck her down and keep her down. She was tired. Permanently tired. It shouldn’t have been surprising - she was a student in her final year, as her thoughts reminded her again and again - yet it did. It wasn’t that far into the year. She’d laid the groundwork well, taking advice from Emily and Jade and some of her other friends. She’d planned to steadily ramp up her studies - and practical coursework - over the year, to be at the top of her game when she took the final exams. Emily had left before taking them - Frieda missed her, more than she could say - but Jade and Cat had set a very high bar. Frieda wasn’t fond of Cat. She would like to beat his final score...
Her thoughts twisted, oddly, as she walked back to her bedroom. There were people in the corridor, ghostly people... she blinked and they were gone, as if they’d never been. A flicker of panic shot through her - if she was losing her mind, she’d be lucky if she wasn’t expelled or possibly even executed before she became a danger to everyone else - before it, too, was gone, buried under the lassitude. She slipped into her room and threw herself on the bed, grateful that Whitehall gave its final year students their own rooms. She’d never been comfortable sharing a room, not since Mountaintop. She’d had to order her boyfriend, Hoban, to sleep somewhere else, just so she could sleep. There’d been no choice. And yet...
She tensed, suddenly. How long had it been?
The flicker of alarm died almost as soon as it flowered, but this time she tried to cling to it. How long had it been since she’d heard from anyone? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? She knew her friends were busy - Emily was a teacher at Laughter, Alassa was ruling a country with Jade and Imaiqah by her side, the Gorgon was doing an apprenticeship at Heart’s Eye and being groomed to take over as administrator when her mistress retired - but it was strange not to hear anything, even a brief note reassuring her they were fine and they’ll be in touch later. Emily wasn’t the best at keeping in touch - she had a nasty habit of putting people out of her mind as soon as she lost sight of them - yet she had always made time for Frieda. It was strange...
She yawned, suddenly. It had been a long day. She’d done... her heart stopped, just for a second. What had she done? She’d been... what? She’d gone to class and... and what? What spells had she done? What essays had she written? What questions had she answered? Her mind went blank. Nothing had happened. She hadn’t been praised for her successes or scorned for her failures; she hadn’t been given extra credit for helping the tutors or punished for disrupting the class... no one had. The tiredness seemed to grow stronger, threatening to pull her down. The bed was calling. She wanted... she wanted to sleep and yet... for a moment, she felt torn between two different versions of herself. She was lying on the bed and standing in front of the bed and... her head spun. It made no sense. It made no sense. It made...
The world twisted. She was standing - no, kneeling - beside the bed, with no clear memory of how she’d gotten there. One moment, she’d been on the bed; the next, she was kneeling beside it. A strange thrill ran through her, as if she were doing something naughty... she wasn’t sure what. She was alone. She could do whatever she liked, in the privacy of her own room. And yet... she felt as if she’d gotten away with something. Her thoughts churned as the lassitude returned, the tiredness trying to drive her back to bed. It was powerful and implacable and... it wasn’t her.
The awareness flashed through her, driving the cobwebs from her mind. She’d been entranced. They’d all been. It wasn’t the first time she’d been compelled to do something - it was a common prank - but this time was... dangerous. Her thoughts spun in mad circles as she leaned forward. She could still feel the spell pressing down on her. It should have been impossible. Awareness of the spell should have been enough to free her. And yet, it was starting to push her thoughts back into submission, into a complete lack of awareness. Frieda couldn’t understand the point of the spell - she could imagine a hundred more interesting uses, rather than just compelling students to behave - but it didn’t matter. The spell was so powerful it was simply grinding her down. There was no way she could get out of the school before she fell back into the trance.
She bit her lip hard, the pain clearing her thoughts for a few precious seconds. The drawer beneath her bed was unlocked, without even a single charm to protect her most treasured possessions. Her tutors would reprimand her for carelessness, if they knew what she’d done, but it worked in her favor. The chat parchments were wrapped in her underwear, buried under a handful of blue books and other possessions. She ripped one free and pressed her fingers against it, allowing her magic to ignite the spell...
...And touched, to her dull surprise, a questing mind.

Prologue II

Maddy had, in her own quiet estimation, a good life.
It hadn’t been easy, not at first. Her family had produced too many daughters and not enough sons... something that would have been disastrous, if they’d lived in the countryside rather than Zugzwang. Instead, she’d learnt at her mother’s knee, planning to go into service as soon as she was old enough in hopes of saving a nest egg she could use to attract a husband. Men asked fewer questions, she’d been told, if the woman had enough money to make her a very good catch indeed. It didn’t hurt if the woman knew how to cook, too.
She’d been nervous, when she’d been offered a position in Sorcerer Void’s tower. He was the most famous resident of the district - and its quiet protector, a man with a reputation that kept kings and bandits and taxmen well away from the town - but very little was actually known about him. Even the most daring of young men wouldn’t willingly set foot in his valley. The handful who had lost bets and found themselves forced to try to find the valley as part of their forfeit had found themselves completely lost the moment they stepped beyond the town’s formal boundary. The tower was impossible to find unless one was invited. Maddy had been afraid, when she’d walked down the charmed path for the first time, that she’d never be seen again. There was no shortage of rumors about what happened to young women who entered service with a magician.
But Void wasn’t a bad master, Maddy had decided long ago. He didn’t molest his maids, nor did he abuse them... she knew masters and mistresses who’d done that and worse to helpless young women in their employ. Her duties were relatively light, even when her master was in residence; she had time to study, to broaden her mind, to make herself more attractive to a merchant or traveling trader who might want a wife who was more than just a pretty face. The only downside was that he didn’t seem to trust his maids. The geas he’d put on them, the moment they entered his service, kept them from breathing so much as a single word about their master to anyone. It was unpleasant, but it could be a great deal worse. And his protections made it all worthwhile. The last young man who’d tried to put his hand up her skirt without her permission, last year, had found himself a toad seconds later. It had taught him a lesson he’d never forgotten.
She smiled as she walked the path, down to the town. The master was not in residence, nor was his apprentice and her personal maid. Maddy had never been quite sure what to make of her. Silent had done her duties with calm efficiency, but she’d never spent any time with her fellow maids... as if she thought she was better than them. No, as if she was just marking time. Maddy puzzled over it for a long moment, then shrugged and dismissed the thought. If Void wanted to tolerate Silent’s odd behavior, it wasn’t Maddy’s problem. All that mattered, right now, was that the master wasn’t home and the maids could slack off, just a little. They could take turns to visit the town and the master wouldn’t be any the wiser.
Zugzwang rose around her as she walked on, a strange combination of thatched cottages and stone blocks, the latter a testament to the town’s reputation for safety. She smiled and brushed back her hair as she spotted two of the local lads leaning against the pub’s door, clearly waiting for the owner to open the door and invite them inside. It was a little early in the day for drinking, but it wasn’t her problem. They smiled back at her, shyly, as she walked on. They were handsome enough, she supposed, but their clothes marked them as laborers. She wanted to travel. Marrying a laborer or a farmer would guarantee she’d spend the rest of her life in Zugzwang, without so much as seeing what lay on the other side of the hill. She’d plucked up her courage and asked her master, once, to take her with him when he traveled. He’d been kind, but he’d said no. Maddy winced, inwardly. Perhaps it would have been wiser to ask his daughter. Lady Emily was strange, even by sorceress standards, but she was a young woman. She would have understood.
A man stepped out of the alleyway, blocking her path. Maddy tensed, then relaxed. She had Void’s protections. No one would be fool enough to try to lay so much as a finger on her, not without her permission. The clothes she wore - a cut above the outfits worn by the more regular domestics - should have been a tip-off that her master was someone important, someone who might see an attack on his servant as an attack on him. She was safe.
“My Lady,” the man said. He spoke with an unfamiliar accent. Maddy vaguely recalled a pair of traveling merchants from Alluvia who’d spoken with similar accents, but she’d been barely six years old at the time and her memories were unreliable. “Can I have a moment of your time?”
Maddy dropped a grand curtsy, rather than the more servile one she’d been taught. “Of course, My Lord.”
If he was affronted by her mockery - if he even recognized it for what it was - he showed no sign. “Your master has been accused of starting the war,” he said. “Do you think that is actually true?”
Maddy blinked. War? What war? She’d heard rumors of unrest right across the Allied Lands, from commoners turning on aristocrats to mundanes turning on magicians, but she hadn’t believed a word of them. It just didn’t happen. The sun might as well revolve around the world. And besides... she remembered hearing a couple of local merchants whining about refugees passing through, but she hadn’t taken them seriously. She certainly hadn’t seen any herself.
“His daughter and former apprentice has turned on him,” the man continued. “She’s told everyone the war is his fault.”
Maddy felt her tongue lock, just for a second. The geas still held her in its power. She could no more talk about her master and his apprentice, without his permission, than she could leap tall buildings in a single bound. The one time she’d tested the geas had been bad enough she’d sworn never to do it again, ever. And...
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I don’t have the time right now.”
She strode past the man, silently daring him to put out a hand to stop her. He did nothing. She felt his eyes watching her as she continued down the street and turned the corner... she shook her head as it dawned on her just how odd the encounter had been. The man hadn’t been interested in her personally... a rogue magician, perhaps? She was all too aware that magicians spent half their time spying on other magicians. And with Lady Emily resident within the tower, interest had doubled. She’d heard from the other maids that the master had spent weeks tightening the defenses before leaving on his latest mission. 
Putting the thought out of her mind, she walked into the greengrocers. The old woman who ran the shop was normally up for a chat, alternatively gossiping about the town’s affairs and prattling about young men of good character who just happened to be in the market for a wife. Maddy didn’t mind, although she wasn’t interested. The old woman meant well...
...And yet, she fell silent the moment Maddy walked into the shop.
Ice prickled down her spine as she made her selection, paid and walked out again. The old woman was normally talkative, to the point it was impossible to shut her up. And yet, she was quiet now... when Maddy had arrived? Had she been talking about Maddy? Or her master? Or... or what?
The sense that something was wrong only grew stronger as she made her way through the town, doing her shopping in an orderly manner. Shopkeepers looked worried, the moment she walked into their establishments; young men who would ordinarily have tried to flirt hurried away, as if the hounds of the seven hells were after them; young women who usually wanted to talk about going into service themselves looked away. Maddy felt uneasy, as if the ground itself were shifting under her feet. The last person to be shunned by the entire town had committed adultery with a traveling vagabond... unwisely doing the deed in her own home, where her husband had caught her. Maddy knew she hadn’t done anything like that. It would be a brave man who dared suggest she’d lost her virginity to her master. And she hadn’t! And yet...
She paused outside the bookshop, admiring the handful of new books in the window and trying to decide if she should buy one. The world still seemed to be tilting on its axis. The bookseller would normally be trying to entice her in, showing off books that came from the other side of the Allied Lands... she could see him through the window, lurking on the far side of the counter and pretending she wasn’t there. She was tempted to throw caution to the winds and stride into the shop, practically daring him not to serve her, but she refrained. She wouldn’t have her master’s protection forever. If she abused it, her past would come back to haunt her when she left his service.
Instead, she picked up the broadsheets by the door and skimmed them. The bookseller didn’t come out to complain, to insist she paid for them... proof, if she’d needed it, that something was deeply wrong. The headlines were as hyperbolic as ever - she’d once read a claim that the duchess of somewhere or other had given birth to twin goblins, or that the king of some kingdom had had nine piglets by the royal sow - but there was something oddly real about them. The Allied Lands were collapsing. Kings were being overthrown, aristocrats were being slaughtered by their serfs, village headmen were being chased out by their former subjects... the details kept changing, yet they all had one thing in common. Void - her master - was the one pulling the strings. And Emily, his apprentice—and his daughter—was standing against him.
Maddy stared down at the papers for a long moment, then took some coins from her purse and threw them at the bookseller before turning and hurrying back to the path. She had to warn the others, although she had no idea what they could do. They were just maids, after all. They were powerless, unable to do anything without permission. They - and Zugzwang itself - would be nothing more than a prize for the victor. And...
Her heart twisted. She wasn’t the only powerless person in the world. Everyone in Zugzwang knew they existed at Void’s mercy, that he could rain fire and death on the town, that he could drive them away on a whim. And beyond Zugzwang... there were countless men and women - commoners, serfs, slaves - caught in the middle, doomed to suffer in the fighting and then become prizes themselves. 
Being one of Void’s servants had been a good life, but now it was over. The entire world had been turned upside down. 
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Nothing.

Chapter One

“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Emily raised her head. The chat parchment in front of her was dull and cold, practically lacking magic. She’d worked hard to blend her magic with Alassa’s in a bid to contact Frieda, somewhere inside Whitehall, but nothing happened. She cursed, not for the first time, the loss of her own chat parchments. The delicate magics within the parchment she’d tried to modify might not have survived her meddling. She might as well have lit a match and set it on fire.
Her head swam. It had been hours since she’d spoken to Void in the Dreamtime and she still felt exhausted, utterly disconnected from the world. She’d slept afterwards - she’d thought she’d slept; Jan had sworn blind she’d slept - and yet she felt as if she’d been awake for days. Her magic felt odd, as if her power was at its peak and completely drained at the same time. She wondered, grimly, if Void had bent his word. He’d told her she was safe, within the Dreamtime, but he’d forgotten more magic than she’d ever known. He could have found a way to strike at her, to weaken her, without ever quite breaking his word.
He certainly found a novel way to keep his oath to the Allied Lands, she reflected, sourly. He thinks he’s protecting them, protecting everyone, and therefore keeping his oath by taking over.
Alassa cleared her throat, then repeated the question. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Emily flushed. They’d gone through everything, when they’d sat down and planned their next move. “Do I have a choice?”
“Yes.” Alassa rested her hands on her hips. “You can stay here and send someone else in your place.”
“There’s no one else, unless you want to send Nanette alone,” Emily pointed out. “The two of us are the only ones who might be able to break into the tower.”
Alassa’s lips looked pinched, suggesting she was displeased. Emily understood. Her friend - the Queen of Zangaria - had spent the last week trying to rally resistance to Void, a difficult task considering the White Council was gone, the Allied Lands in ruins, the portal network destroyed and half the remaining magicians unsure of what was really going on. Void’s plan might have gone off the rails - slightly - but he was already recovering. It was just a matter of time before he pushed forward and finished the job. Alassa had used Emily’s name as a rallying cry, used her reputation to convince outsiders to back her. Losing Emily now would damage the cause beyond repair.
Emily sighed, inwardly. She understood Alassa’s concerns. Void’s Tower made the Tower of Alexis look utterly undefended... and breaking into the Tower of Alexis had been extremely difficult. It had come very close to getting Emily killed. And that had been with Jade and Cat, two men she trusted completely, by her side. Nanette, on the other hand, had been a thorn in her flesh from the day they’d first met. They might be allies now, but no one trusted her. Emily found it hard to turn her back on the other girl, even after their minds had touched a few days ago. Nanette wasn’t an ally, not really. They just had a shared goal.
She ran her hand through her hair. There simply wasn’t anyone else. Jade was Alassa’s strong right hand, as well as Alassa’s husband. The Queen needed him. Jan was a skilled charmsmith - and Emily’s lover - but Emily wasn’t blind to his flaws, his lack of enthusiasm for actual fighting. Caleb wasn’t much better. Cat would have been ideal, but he was on the wrong side of the Craggy Mountains. And Sergeant Miles...
Alassa was saying something. Emily dragged her attention back to listen.
“...We don’t even know the spells are safe,” Alassa said. “Can you trust them?”
“I think so,” Emily said. “They’ve been checked extensively.”
Alassa’s perfect lips twisted into a scowl. “And if you’re wrong?”
Emily winced, inwardly. Alassa wasn’t usually so... timorous, but - normally - the entire world wasn’t resting on her shoulders. Zangaria had weathered the storm far better than its neighbors, in no small part due to the changes Emily had wrought, yet large swathes of the kingdom were still in chaos, with enemy troops loose on the wrong side of the border. Void would turn his attention to the kingdom soon enough, they were sure; his enhanced troops and sorcerers would bolster the forces of the neighboring kings as they invaded from three directions at once. Alassa’s army was experienced, loyal and modern, but it wouldn’t be enough. The moment Void had finished securing the nexus points, he’d deal with Zangaria.
And yet, she knew Alassa had a point. Teleporting was dangerous, these days. Void had used the nexus points to cast a spell over the land, overriding the preset destination and casting anyone who tried to teleport to land in Whitehall’s oubliette. Emily had been there, years ago. She knew it was impossible to escape, even for a skilled and powerful magician. Void would have all the time in the world to inspect his prisoners, to determine if they were any use to him, then dispose of them if they weren’t. The only way to teleport safely - from what they’d been able to determine - was to use a teleport gem. And yet, even they weren’t completely trustworthy. Emily had devised the concept, before the world had gone mad, but it had been Void who’d made it workable. He knew the spells better than she did.
“The only other option is staying here and waiting for him to come get us,” she said, more tartly than she’d intended. “We’re not ready to start the march to Whitehall yet.”
She rubbed her eyes, then stood, folded the chat parchment and passed it back to Alassa. It hadn’t worked and she wasn’t sure why. Frieda might be entranced, so deeply enspelled she wasn’t aware of time passing, or she might simply be held in stasis... or Void, knowing Frieda was the closest thing Emily had to a younger sister, had simply put her somewhere she could do no harm. Or, perhaps, she’d accidentally ruined the parchment when she’d tried to modify the spells. Writing messages hadn’t produced a response. In truth, she feared the worst. Void had the nexus point and control of the school’s wards. He could keep everyone in the building entranced so deeply they forgot their own names.
“You are in no state to go,” Alassa said, as she slipped the parchment into her dress. “You should rest first, before trying anything.”
“The longer we wait, the greater the chance he’ll do something to keep us out,” Emily said, although she knew Alassa was right. “The tower is heavily defended. If he erases us from the wards, we won’t be able to get to the walls, let alone inside.”
Alassa nodded, her lips thinning in disapproval, and led the way into the corridor. Emily followed, wincing at the devastation. The twin bouts of fighting had done immense damage, from tearing down tapestries and shattering suits of ancient armor to smashing doors and scorching the stone walls with traces of powerful magics. She wondered, as she eyed her friend’s back, if part of Alassa’s bad mood stemmed from the fact she no longer felt safe in her own castle. Void’s troops had nearly captured her and her family only a few, short weeks ago. The fighting to recover the castle before it was too late had been horrific. And Alassa’s loyalists had paid the price.
She spotted a serving girl hastily pressing herself into the wall as the queen and the kingdom’s foremost noblewoman walked past. Emily felt a twinge of sympathy for the young woman, barely entering her teens. She’d been caught in the middle when the invaders had stormed the castle, held prisoner until Alassa and Jade had rallied their forces and struck back... and now, like the rest of the surviving staff, unable to leave the castle without permission. Void had proved himself a master of mind control - and infiltration. The young girl might be an unwitting spy, programmed to report to her master without ever being aware of her actions. No truth spell could reveal the truth if she didn’t know it herself. Emily had considered using soul magic, in hopes of identifying the unwilling spies, but the risks were just too high. Void could easily have planted a booby trap in their minds to take out anyone foolish enough to try.
Jade met them as they descended the stairs. “Emily,” he said. His tone was flat, his words blunt. And he had a black eye. “The sergeant is growing worse.”
Emily winced. “There’s no improvement?”
“No.” Jade shook his head, curtly. “One moment, he’s perfectly normal; the next” - he touched the blackened eye - “he’s lashing out at everyone, apparently convinced he’s on the verge of being sacrificed by a necromancer. His chambers are surrounded by the most powerful wards we can devise and yet... his magic is still threatening to burn out of control. If he loses it completely...”
“I know.” Emily had been cautioned, more than once, that a sorcerer who went mad might start tapping into levels of power beyond any sane sorcerer. She’d read a handful of books - all banned, with good reason - that suggested madness made it impossible for the sorcerers to know their limits, allowing them to push well past them. “We can keep him asleep, can’t we?”
Jade shot her a pitying look. “Not for long,” he cautioned. “His magic is resisting the potions and there are limits to how much Durian we can feed him. Even non-magical sleeping draughts are only having a limited effect. You might need to consider a final solution.”
Emily grimaced. Sergeant Miles was the last of the major adults in her life. Sergeant Harkin, Grandmaster Hasdrubal, Lady Barb... even King Randor and Void himself... had all left her, all dead save for Void. She didn’t want to kill him, or send him to his death, and yet she knew the sergeant would sooner die than go mad, his madness contaminating the entire world. Alassa would have killed Sergeant Miles herself, or ordered him killed, if he hadn’t been... him. Keeping him in the castle was just too dangerous. And yet...
I could take him with me, she thought. But where?
Her mind churned. There had to be something she could do. But what? The Nameless World had no concept of curing the insane, of helping the mad back to sanity. The mere idea was regarded with naked horror, simply because a maddened sorcerer’s madness was the only thing that made it possible to defeat him. Void wasn’t mad, just... convinced he was doing the right thing. A necromancer, or a madman, was dangerously unpredictable. They tended to lose track of what they were doing...
“We’ll deal with him after we get back,” she said. “Please keep an eye on him.”
“I will,” Jade said. “But you do understand we can’t keep him under control much longer?”
Emily said nothing as they walked into the next chamber. The teleport gems were laid out on the workbench, waiting for Jan to finish slipping them into the spell lattice. Nanette stood against the wall, flanked by Sienna and a nervous-looking guardsman, who’d probably been assigned to escort her as a tripwire. He wore a suit of charmed armor, covered in runes that would absorb or deflect spells hurled at him, but a sorceress as powerful and capable as Nanette would have no trouble finding a way through those. If nothing else, she could simply levitate a rock and hurl it at him with all the force of a cannonball, cracking his armor like an eggshell. Emily hoped Alassa would find a way to reward the guard. He hadn’t volunteered to follow a sorceress who could kill him on a whim.
“Emily,” Nanette said. Her accent had changed from a slightly haughty magical accent to something that was a closer match to Emily’s. “Are you ready to go?”
Emily studied her thoughtfully. Nanette looked... ordinary, neither an aristocrat nor a serving maid. She had long brown hair and a bland face, the kind of appearance that would go unnoticed unless she chose to step into the light; she wore a simple shirt and leggings that could have belonged to anyone from a merchant’s daughter to a peasant woman working the fields. Her clothes were carefully tailored, neither designed to show off her curves nor hide them. Emily guessed it would take a matter of moments for Nanette to change her appearance to the point that no one, even someone who knew what she looked like, would recognize her. She could even, by hiding her hair and tightening her clothes in all the right places, pass for a young man. And there was no magic involved in the transformation, not at all. She was just plain good at disguising herself. 
Which gives her an edge, Emily thought, crossly. She knew how to use magic to pass as something she wasn’t or simply keep people from looking at her too closely, but she knew she couldn’t fool another magician. It was a breach of etiquette to peer through someone’s glamour, yet the mere presence of a glamour was proof the user wanted to conceal something. Nanette could walk right through a set of outer wards and no one would realize she had something to hide.
“Just about,” she said. They’d planned the operation as best as they could, but too much of their planning was based on guesswork. There were sections of the tower that neither of them had been allowed to see. They didn’t even know if the maids were still there. Void could easily have sent them home with generous payments and sealed the tower... if he’d had the time. “And yourself?”
“Ready.” Nanette grinned, as if she expected the operation to be easy. Emily suspected it was just another facade. She’d hate to face Nanette across a poker table. “And then we go on to Whitehall.”
“If you want to take a shot at him alone, you can go.” Alassa’s voice was cold and hard. “If you want to actually have a chance to succeed, you should wait for the rest of us.”
Nanette dropped a perfect curtsey. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Emily groaned, inwardly. Alassa and Nanette stood in odd contrast to one another. Alassa was the center of attention, her beauty and carefully tailored dress marking her as someone to watch; Nanette was a living shadow who could present the impression of being whatever she liked, someone who practically went unnoticed unless she made her presence obvious. And yet, they had a great deal in common. They were both powerful magicians, they’d both been taught to keep their full powers carefully hidden from the outside world...

And they hate each other, Emily thought. Alassa had nearly been killed through Nanette’s manipulations; Imaiqah had lost a father who’d been a good and decent man. Emily wasn’t sure how Nanette felt about Alassa, but she’d be surprised if Nanette - a common-born magician - didn’t feel a twinge of contempt for the girl who’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. As long as they work together long enough to win the war...
“We’ll go as soon as the spell is ready,” Emily said. “Jan?”
“I’ve calculated the correct configuration to slip through the spellweb,” Jan said, as he slipped the final crystals into place. “You shouldn’t have any trouble getting there, but you’ll materialize very close to Zugzwang rather than the tower. I don’t want to risk trying to drop you any closer. The tower has its own defenses, as you know, and the raw magic further up the mountain will make your life interesting if you brush against it without proper preparations.”
“Interesting,” Nanette repeated. There was a hint of amusement in her voice. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
Jan held up a pair of gemstones. “I’ve spelled these to drop you back here, just outside the walls,” he said. “Don’t try them inside the castle unless you’re desperate. I tried to duplicate the spells he used, to allow you to teleport out of Whitehall, but I can’t swear they’ll work.”
“Whitehall didn’t want me dead,” Emily said, wryly. “The tower might have other ideas.”
“He was the only one who could allow teleporting in or out of the tower,” Nanette agreed. She glanced at Jade, her eyes going wide in a show of girlish enthusiasm. “Do we have any up-to-date intelligence on the situation in Zugzwang?”
Emily sensed Alassa tensing beside her. Jade, to his credit, didn’t seem impressed.
“The last reports from the region suggested there was little trouble, beyond a handful of brief clashes between low-level aristocrats and commoners,” Jade said. “That was two weeks ago. I sent a pair of agents with chat parchments to report back, once we knew what was actually going on, but they haven’t arrived yet.”
“No,” Emily agreed. A month ago, she could have teleported across the entire world in less than a second. Now, teleporting was dangerous and traveling from one side of Zangaria to the other would take weeks, even if they didn’t run into bandits, rebels and invading armies, all bent on looting, raping and burning their way across the country. Law and order had broken down everywhere. “We’ll be there ahead of them.”
She looked at the glowing crystal, then hefted her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. There was no point in delaying a moment longer. Time was definitely not on her side. She held out a hand, steadying herself as Nanette took it. Emily didn’t trust the other woman much - not very much at all - but she understood Nanette’s desire for revenge. Void had killed Nanette’s first true father-figure, then used the death to manipulate her. She had a score to settle with him.
Emily smiled as the others stepped back, then reached out and touched the crystal. The world went white...
...And then plunged into madness. 

Chapter Two

Emily felt, just for a moment, as if she were trapped on a boat caught in a deadly storm. She was thrown from side to side, body crashing against the walls and smashing to the deck, the pain coming and going so quickly she barely registered it before the feeling was gone so completely it might never have been there at all. And then...
Darkness fell.
Emily thought, for a horrified moment, that she might be dead. It was possible. The simplest of wards could stop a teleport spell in its tracks, scattering the atoms of the caster so completely that nothing short of God Himself could put them back together again. Void could have shut down all teleports within range of the nexus points or used them to kill anyone foolish enough to try, if he hadn’t wanted to take her alive. Her feet hit the ground a moment later, her eyes widening as she spotted stars overhead. There was a faint glow to the south. The town, she noted, didn’t seem to feel any urge to hide.
There’s a powerful sorcerer in residence nearby and several minor sorcerers within the town itself, she reminded herself. Void didn’t exactly rule the surrounding countryside and the population weren’t precisely his subjects, but their relationship wasn’t that much different than a lord and his peasants. He protected them from outside threats and, in exchange, they left him and his tower strictly alone. They must think he’s still there.
She muttered a slight - very slight - night-vision spell and looked around. The teleport spell had dumped them in a valley between the town and the tower itself, by a stream that flickered with wild magic from further into the mountains. Nanette stood a little apart from her, her body very still as her eyes searched for possible threats. Emily understood why. The human eye was lazy. If they stayed still, in the darkness, it was unlikely they would be spotted by watching eyes... it was rare for anyone to come so close to the tower without being invited, not when sorcerers guarded their privacy jealously, but it was well to be careful. The northern valleys teemed with wildlife. She could easily imagine a bunch of poachers taking advantage of the chaos to catch and kill as much as possible. The town might not be aware of it, yet, but the coming winter would be hard.
The darkness rustled, slightly, as wildlife fled. Emily tensed, then relaxed as the noise faded. They were alone. Her eyes swept the darkness, peering into the nooks and crannies along the valley’s edge to make sure of it. If someone spotted them... they’d have to stop him, quickly, before he raised the alarm. It was going to be hard enough to get into the tower even if the wards hadn’t completely locked the building down.
Nanette held up a hand. Emily glanced at her, then nodded. They were probably far enough from the tower to speak normally, but sound could travel quite a distance in the dead of night. Her stomach churned as they started to walk through the valley, wild magic sparking at the corner of her eye as they made their way up the path. Void could have dismissed the maids - apparently, the other girls were genuine maids, rather than spies or trainee magicians - and locked down the tower, or simply left them in place to pretend all was normal. She frowned at Nanette’s back as they picked up speed. The older girl had suggested launching an armed assault on the town, in hopes of drawing Void out of Whitehall. Emily had overruled her. She doubted Void cared enough to intervene. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a hundred other problems to concern him. The town was a very minor matter compared to that.
Her leathers itched, oddly, as they clambered over rocky formations, descended into valleys and started the climb again. The landscape seemed... different, even though she’d spent some of her free time exploring the mountains and valleys around the tower. Void had encouraged her to explore, for reasons she didn’t understand. Perhaps he’d just wanted a break from her... the thought cost her a pang, despite everything. It couldn’t be true. He could have retired into his section of the tower, into his private chambers, if he’d wanted to be alone. She wouldn’t have objected. There’d been plenty of times in her life when she’d wanted to be alone, too.
Nanette slowed as they reached the final valley and made their way towards the gash in the rocky walls. Emily took a breath, sweat beading on her back. Void had told her that, hundreds of years ago, two powerful magicians had fought each other here, unleashing power so dangerous that they’d torn up the landscape beyond repair. There were patches of soil around the valley where the grass would never grow again; the remainder might have been overgrown, in the years since the battle, but still bore the scars of the long-ago conflict. She braced herself as they stepped through the needle, wild magic slowly giving way to the outer edge of Void’s wards. They pulsed with subtle power, pressing against her mind. Her wards were strong, and she knew what to expect, and yet it was hard not to remember she’d forgotten something, something so important she had to turn and walk away. She felt the wards plucking at her mind, trying to distract her... she gritted her teeth as the valley came into view. The locals claimed the tower changed places as easily as they changed their clothes. Emily suspected the truth was a little more prosaic. Anyone who stumbled into the wards, without taking careful precautions, would leave with a gap sliced out of their memory. Void had told her, once, that there was no point in showing off when something subtle would do the job just as well. The best crimes were the ones that went completely unnoticed. 
And perhaps I should have wondered about that a little more, she thought, tartly. Even now, she still found it hard to believe her teacher was waging war on the entire world. How many crimes has he committed, over the years, in pursuit of his crazy plan?
She took a breath as the valley lay open before them, the wards fading into the background. They weren’t designed to sound the alarm - Void didn’t want to be disturbed by poachers and climbers who brushed against the wards and found themselves redirected, moments later - but they were a clear statement of intent. Anyone capable of noticing their presence - let alone resisting them - would know they were about to walk into a sorcerer’s territory, and that there would be stronger and nastier defenses waiting for them. The rules were clear. A sorcerer could do anything he wanted to an intruder - and anyone stupid enough to break into a sorcerer’s house deserved everything he got.
Void trained me to break into houses, she reminded herself. Why?
The tower was almost invisible within the gloom. It looked... tiny. She couldn’t help thinking of an oversized rook, barely large enough to house a dozen men. And yet, as she stared at it, the size seemed to randomly shift. The tower was bigger than Whitehall and yet so small it was little bigger than she was. The tower was bigger on the inside, she recalled; perhaps she was seeing the interior dimensions pressing against the local magic field. She told herself to be grateful the original builders hadn’t put the tower on top of a nexus point. They could have made the interior as big as a TARDIS, perhaps bigger, if they’d had an infinite source of power. She wondered, not for the first time, where the power actually came from. Void was powerful, and she assumed his predecessors had been equally so, but not that powerful. It should have been impossible.
Nanette inched closer to her. “Are you ready?”
Emily nodded. Time was running out. Void might not be there - she was fairly sure he wouldn’t take the risk of leaving Whitehall, not until he captured her - but he did have servants. Allies. Maddy and her peers might not be magicians - she thought that was true - but they could trigger the wards and lock down the tower if they felt threatened. Or - worse - he might have a few magicians oathsworn to him. It wasn’t impossible. Emily had to admit his cause wasn’t unjust, merely misguided. Others might have the same thought.
Her heart thudded in her chest as they made their way down into the valley and inched through the forest. The local wildlife scampered away... she hoped, prayed, that Void hadn’t turned owls and foxes and other nocturnal creatures into a subtle early-warning system. She’d seen the world through her familiar’s eyes often enough to know that animals often picked up on things humans missed, to the point there were no concealment spells that would hide someone from animal senses. Magic rippled overhead as she glanced up, the tower’s wards sweeping the air for incoming threats. She’d considered, briefly, trying to fly to the tower. But it would have been suicide.
The tower was suddenly there, right in front of them. Emily stared across a grassy plain that grew wider and wider with every passing second. It was hard to pick out the patterns in the soil, the elaborate runes that directed wild magic towards the tower and, at the same time, made it difficult to approach. She had to admire whoever had come up with the idea. It was blindingly simple, so obvious it should have been in common use, yet it required someone to think so much outside the box that she hadn’t seen the concept anywhere else. The first time she’d visited the tower, she’d found it hard to penetrate even though she’d been a welcome guest. Now, she had a feeling it would be a great deal harder to get to the wards.
Nanette held out a hand. “Ready?”
Emily took it, bracing herself. They didn’t dare be separated. They were already inside the danger zone. Void might have programmed the wards to hold any intruders prisoner until he returned or he might simply have ordered them to kill any uninvited guests. If this went wrong... she glanced at Nanette, admiring the calm expression on the older girl’s face, then stepped forward. Magic welled up around her, a storm of naked power rapidly growing stronger as she inched through the maze. Void had told her, once, that the trick to evading a powerful set of wards was to show them what they expected to see. Here... it wasn’t going to be easy.
I guess I’m not a welcome guest any longer, she thought, with a twinge of regret. The wards wouldn’t try to stop me if I was still keyed into the magic...
Power surged around her, pressing against her mind. She kept walking forward, dancing around the maze. The spells were incredibly complex, each easy option threatening to punt her out of the maze - or worse. Void had sneered at sorcerers who crammed their homes with elaborate traps - he’d told her a few stories about magicians who’d sleepwalked right into their own traps - and yet, she couldn’t help thinking he’d done the same. She knew his magic well, and she’d had plenty of time to study the tower’s defenses, but it was still hard to resist the urge to run. The maze was so elaborate it was hard to look more than a step or two ahead. She could make a mistake and never realize it until she passed through several more steps...
Nanette’s hand tightened, just for a second. Emily tried not to smile. Nanette was clearly stressed too, even though she looked calm. Oddly, it made Emily feel better. She pressed on, dancing through spinning whorls of magic that threatened to turn them around or trap them within the maze. The tower was bigger on the inside... the maze, she realized dully, was just the same. They were ants crawling over something so huge it was completely beyond their comprehension.
A wall rose in front of her. She crashed into it before she could stop herself. The world spun... for a horrified moment, she thought she’d knocked over the entire tower and it was about to crush her... and steadied. She clung to the wall, pulling Nanette close as the magic snapped and snarled behind them. They barely had any room to maneuver. They had to find the entrance before they slipped and fell back into the maze. It might not be fatal, but it would set off so many alarms and traps it might put an end to their adventures once and for all.
She inched around the tower, feeling as if she were halfway up a cliff face even though her feet were on solid ground. The wind whipped around her, rustling her shirt and blowing her hair into her face. Nanette grunted something - it sounded like a curse - as she followed, clearly having her own problems. Emily had no time to reassure her. She sent her magic through the stone, searching for the door. If the tower was locked down, they might not be able to find the way in. The only way to enter if the tower was sealed was to teleport and the only person who could do that was Void. She didn’t dare try to teleport into the tower herself. It would be a simple way to commit suicide.
The stone seemed to shift, just slightly, as her fingers found an indentation in the wall. She pressed her magic into the gap, twisting it into a key as she found herself touching a complex locking spell. It came to life the moment her magic brushed against it, a twisting mass of something that made her stomach churn just looking at it. She felt as if she were staring into a nest of worms, except they weren’t worms... she drew on all her experience to hold the magic in place, one hand pressed against the stone while the other scrabbled in her pocket for Void’s ring. It sparkled against her mind, a grim reminder of both happier times and a betrayal that had cut her to the bone. She pressed it against the stone, drawing on the magical signature embedded within the ring. Void had made her a member of his family, practically adopted her as his daughter... she hoped, desperately, the magical signature would work. It was the only way they had to get into the tower without triggering all the defenses.
She winced as the magic lunged forward, freezing her. It felt as if it hadn’t worked and yet... the magic wasn’t trying to actively kill her. Nanette pressed her fingers against Emily’s, her magic gliding over Emily’s power and pressing against the defenses. It felt weirdly intimate... Emily had to suppress the urge to pull back as their combined magic pressed the signature into the lock. The world twisted and they fell forward, landing on a stone floor. She breathed a sigh of relief as the magic faded. They were inside the tower.
“Interesting,” Nanette managed. She sounded as if she was on the verge of falling asleep. “I... what was that?”
Emily shook her head. They were on the stone floor, completely exposed, and yet she could barely muster the energy to sit up. Her head ached, as if she’d been slapped several times in quick succession. She rubbed her forehead, dully aware she still held Nanette’s hand. She supposed that was all the proof she needed that Nanette truly had turned her coat. It would have been easy for her to put a knife in Emily’s back - or worse - when they’d been in the maze. Nanette could even have made it look like an accident. A flash of magic in the wrong place, at the wrong time, would have been quite enough to raise the alarm.
“I don’t know.” Emily forced herself to sit up, letting go of Nanette’s hand as she drew the canteen from her belt and took a long swig. Her mouth tasted of dust. “The tower is far older than Void.”
She looked around, remembering the day she’d entered the tower as an apprentice. She’d washed and dressed herself, symbolically putting aside her past and donning her master’s colors... not, she reflected wryly, that Void had bothered with heraldry of his own. He hadn’t cared what she wore, as long as it was practical. Now... she looked down at herself, then stood. Time was fleeting. Who knew where the maids were?
Nanette touched the walls, lightly. “We seem to be inside,” she said. “Shall we go?”
“Yes, quietly,” Emily said. “Do the maids have access to the internal wards?”
“I don’t know.” Nanette shook her head. “I never spent much time with them. They might have seen through my disguise.”
Emily nodded, curtly. Lady Barb had told her, years ago, that aristocrats and powerful magicians were easy to fool. They paid so little attention to the people around them that a spy could get quite close without being noticed, particularly if they were fool enough to believe their own propaganda. Commoners, particularly ones on the edge, could be harder to deceive. Their very existence relied upon watching their superiors, just so they knew when to duck. They might notice something off about the disguised person, something that suggested they weren’t quite what they seemed.
And Void wouldn’t have hired idiots, she reminded herself. He didn’t want people who couldn’t think for themselves.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Three

The tower had once felt like home.
Emily felt strange as they made their way through the corridors and up flights of stairs that were normally reserved for the master and his apprentices. She’d enjoyed her time here, studying advanced magic with Void, a teacher who knew how to make the lessons interesting as well as informative. It had felt like home... no, it had been her home, a refuge from the outside world. She’d felt safe, safer than she’d ever felt anywhere, save perhaps for Whitehall. She was honest enough to admit the tower probably hadn’t been paradise for everyone - the maids might have been well treated, yet they were still servants - but it had been good for her. And yet, now...
She felt torn between the sense of returning to somewhere she’d outgrown and an awareness she was intruding into a magician’s home. It was oddly disconcerting, as if she were somewhere she should and shouldn’t be. She half-expected to see Void walk around the corner, his head in a book, or one of the maids hurrying to the dining room, carrying a tray of food. It wasn’t her place any longer and yet, somehow, it was. She frowned as they reached the top of the stairs and stopped outside her old bedroom, wondering if it was safe to enter. Void might already have removed all traces of her from his tower.
“Check the door,” Nanette muttered.
Emily nodded and - gingerly - rested her fingers against the doorknob. She hadn’t bothered to spell it, a reflection of just how safe she’d felt in the tower. It wasn’t like Whitehall or King Randor’s castle or any of the other places she’d slept in the last few years. No one was going to break into her room in the dead of night, to turn her into a frog while she slept or search her trunk or molest her, let alone try to kill her. The knob clicked, the door squeaking open. She froze, convinced the noise would wake the maids. If they came...
Their rooms are on the lower levels, Emily recalled, as she hastily caught the door and held it still. There’s no way they’ll hear us down there.
She inched into the room, feeling another twinge of wistfulness as she eyed the letters on the table. She’d left them there... she wondered, idly, if there was any point in stuffing them in her pocket and taking them back to Zangaria. Probably not, she decided. The unopened letters were postmarked between her departure to Alluvia and Void’s takeover at Whitehall, whereupon they abruptly stopped. She smiled, humorlessly, as she spied a pink envelope amongst the mess. Unless she missed her guess, it was another marriage proposal.
“Hurry,” Nanette hissed.
Emily nodded and walked into the bedroom. Someone, probably Silent - it was hard to believe, despite everything, that Nanette and Silent were the same person - had made the bed when she’d left the tower for the last time. It looked as if Void had expected her to return, to stay in the tower until he’d completed his coup and presented her with a fait accompli. Her heart twisted. If he’d been honest with her, right from the start, she might have reacted differently. But instead...
She put the thought aside as she dug under the bed for her trunk. She’d woven powerful spells into the wood to make it impossible for anyone else to open, but it was hard to be sure. Void had kept some of her possessions, right from the start; he’d certainly had plenty of opportunities to obtain some of her blood. Given enough time, he could have opened the trunk and sealed it again without leaving a mark. She’d added some precautions when she’d been a student - trying to break into trunks was an old tradition - that should alert her if someone managed to get inside, but it was hard to be sure. Void was far more experienced than any of her rivals at school. He might notice the non-magic tricks she’d inserted into the trunk.
The magic crackled around her as she opened the trunk. As far as she could tell, nothing had been touched, let alone taken. She grimaced as she realized there were no chat parchments left, although she’d known it was unlikely she’d left one behind. She’d taken half of them to Alluvia and they’d been destroyed there, with the remainder left in her home in Dragon’s Den. She promised herself she’d recover them, providing Void hadn’t taken them first. Dragon’s Den was well within his territory. He could have broken into the house - or simply destroyed it - on a whim.
She picked up the handful of spellbooks, including the ancient tome Void had given her long ago, and stuffed them into her knapsack, then closed the trunk. There was nothing else worth taking, not now. Either they won the war, in which case she could recover the remainder of her possessions at leisure, or they lost. She put the trunk back under the bed, then turned and walked back into the living room. Nanette was waiting for her, impatiently. She looked so much out of place that Emily’s eyes threatened to slide over her, as if she weren’t there at all.
“We have to go further up,” Nanette said. “Come on.”
Emily nodded. They’d compared notes on the uppermost levels, but neither of them knew quite what to expect. The tower was big enough - on the inside - to house an entire school. She found it hard to believe Void could have taught several apprentices at once, but it wasn’t impossible. And yet... she shook her head. There would probably be several workshops - she’d seen one - a private library containing rare or forbidden books, a bedroom... she wondered, not for the first time, where Void had slept. He’d never shown her his bedroom.
The wards felt heavier as they made their way up the stairs, subtle misdirection charms blurring oddly with spells designed to keep people from spying on the tower’s master. It wasn’t uncommon for sorcerers to be paranoid about their privacy, but Void seemed to have raised paranoia to an art form. The tower itself was heavily warded and yet he’d layered more and more wards over his private chambers, as if he feared his guests would spy on him. Perhaps he had a point. Emily hadn’t tried to spy on him, but Nanette probably had. And there might have been other guests over the years who’d made the attempt, too, for all she knew.
The stairs stopped in front of a narrow iron door, studded with runes and charms. Emily inspected the magic thoughtfully, noting how it was designed to be easy to open as long as someone had the right magical signature. Anyone else... she glanced back down the stairs, wondering how the maids had gotten in and out. Void had never struck her as the kind of man who enjoyed living in squalor - the levels were as clean and tidy as one could expect - and she doubted he had the time to clean up after himself. There were cleaning spells - she knew some - but they tended to cause problems if they were used time and time again. One could only magically clean a dress a few times before it fell apart at the seams.
“Interesting,” Nanette muttered. “I think he’s warped his own magical signature.”
Emily frowned. Nanette was right. Void hadn’t keyed the spell to his own signature, but to a warped version of it... the signature could be anything. She cursed under her breath. The ring had gotten them into the tower, but there was no way they could use it to get into the innermost chambers. The odds against getting it right the first time, if she tried to twist the signature within the ring, were astronomical. And she was sure there’d only be one chance at it. They couldn’t get in without the key and...
She stared at the lock, a thought twisting through her brain. It made no sense. She knew Void. He’d scorned the idea of overthinking one’s security precautions. He had the power to twist his own signature - she had no doubt of it - but a single tiny mistake would be enough to either lock him out of his own chambers or simply kill him. It wasn’t as if one were simply adding a single number to their PIN code. It was a great deal more complex. If they tried to hack it, they’d be killed on the spot.
A thought struck her. “Stay back,” she ordered, as she knelt in front of the door. The keyhole was just above her eye level. It would be eye level for Void. Up close, she could see layer upon layer of spells piled on the metal, running through the keyhole... she smiled as she saw it. The spells were so complex that half of them were designed to cancel the other half out, leaving only one spell active. “I’ve had an idea.”
She took the ring and pressed the magical signature against the final spell, opening the way to the keyhole. Void was cunning. She felt a flicker of admiration as she dug a small screwdriver out of her belt and pressed it into the lock, feeling for the springs. Nanette gasped behind her as Emily pressed against the springs - it was rare for a sorcerer to rely on something as simple as a mundane lock, but that was the genius of it. Void would have crafted himself a key, she was sure; she didn’t need one. She’d been taught to pick locks a long time ago.
The door clicked open. Emily smirked as she nudged it wider with her screwdriver, careful not to touch the remaining wards. Void had pulled a fast one. Anyone who broke through his outer wards would waste time trying to crack the inner wards, instead of simply bypassing them. She had no doubt he could pick the lock too, if he lost the key; hell, the lock itself was hardly complex. One did not need specialist tools to open it. A normal magician would rely on magic to unlock the doors, rather than bother to turn the key.
“Oh,” Nanette said.
Emily stepped into the chamber. It was a giant workroom - not, she noted grimly, the one she’d visited before all hell had broken loose. There were a dozen wooden tables within eyeshot, all bearing the signs of extensive use. She inched forward, examining the tools and materials scattered around. Void seemed to have enough tools for a dozen separate projects, ranging from simple saws and hammers to far more complex devices she didn’t recognize. Two tables were laden with rare and expensive supplies, including dragon scales and pieces of bones clearly too large to be anything conventional. One of them looked like a chicken bone, but it was larger than her forearm. She frowned as she spotted a handful of teleport gems resting on the table. Void had clearly intended to come back for them.
She glanced at Nanette, who shrugged, then stepped into the next room. It was a cross between a library and a study; the windows looking out over the forest below, the walls lined with books, the desk piled high with parchments and papers and more books... she smiled, despite herself, as she rounded the wooden desk and spotted the butler’s tray resting beside the chair, with an empty mug sitting on top. Void had clearly been drinking while he worked. She picked up the mug and took a sniff. Kava. Strong Kava. He’d worked long into the night.
“Interesting.” Nanette peered through the windows. “Did you see the windows from outside?”
Emily shook her head. There’d been a handful of murder holes - slots allowing defenders to rain arrows on an attacking army - but not actual windows. She wasn’t sure the slots really were murder holes. Void wouldn’t need them... perhaps they were actually keyed to the defenses in some other way. But she definitely hadn’t seen any windows. She glanced towards Nanette, then back at the papers on the desk. It looked as if Void had been intensely studying something.
She sat, feeling dirty as she scanned the papers. Void had taught her much, before she’d gone off to fight in the wars, but the work in front of her was a grim reminder she still had a long way to go. It looked as if he was studying teleport spells, yet the coordinates were so screwy anyone stupid enough to try to cast the spells would be lucky if anything happened. Her eyes narrowed. Void was hardly stupid. He couldn’t have intended to try the spells, could he? It would be like trying to drive from New York to Washington DC and somehow managing to reach California before discovering the mistake.
Worse than that, she thought, as she worked her way through the papers. It’s as if he’s trying to draw a cube without knowing what a cube is.
She felt a dull ache at the back of her head. The papers made no sense. And yet, she was sure she was missing something. Void wouldn’t have left them there for her to find, to trick her into wasting her time. If he’d known they were coming, he would have set a trap. The wards could easily have frozen the pair of them, suspending the two girls in time until he came to collect them. No, he wouldn’t have tried something clever. He’d hammered it into her, time and time again, that trying to be clever was asking for trouble.
The problem with making something foolproof, his voice echoed in her thoughts, is that some fools are very clever fools indeed.
The papers rustled as she dug through them, growing ever more puzzling. It was a teleport spell combined with a portal and yet... it made no sense. The spell seemed to be practically self-guiding. Emily shook her head in disbelief. It was like jumping off a cliff without knowing what was waiting for you, without - even - knowing where you were jumping from.
“Odd,” Nanette said. “What are these?”
Emily looked up. Nanette was holding a pair of frayed jeans and a shirt... for a moment, Emily’s eyes refused to grasp what she was seeing. Jeans and a shirt... they were hers. She’d been wearing them when she’d been yanked into the Nameless World... they hadn’t been anywhere near as important as her library card - she’d picked them up at the Goodwill, many years ago - but they’d been hers. She hadn’t seen them since Void had given her a robe to wear... what were they doing here?
“Clothes,” she said, dully. She could imagine Void keeping them, but... why? “They used to be mine.”
Ice ran through her veins as she looked back at the papers, everything suddenly falling into place. Void hadn’t been trying to find a new way to teleport. He’d been trying to find a way to cross the dimensional divide, one that didn’t rely on sprites or demons or other untrustworthy entities. Her heart thumped as she put the pieces together. The clothes - her clothes - had a link to their original homeworld. To Earth. Void could use them to guide his magic and open a portal... perhaps. Her thoughts ran in circles. There was no magic on Earth... not as far as she knew. It was possible the portal would collapse the moment he tried to open it.
Unless the Wizarding World really does exist, her thoughts whispered. Who knows what the Ministry of Magic would do?
She shook her head, dismissing the thought as she hastily picked through the papers. They made sense now. Void was casting spells to operate in a multidimensional environment, in a realm with planes and angles humans simply couldn’t perceive... barely, perhaps, even deduce their existence. It was clever. He could use the multidimensional signature on the clothes, her old clothes, to steer the portal. And once he had control of a nexus point, he could open the portal whenever he pleased.
“If we take the papers...”
She swallowed, hard. Taking stuff from her trunk was reasonably safe. Void might or might not search the trunk, at some later date, but she was fairly sure he hadn’t done so already. He certainly hadn’t disturbed the strands she’d left behind to inform her if someone had tried to get inside. He wouldn’t notice something had been taken if he didn’t know what had been there before she took it. But here... she was sitting at his desk! She knew she’d notice if someone meddled with her work. And it was unlikely Void would blame it on the maids.
Emily stood. “We’ll take the clothes with us.”
Nanette shot her a concerned look. “He’ll notice.”
“I know.” Emily took the shirt and jeans and stuffed them in her knapsack. She’d had a bra and a pair of panties too - she’d never been tempted to walk around without underwear, unlike some of the girls she’d loathed back home - but she couldn’t remember what had happened to them. She’d taken her shoes and socks to Whitehall, then stuck them in her trunk when they’d been replaced. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
“Then take the papers too,” Nanette said. “We might as well.”
Emily nodded. “Good idea,” she said. She started to stuff the papers into her bag, one by one. She’d sort them out later. “Snatch up anything else you can find, then...”
She heard a gasp and looked up. Maddy stood by the door, eyes wide with fear.

Chapter Four

“Lady Emily?” Maddy sounded stunned, as if she were still half-asleep. “And who the hell are you?”
She doesn’t recognize Nanette, Emily thought, numbly. She would have laughed, if the situation hadn’t suddenly become dangerous. Of course she doesn’t!
Her mind raced. It would be easy to stop the maid in her tracks, to freeze her or turn her into something harmless or simply put her in a trance, but doing anything to her might trigger alarms. Void didn’t want guests abusing his maids. He’d told her he’d given them a handful of protections designed to keep them safe against visitors with more power than common sense. Emily tried to think. She was - as far as Maddy was concerned - Void’s apprentice. And yet the maid had caught her in her master’s private chambers. Somehow, Emily was sure the maid wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.
“Void sent me to collect some papers for him,” Emily said, although she doubted it would work. The wards would have roused the maids, if she’d returned to the tower. Maddy had probably been on her way to make breakfast when she’d seen the light from the upper levels or something. It didn’t matter right now. “He’ll be back shortly.”
“You shouldn’t be in here.” Maddy’s voice shook. “I... you shouldn’t be in here.”
Emily felt a moment of sympathy. There was nothing the poor maid could do that wouldn’t anger at least one immensely powerful magician. She liked to think she was better than some of the magical brats she’d encountered, eighteen going on eight, but Maddy could hardly take that for granted. She would displease her master if she turned a blind eye to Emily’s activities and displease Emily herself if she tattled on her. And, protections or no, Maddy was terrifyingly vulnerable. It was unlikely Emily would suffer any major consequences for hexing the maid.
Her lips quirked. Now, things are rather different.
“Void sent me,” Emily said, calmly. She hoped Void had given the maid enough freedom to accept her words at face value. “Go prepare breakfast. We’ll be down in a moment.”
Maddy hesitated, visibly. “Lady Emily, I...”
Emily cursed under her breath. Maddy really was stuck, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. She had to put Void’s orders first... Emily reached out with her senses, probing the poor girl. The maid’s protections were very basic, imposed on her rather than put in place by her own mind, but spells powerful enough to worm their way through them would probably set off all kinds of alarms. She didn’t even dare try to send the young woman to sleep. It might just trigger the wards...
Nanette stepped forward, jabbing a finger at Maddy. The girl threw her arms up in shock, an instant before she melted into a tiny statue of herself. Emily swallowed hard, knowing just how unpleasant it was to be transfigured without warning. The longer Maddy stayed in that form, the harder it would be to recover. The only upside was that Void would have no trouble finding her.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Emily snapped at her. She could feel the wards shivering, great powers coming to life below. “She couldn’t have hurt us!”
Nanette scowled. “She could have sounded the alert,” she snapped back. “Do you not think she could have triggered a spell, even without magic herself?”
Emily swallowed the words that came to mind as she ducked into the next room. Their time was about to run out. She didn’t think the tower was linked directly to Void, but she knew better than to take that for granted. Even if it wasn’t... the wards were perfectly capable of freezing everyone in place and waiting for their master to return. The only upside was that Void would be reluctant to come himself, perhaps assuming the attack was a diversion. He’d need to decide what to do pretty quickly. 
She frowned as she looked around the room. Maps lay everywhere; some little more than rough outlines, as if the original artists expected the users to fill them in as they went along, some so detailed they were as close to perfect as any others she’d seen in the last few years. Void had sketched out his plans... Emily looked at the maps, then shook her head. They were all outdated, swept away by the press of events. She already knew Void had taken Red Rose and the nexus point underneath the castle; she’d been the one to recover it during their flight from Whitehall. She hoped, grimly, that Queen Mariah and her husband were still holding the line. Void would do everything in his power to capture the nexus point again.
Her eyes narrowed as she spotted an isolated map showing the Kingdom of Johor. It was right on the eastern border of the Allied Lands, far from both the White City and the furthest reaches of the Blighted Lands; Johor prided itself, from what little she’d heard, in maintaining a degree of independence from the rest of the Allied Lands. Void had drawn circles on the map, a line between a place in the scrubland and a city caught between marauding warlords. It clearly meant something to him, but what? Johor was so far away that it might not even be aware something was going on to the west.
She put the mystery aside for later consideration and swept through the rest of the rooms, one by one. A bedroom, not much larger than her own; she was mildly amused by living quarters that were decidedly bare, without much in the way of creature comforts. The only hint of luxury was a large walk-in closet that wouldn’t have shamed Alassa, crammed with outfits from peasant shirts and trousers to merchant outfits, royal and magical robes... it struck her, suddenly, that Void had enjoyed disguises as much as Nanette did. A small chest in the third room was crammed with school reports... her school reports. Emily snatched a handful up and ran as the tower shook again, magic starting to zero in on them. They were out of time. Behind her, something crashed. She looked back, just in time to see the bedsheets come alive and reach for her.
Emily gritted her teeth, then summoned a fireball and threw it into the mass of animated bedding. It exploded into fire, the flames quenched a second later by the wards. She turned and fled, knowing she’d bought herself a few seconds at most. Nanette ran out of the office, carrying a handful of books in one hand. A dozen more books flew after her, intent on battering Nanette to death. Emily hastily cast a spell, blowing them against the far wall and sticking them there. The ground quivered, again, as they ran into the workshop. She heard a scream from downstairs and peered down, just in time to see a tidal wave of molten stone flow over a maid. The poor girl was submerged before Emily could do a thing to help her. She hoped, desperately, that the maid would merely be held in suspension until Void returned. The air was still cool. She prayed that meant the stone wasn’t actually molten.
“I thought he didn’t like showing off,” Nanette said, as the wave of stone started to advance up the stairs. She slammed the door closed with a wave of her hand, casting a set of spells that should have firmly barred the door. “This isn’t showing off?”
“It’s designed to trap us.” Emily had a nasty feeling Nanette was wasting her time. The stone was animated by powerful magic. There was a very good chance the stone would simply blur through the door, the magic infecting the walls and spreading into the workroom itself. “It’ll certainly make it harder to escape.”
She scooped up Maddy’s tiny form as the door started to bulge inward, trying desperately to think of a plan. She’d made a mistake. She’d assumed she could evade any trapping spells... she ground her teeth in frustration. It would have been easy to knock Maddy out with her fists, rather than use magic. There was no guarantee striking the maid wouldn’t set off alarms, but... she shook her head as the stone on each side of the door started to shimmer like melting metal. It was just a matter of time before it came for them.
“Cover me,” she snapped, as she saw the teleport gems. “I’ve had an idea.”
Emily grabbed the gems, just as the door exploded inwards. She ducked instinctively, then ran for the office. Nanette followed, casting a hail of spells - some simple, some complex - at the stone as she ran. It absorbed them, effortlessly. Emily admitted, privately, it was a cunning plan. Nanette could blow chunks of stone to atoms if she wished, but so what? There was always more, flowing towards them like water...
Nanette slammed the door shut as soon as they were inside the office, then hammered a network of complex spells into the walls. Emily nodded, although she suspected it wouldn’t make things any better. The floor was made of stone too. She glanced down. The floor wasn’t moving - yet - but she was sure it was just a matter of time. Or perhaps not. Void wouldn’t want to lose the books in the library. He might just settle for keeping them trapped - or worse - until he had a chance to return.
She pressed her fingers against the gems. Void had taken her design and improved upon it, giving his forces the ability to teleport while leaving his enemies stranded in the dust. There was no preset destination, thankfully; she forced herself to insert a set of coordinates into the system, hoping the spell would be powerful enough to break through the tower’s wards. If it was his magic... she used the ring one final time, allowing his signature to flavor the teleport spell, then tried to test the spell by triggering the first gem. It shuddered violently, the magic twisting so badly she knew there was no hope of surviving the jump, before shattering into dust. The wards weren’t fooled. No doubt Void had calculated that anyone who got so far into the tower would have to be able to duplicate his signature in some way...
The walls shuddered. Emily grimaced as Nanette started to wave and chant, draining her power in a desperate bid to buy them a few more seconds. She was strong, Emily reflected, but the wards were stronger still. The floor quivered beneath her feet. She looked down to see the stone starting to ripple, like water that had just been disturbed. Panic washed through her as she jumped backwards, clutching Maddy in one hand and the gems in the other. If they were sucked down into the mire, they were dead. Or, worse, they’d be taken prisoner.
“It won’t end like this,” Nanette snarled. Emily could see puddles of stone forming around her shoes. “It won’t let it end like this!”
Emily glanced at the windows. They were charmed to be unbreakable, but... she slammed the second teleport gem against the windows and triggered it. The windows glowed with light, then snapped out of existence as the spell yanked them away into nothingness. They wouldn’t reach their destination, but it didn’t matter. She clambered onto the ledge and shouted for Nanette, just as the floor gave way. Nanette struggled, but she was trapped...
Gritting her teeth, Emily cast a summoning spell, putting as much power as she could into the magic. It was massively overpowered. Nanette was torn out of the stone, yanked towards Emily so hard there no time to cancel the spell before Nanette slammed into her, the force of the impact hurling them both into the air. Emily caught hold of Nanette and cast a flying spell, trying to get outside the wards before triggering the final teleport gem. The tower seemed to glow with light behind them. The spell started to fail, sending them plunging to the forest. Nanette muttered a spell, her voice too tired to be loud. Their fall slowed an instant before they hit the ground, Nanette landing on top of Emily.
Emily giggled, despite herself. “That was... that was...”
Nanette laughed and rolled over, lying beside Emily. “Remarkable.”
She grinned. “If you decide you want to spend your days robbing magicians, count me out.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “I think we got lucky,” she said. “A few more seconds and he would have had us.”
She sat up and looked towards the tower, clearly visible by the dawn’s early light. It seemed unmarked. There was no sense the building had been invaded, let alone looted. It was easy to believe nothing had happened, that Void didn’t even know they’d been in and out of his fortress... she shook her head as she stood, brushing the mud and dirt off her trousers. Void knew. The tower might not be linked to him directly, but she’d be surprised if he didn’t have wards keyed to alert him if things got out of hand. It was what she would have done.
Maddy’s tiny form was still clutched in her hand. She placed the statuette on the ground, motioned for Nanette to step back, then undid the spell. Maddy shot up, nearly falling as her body came back to life. Emily put out a hand to steady her, trying not to wince at the way the maid flinched. She’d known she could be enspelled at any moment - and Void had used her to demonstrate a handful of spells - but there was a difference between knowing and truly believing. Emily just hoped Maddy wouldn’t try anything stupid.
“You...” Maddy swallowed hard. She looked like a mouse that had just sighted a hawk overhead. “Lady Emily, what...? What’s happening?”
Emily hesitated, unsure what to say. “Your master has declared war on the rest of the world,” she said. Her lips quirked, humorlessly. “So far, he’s winning.”
Maddy was already pale. But, somehow, she paled still further. “I heard rumors, but...”
“You have a choice,” Emily said, flatly. She wanted to ask what Maddy might have heard - the town wasn’t exactly off the beaten track, yet it was quite some distance from either Whitehall or Zangaria - but she didn’t have time. “You can stay here until the master returns and tell him what happened” - she ignored Nanette’s scoffing sound - “you can come with us, or you can go back to the town and hope for the best.”
She sighed, inwardly. That was the worst of the three choices. And yet, it had to be stated.
“I don’t...” Maddy stared at her for a long moment. “I swore an oath!”
Emily winced. She wasn’t sure just how tightly the oaths would bind the maids. They didn’t have any magic of their own... no, Void could easily find a way to embed the oath in their blood. From what she’d heard, someone at Heart’s Eye had found a way to use blood - anyone’s blood - to store magic. It would have been impressive, under other circumstances. If the bounty hunter hadn’t used it against her...
“Then go back to the tower and wait,” Emily said. “He’ll be along soon enough.”
Maddy looked as if she wanted to say something but didn’t quite dare. Instead, she turned and hurried away, her every movement insisting she wanted to run... to run as if she expected to be hexed in the back at any moment. Emily felt her heart sink, half-wishing she’d chosen to simply grab Maddy and take her to Zangaria instead. Void wasn’t King Randor, who’d been known to torture or even kill messengers on occasion. Emily was sure he wouldn’t harm Maddy. What could the maid have done against two powerful magicians? 
He didn’t even think to tell her I was no longer his apprentice, Emily thought. If he’d done that, she might have raised the alarm before confronting us.
Nanette gave her a reproving look. “You should have killed her. Or wiped her memories.”
“No.” Emily shook her head, not bothering to hide her disgust. “I’m not going to start killing people just because it’s convenient.”
“And she’ll tell him everything,” Nanette pointed out. “She won’t even try to keep anything from him.”
Emily shrugged. “So what?”
She turned away and started the walk back out of the valley. They could trigger the final teleport gem once they were clear of the wards, then head straight back to Zangaria. It wasn’t as if Maddy would be a major problem, in the grand scheme of things. She couldn’t tell Void anything he couldn’t deduce for himself. Hopefully, the chambers had been wrecked enough for him to be unsure what was taken... he’d have to clean up, just to see what was missing, and hopefully that would take more time than he had. He couldn’t leave Whitehall for long. 
“We don’t have time to be faint-hearted,” Nanette said, from behind her. “Who knows what she might have seen, what could wind up being used against us?”
“If I had believed that, I would have killed you years ago,” Emily said, flatly. “I didn’t have to save your life.”
She felt Nanette scowling at her back, but the older girl said nothing. Emily understood her attitude, but she simply didn’t share it. How could she? She believed firmly that killing was the last resort, something to be done only when there was no other choice. And yet, she was responsible, directly or indirectly, for hundreds of deaths.
And when this is over, her thoughts mocked as they reached the edge of the valley, you’ll be responsible for hundreds more.

Chapter Five

“You could have been killed,” Jan said, when Emily finished telling him what had happened. “If you’d been caught...”
Emily had to smile. She didn’t blame him for being worried. If they’d been caught, it would have been the end for both she and Nanette. And yet... they’d managed to get into one of the most heavily defended places on the planet, recover a considerable amount of what General Pollack would probably call actionable intelligence and get out alive, despite the tower’s best attempt to kill them. All things considered, it could have been a great deal worse.
“We weren’t,” she assured him. She’d handed Nanette back to her guards as soon as they’d returned to Zangaria, then made her way down to the spellchamber. “We made it out alive.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. Jan seemed to hesitate, just for a second, then kissed her back. Emily felt an odd twinge of unease. She’d yet to meet a young man who didn’t want to kiss. And yet, Jan had practically moved into Jade’s spellchamber and its adjourning rooms as soon as they’d reached the castle and turned them into a lab. The tables were covered with spell diagrams and notations, covering everything from advanced teleport and portal charms to mimics and other weapons of war. Jan wasn’t a fighter, she reminded herself dully. He was more suited to working in the rear, preparing weapons and spells for the sorcerers on the front lines.
Jan drew back, slightly. “Did you find anything useful?”
“A few things,” Emily said. She passed him the spellbooks, then the notes she’d stolen. The clothes would remain in her chambers until she decided what to do with them. She didn’t want to destroy the clothes, even though she’d outgrown them long ago, but she feared it might be the best thing to do. As long as they existed, they were a potential threat. “Void’s been experimenting with interdimensional magic.”
“Interesting.” Jan studied the notes thoughtfully. “Master Lucknow said, once, that there’d been a handful of sorcerers who’d opened gates to other realms, stepped through and never returned. He seemed to think it was suicide.”
“Void said something similar, once upon a time,” Emily said. She wondered, suddenly, if Void had had an unfair advantage. His former apprentice was living proof that interdimensional travel was possible. “They go and they don’t come back.”
“They might not be able to navigate,” Jan mused. His eyes never left the notes. “Void may have figured out a solution, even if it will only take him to one specific world.”
He looked up. “And if he can open a permanent gate to your world, what could he find there?”
“Too much,” Emily said, shortly. She’d often thought she would have liked to go back long enough to pick up a small library of technical books and perhaps a few hundred machine tools... maybe even recruit a few craftsmen to start hammering out a more advanced tech base. Void could easily do the same - or worse. “It would change the world.”
“Just as you changed the world,” Jan pointed out. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Right now, we just have to hope he’s not ready to try,” Emily said. She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know what happened to the rest of the stuff I brought. I wasn’t carrying much, but...”
She shook her head, again. She’d never thought to ask about her clothes. Or anything, really. It had been so long she’d forgotten about it, right up to the moment he’d used her much-loved library card against her. She winced in pain. She missed it, even though the card was nothing more than a souvenir now. She wanted it back, to carry it with her... her heart twisted in pain. Void had known what it had meant. He wouldn’t have been able to use it as effectively if it had been nothing more than a piece of scrap paper and cardboard.
The door opened. Aiden stepped in, wearing her male guise. “Emily, I heard you made it back!”
Emily smiled. “Barely. It was a very close-run thing. But we proved he can be beaten.”
Aiden nodded as she dropped into a chair, relaxing her pose now she was among people who knew her secret. Too many others, including her fellow Levellers, knew her as a man. They wouldn’t be amused if they discovered she’d fooled them all along... rumors would leak out eventually - they always did - but by then she would either be unimpeachable or sunk without trace. Emily wondered, idly, if Aiden would prefer to spend the rest of her life in male guise, rather than return to her father. She could see the advantages.
“I’ll write it up at once,” Aiden said. Her lips twitched. “Did you engage in mortal combat with ten guardians - or a hundred?”
“None,” Emily said, firmly. “I’ll give you the rest of the story later, but we don’t want to tell too many lies. The people we want to influence won’t believe them.”
“The story will grow in the telling,” Aiden pointed out. “You might as well try to shape it.”
Emily shook her head. The broadsheets took the truth and exaggerated it to the point no one who knew anything about the subject would believe them. Void wouldn’t care in the slightest what the broadsheets said about him, but a lot of his potential allies in magical society would waver and sit on their hands if they thought there was a good chance he’d lose. If they knew the broadsheets were lying, they might think Void was winning and hasten to join him, just to make sure they were on the winning side. Void wouldn’t care about magical society either - he’d already dealt it several blows - but he’d make use of them as long as they were useful. And they would be.
“Not as lies, or stories they won’t believe,” she said. “We want them to believe us.”
She sat down, trying to organize her mind. She felt drained... and yet, uncomfortably keyed up. She wanted... she wasn’t sure what. She wanted to go to bed, with or without Jan; she wanted to train with Jade or go for a walk or something - anything - other than staying where she was. She wondered, suddenly, if she should relieve the guards escorting Nanette around the castle. The poor men were dangerously exposed and they knew it. Charmed armor or no, a sorceress as powerful as Nanette would have no trouble killing them. They knew that, too.
The point isn’t to stop her from causing trouble, Emily reflected. The point is to force her to deal with the guards first, giving everyone else a few seconds of warning before she turns on them.
She closed her eyes for a long moment, but her thoughts refused to give her any peace. Void would know what they’d done. It wouldn’t take long for him to deduce how they’d broken into the tower, then made their escape. She silently catalogued everything she was happy to tell the world - there was no point in trying to keep it secret from Void, not when he already knew the truth - and what she’d prefer to keep to herself, at least for now. Perhaps she could credit Melissa, rather than Nanette, as her companion. Nanette had been declared outlaw years ago. People would raise eyebrows if they saw her on either side.
The door opened, again. “My Lady, My Lords, the Queen requests your presence in the dining hall.”
Emily groaned inwardly, without opening her eyes. A royal messenger, crashing around the castle as if he owned the place... she understood, now, why King Randor regarded them with a mixture of irritation and disgust. They were useful, but they also had a habit of crashing through doors without warning. She opened her eyes, reminding herself what happened to rulers who killed messengers. She’d always had a private theory the messengers deliberately tried to annoy as many aristocrats as possible, claiming it was the king’s orders. How else were they meant to get their own back?
She stood, brushing down her leathers. She wasn’t exactly dressed for dinner, but Alassa wouldn’t care. The castle - and the kingdom beyond - was girding for war. There was no time for fancy dresses or courtly balls, nothing that might distract attention from the war effort. Alassa had sent a handful of the more irritating aristocrats into meaningless positions, partly as a tripwire - she’d used that argument to justify the postings, from what Emily had heard - and partly to get them out of her hair. The borders were little more than lines on maps, as far as Void was concerned. Emily wondered, idly, if the aristos were bright enough to know it.
Jan shot her a concerned look. “Are you feeling up to it?”
Emily nodded. “I should be fine.”
She forced herself to walk out of the spellchamber, along the corridors and into the monarch’s inner chambers. The castle was a honeycomb, ranging from chambers open to everyone to sections open only to the monarch’s most trusted advisors and sections that belonged to the monarch herself. There were inner chambers and inner-inner chambers... Alassa had once joked there were even inner-inner-inner-chambers. Emily lifted her head and held it high as she stepped into the dining room, followed by Jan and Aiden. It might be private, but very little was truly private in a royal castle. Alassa and her family lived in a goldfish bowl.
“Emily,” Alassa said. “Thank you for coming.”
Emily nodded as she took her seat, eyes sweeping the table. Jade sat beside Alassa, his magic crackling around him; Imaiqah, Markus and Melissa sat further down the table, flanked by... Emily smiled, widely, as she recognized Caleb. She’d known he’d be coming once they confirmed it was safe to use the gems to teleport, but she hadn’t known when. He smiled back. Their relationship might have ended, but at least they were still friends.
“This is an informal dinner,” Alassa said. Her face was as striking as ever, but her voice was tired. “Speak freely, drink freely... you can even be rude to me, if you like.”
Emily’s lips twitched. It wasn’t funny. There was no such thing as an informal dinner with the monarch of an entire country, not when everyone would be watching for signs of who was in favor, who was on the outs... and, worst of all, hints that the monarch was losing her grip. Alassa’s court was somewhat more civilized than the others Emily had seen - it helped that most of the older aristocrats had been killed or sent into exile during the civil war - but it wasn’t immune. There were just too many ambitious men and women, looking to make names for themselves. And they thought they could do it by sucking up to the monarch.
She frowned as she realized who was missing. “Where’s Sergeant Miles?”
Jade looked troubled. “He’s still in his chambers,” he said. There was a hint of reproof in his voice, a droll reminder that the sergeant’s condition wasn’t going to get any better. “I had to tighten the wards. Again.”
Emily felt herself flush. She looked at Caleb. “When did you arrive?”
“I left the moment I was sure Heart’s Eye was in good hands,” Caleb said. “There was an attempt to destroy the university - I’m almost sure that was a royalist or reactionary plot - and an attack we beat off fairly quickly, but rumor insists the kingdom is mobilizing its troops and recruiting sorcerers. It could get unpleasant if the king decides to try to storm the university.”
“If he’s still in his right mind,” Jade said, quietly. “He might be under a spell.”
Caleb grimaced. “It won’t be easy,” he said. “There’s no way he’ll be able to sustain his men long enough to starve us out. The railway link between Heart’s Ease and Farrakhan isn’t anything like big enough to bring in enough supplies, forcing him to resort to simpler measures. We have enough food stockpiled within the university to last for quite some time.”
“And Void will know that,” Emily said, quietly. “Did you take the precautions I suggested?”
“Yeah.” Caleb let out a long breath. “But there’s no way to know how well they’ll work until they’re actually tested.”
Emily nodded. She had no doubt Void knew her magical signature as well as his own. He had had plenty of time to study her magic, as well as items she’d charmed personally... it wouldn’t be hard for him to use one of her items to trick the wards into letting him into the university. Heart’s Eye sat on top of a nexus point. There was no way in hell Void would leave the university alone for long. He had to take control before it was too late.
The maids entered, carrying trays of food. They placed a large roast in front of Alassa, then handed out bowls of everything from potatoes to steaming vegetables and gravy before retreating as silently as they’d come. Alassa carved the meat with practiced ease, an honor that wouldn’t be lost on any of her guests, while Jade poured water and wine into glasses. Emily declined the wine. She’d never liked alcohol.
“We’ll be holding a proper planning session after dinner,” Alassa said, as she handed out the plates. “Right now, we can talk about something - anything - else.”
And that’s an order, Emily thought. She understood, all too well. But what else are we going to talk about?
She tried to think of something harmless, but drew a blank. There was nothing that came to mind that didn’t touch on the war, or exclude some of the guests. Alassa had never been particularly interested in magical theory, while Aiden couldn’t follow it at all... Emily couldn’t think of anything. What could they talk about? It wasn’t as if they had that much in common.
“I’ve heard good things about Heart’s Eye,” Jan said. “Do you really allow everyone to study everything?”
“Anything,” Caleb said. “We believe in cross-fertilizing research. A student may draw on aspects of everything from charms to alchemy in hopes of developing something new. A very clever student actually reasoned out how to use blood to store magic, simply by combining a handful of disciplines and thinking outside the box. A lot of ideas simply don’t pan out” - he shrugged, expressively - “but the ones that do are very useful indeed.”
“My old master complained you had no formal set of assessment tests,” Jan said. “How could you certify someone’s progress?”
“We do arrange for our students to take the standard mastery tests,” Caleb said. “They may not have studied under a normal master, in a regular apprenticeship, but they have often picked up the important details. There’s a degree of one-to-one tuition to complete their preparations before they actually sit for their mastery. It doesn’t always work, because the master doesn’t know the apprentice as well as he would if they’d spent years together, but it does let us know what the student needs to study if he wants to pass.”
He smiled. “I’m not saying the system is perfect, because it isn’t. But it does give us new insights that are often missed by those on a more... regulated career path.”
Emily smiled, silently thanking Jan. Heart’s Eye was something they could all talk about, even if they’d have widely different opinions. Alassa and Melissa might see the university as a threat to their power; Jade and Jan might regard it as a sign they’d wasted their time as apprentices... Aiden might see it as a shining beacon of light or a deadly threat to a decentralized movement. If all the innovators moved to the university, it might be easier for reactionary forces to keep them from spreading into their kingdoms. 
“You must have a lot of enemies,” Aiden observed. “Haven’t they tried to weaken you?”
Caleb shrugged. “Like I said, there was an attempt to destroy the university a few months ago, shortly before the war began. And there have been other problems... practically speaking, we don’t force anyone to attend. If they want to leave, they can leave. Mostly, the old guard has been sneering at our students, insisting they’re jacks of all magics and thus masters of none. They do have a point. Our students tend towards having broad knowledge, rather than deep. But we have produced more generalists than any other school of magic.”
Emily allowed herself to relax, just a little, as the conversation washed around the table. The food was good, cooked to perfection... she felt a stab of guilt, knowing there were starving refugees only a few, short miles away. Zangaria had barely recovered from one war before the next began, convincing far too many people it was better to leave their lands permanently rather than stay and be slaughtered by one side or the other. She wished she could do something for them, but there was nothing... beyond winning the war. As long as Void remained alive, the war would never end.
She caught Alassa’s eye and felt a flicker of pity. The queen had so few times she could just let her hair down and be normal, as normal as anyone could be in a world of magic. Alassa would have to don her queenly mask again, soon enough; she had to stand alone, with everyone - even her husband - walking behind her. She couldn’t show weakness in front of the court. The people who had assassins on their payrolls would start plotting trouble. And who knew what Void would do?
We have to win quickly, Emily thought. And that’s not going to be easy. At all. 

Chapter Six

Emily wasn’t surprised, as she and Jan walked into the council chamber two hours later, to discover that Alassa had changed clothes, swapping her simple dress for a much more elaborate outfit that made her look like a warrior queen. It had been expertly tailored, allowing her to run without lifting her skirts or - if worse came to worst - to rip away the outer layers without revealing bare skin underneath. Emily suspected there were a multitude of protective charms woven into the fabric, as well as a handful of weapons. Alassa was skilled with a dagger. It was quite likely she’d hidden a virgin blade in her sleeve.
She took her seat and looked around the table. It was strikingly informal. General Pollack and Sienna sat together, speaking in low tones; Markus and Melissa sat facing them, their faces blank. Nanette sat at the far end of the table, flanked by Jade and a sorcerer Emily didn’t recognize. For once, Emily reflected, queenly protocol worked in their favor. No one was going to be asking why Jade wasn’t sitting next to his wife. They’d be so aware Jade couldn’t be seen to be calling the shots that it wouldn’t occur to them to wonder if Nanette might be dangerous. The remainder of the courtiers and ambassadors slowly filed into the room, eyes flickering from side to side as they gauged the mood. They’d want to know what the monarch was thinking, before they committed themselves. There weren’t many aristocrats left who were strong enough to argue against the monarch in public. It struck Emily, suddenly, that she might be the only one.
Jade can disagree with her, she reflected. But only in private.
Alassa rapped the table. “This meeting is now called to order,” she said, in a manner that drew all eyes. “As we are a diverse gathering, representing many different interests, we will all speak freely. You have my word, upon my honor, that no one will be punished for their opinions.”
And we can believe as much or as little of that as we like, Emily thought. She knew Alassa meant it, but she feared she was the only one. This meeting could get nasty.
Alassa smiled into the silence. “Lady Imaiqah, your report?”
Imaiqah stood and snapped her fingers. A map appeared on the far wall, showing the northern hemisphere. Red marks were everywhere, placed on top of castles, cities and nexus points. A handful of green marks denoted places known to be free of enemy activity, but they were few and far between. Void had done well, Emily reflected. He’d seized and secured almost all his targets. Zangaria, Heart’s Eye and Red Rose had been lucky to remain untouched.
“The situation is grim, but not as bad as we feared.” Imaiqah might not be a born noblewoman, but there was no hint of it in her tone. Years as Alassa’s friend - and trusted right hand - had left their mark. “Void has successfully captured or destroyed most of the pre-war strongpoints, either through spell-controlled traitors or simple brute force. He has commandeered nearly all of the pre-war governing infrastructure, from government ministers to feudal magnates holding their lands from the king. He has also, and this cannot be denied, overwhelmed a number of magical communities. On the surface, the situation is dire.”
She paused to let her words sink in, then continued. “The truth is a little more complicated. The upswing in revolutionary activity prior to the Whitehall Conference, and the disaster there, has led to armed resistance against both monarchical and reactionary forces. The Levellers put together a fairly strong network of contacts and cells, which have been working hard to coordinate defensive operations. Many of them do not understand the true situation, and don’t see beyond their own kingdoms - if that - but it doesn’t really matter. From our point of view, they’re causing problems Void will have to solve if he wants to take complete control.”
“They won’t last long,” Melissa predicted. “They’ll be crushed when he turns his attention to them.”
“That may be true,” Imaiqah agreed. “However, for the moment, they are keeping the various armies tied down, when the armies haven’t fragmented or simply dissolved. Void’s own troops are formidable, and he can whisk them around the world via teleport, but there simply aren’t enough of them. The destruction of Resolution Castle, we think, wiped out a considerable number of his troops. He’ll need some time to replace them.”
Emily shivered, remembering the memories Void had shown her. He’d insisted his methods for creating super-soldiers didn’t involve mass butchery, but... she feared the worst. He might convince himself he had no choice or... not, she supposed, that it mattered. He had an entire magic school under his control. He could take blood from the students any time he wanted.
“Which leads to an obvious question,” Sienna said. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know,” Imaiqah said. “It depends if he’s prepared to leave Whitehall himself.”
He can’t leave the nexus point unguarded, Emily thought. Something occurred to her and she winced. But, given time, he can always bilocate himself again.
“Overall, he is winning,” Imaiqah said. “He has apparently taken control of both Stronghold and Mountaintop. Laughter is untouched, so far, but it is just a matter of time before he turns his attention to the school. Heart’s Eye was attacked and survived - again, it won’t be long before he tries a second time. Given time, he can deal with us and then finish taking the remainder of the Allied Lands.”
“He has most of the nexus points,” Melissa said. “Given time, he can just enslave the entire kingdom.”
“The northern nexus points,” Imaiqah corrected. “Most of the southern ones remain independent.”
“For what good it will do,” Jade said.
Cat’s sitting on top of one, Emily mused. And I could use it to jump back in time...
She considered the idea, silently resolving to discuss the idea with Jan when she had a moment. The first time she’d time-traveled, she’d known it would work because it already had worked. This time... her thoughts churned as she considered the implications. She could stop Void before he took over, she could save Lady Barb, she could... she wasn’t sure she could. If history were changed... she wished she knew what would happen, if anything. It would be easier to handle, she thought, if she knew.
“Thank you, Lady Imaiqah,” Alassa said. “General?”
General Pollack stood, clasping his hands behind his back. Emily leaned forward. General Pollack was, as far as anyone could tell, the senior surviving Knight of the Allied Lands, the only remaining person empowered to command a multinational army. It struck her as silly to insist he took command - the Allied Lands were effectively gone - but she could see the advantages. If nothing else, it would provide a fig leaf of legitimacy that would keep the various kingdoms from arguing over who should command. And besides, he had a very good reputation. No one doubted his competence. He’d led armies to victory against necromancers.
“We must move quickly,” General Pollack said. “Our attempts to raise troops have been very limited, even with the new weapons from Heart’s Eye. I believe it will take quite some time, more than we have, to raise significantly higher numbers, by which time he will no doubt have raised and enhanced more troops himself. Fortunately, our enemy has a serious weakness. His war effort is dependent upon him. Take him out and his forces collapse.”
Emily nodded, curtly. Void had no heir, no successor. He’d tried to convince her to take his place, after his new empire was forged, but she’d refused. She wasn’t sure how long he could keep himself alive, yet... sooner or later he’d run into a point of diminishing returns and die. And his empire would die with him, falling into civil war. It would become a disaster.
“My staff and I have drawn up a plan of campaign,” General Pollack continued. “Our sorcerers believe they can open portals to Red Rose, which has remained stubbornly independent despite a siege. We will shatter the enemy armies, then drive on through Alluvia to Whitehall itself. Given time, we can break through the school’s wards and destroy him - or, if that proves impossible, isolate him. We can disrupt his teleports as effectively as he can disrupt ours.”
Getting into the school might prove tricky, Emily thought. She might have set the wards herself, back in the distant past, but Void knew what she’d done. He would have locked her out already. Perhaps if we try...
She allowed her mind to wander as General Pollack started to outline more specific aspects of the plan. They weren’t her concern. Alassa would handle the politics, while Jade and Sienna - and Jan - would work on the magic, considering how best to get the army into position without exposing them to the nexus point. Emily needed to deal with Void himself and... she wasn’t sure how to do it. Getting into the school would be extremely difficult. There were secret passages, but Void knew them. Unless there was a passage known only to the tutors...
His brother was the Grandmaster, Emily thought. He could have told Void about any secret passageways.
She glanced at Jade. She’d have to ask him if he knew any passages she didn’t. She doubted it. They had spent a lot of time together, back when they’d shared a class, and he’d shown her some secrets. She’d found others on her own, as she’d grown older. The chances of Void not knowing about them were very low. He’d been a student once. And he had access to the tutors at Whitehall, who could be made to tell him anything he didn’t already know.
“We’ve brought in enough of the new muskets, along with charmed bullets, to outfit an army,” Caleb said. “However, the bullets will run out quickly. We have to warn the soldiers to recover them, if possible.”
“If possible,” Jade said. “We might not be in possession of the battlefield, when the fighting is over.”
“We can start churning them out here,” Alassa said, firmly. “Given time, we can replenish our losses.”
“The charms aren’t difficult to do,” Caleb assured her. “They really draw on the magic that enhanced the poor bastards, turning their own magic against them.”
General Pollack glanced at his son. “What happens if the bullet hits a regular man?”
“It’ll act like a regular bullet,” Caleb said. “They’ll be injured or killed, depending where they’re hit.”
“Good.” General Pollack smiled, humorlessly. “We’ll bleed him white even if we don’t stop him.”
Emily glanced at Jan. He looked terribly out of place, his back ramrod straight as if he was reluctant to show weakness. Emily wished she’d thought to suggest he stayed in the spellchamber, rather than attend the meeting. He’d designed the charmed bullets - which had then been forged at Heart’s Eye - and helped with the teleport spells, but he had little else to contribute. It would have been kinder to let him remain in his rooms. Emily disliked the meeting and she was one of the most important people at the table.
“We can also make a bid for recovering the various nexus points,” Melissa said. “My husband and I should be able to get back into the mansion, with a little help.”
“You’ll probably find that one or more of your family members have been converted into unwilling spies,” Jade warned. “That’s what happened in Red Rose.”
“We can’t leave the nexus points in his hands,” Melissa said. “Like I said, given time, he can work out how to use them against us.”
Emily nodded, curtly. The teleport redirection spell had been a nasty surprise - and she’d been lucky she’d realized it was there before she’d tried to teleport - but it was really nothing more than a supercharged version of the spell from Whitehall, the one that had dumped her into the oubliette when she’d triggered a teleportation spell within the school. Who knew what other spells could be supercharged? A mass compulsion spell? A transfiguration spell? Or... there would be few limits. Void could cause an earthquake powerful enough to dump the entire country into the sea, if he had the time to set it up. Melissa was right. They needed to ensure Void had as little time as possible.
“There’s another problem.” Nanette’s voice cut through the chatter like a knife through butter. “Void will be coming for Emily. He wants her - needs her.”
“He didn’t catch us at the tower,” Emily pointed out, as a rustle ran around the table. “We escaped.”
“It was a very close-run thing,” Nanette countered. “He nearly did catch us. I would be surprised if he doesn’t have agents already sending more bounty hunters after you, in hopes of taking you alive. He probably knows precisely where you are.”
“This is the most heavily-guarded castle this side of the White Mountains,” Alassa said, tartly. “She’s safe here.”
“So what?” Nanette smiled as another rustle ran around the table. “Void isn’t going to care if a bunch of bounty hunters get killed trying to break into the castle. He can afford to keep sending them, until one of them gets lucky... there are so many of the bastards he’s not going to run out in a hurry. He just needs to get lucky once.”
Alassa’s face darkened. Emily spoke before a real argument - or worse - could break out.
“Good point,” she agreed. “What do you suggest?”
“He knows your magical signature,” Nanette said. “Send... impressions... of it with every party that leaves the castle, particularly the ones heading to the nexus points. Force him to waste time chasing down each and every lead, in hopes one of them is the real you. Keep him off balance so you can sneak up on Whitehall and put a knife in his back.”
“Void will not have any doubt where she’ll be going,” Jade pointed out. “Where else can she go?”
Emily nodded. Void wouldn’t expect them to fight a long, drawn-out war, not when he held all the cards. Given time, he could raise a far larger army and snuff out the remnants of the former order, as well as the rebels and revolutionaries. No, he’d have a fairly good idea what they’d do... probably. She tossed a handful of ideas around in her head as Jade and Nanette argued over the particulars, Melissa adding a few suggestions of her own. The idea of Sienna or another combat sorceress pretending to be Emily struck her as a workable idea, although it wouldn’t last for very long. Void knew her too well.
Alassa cleared her throat. “General,” she said, drawing attention back to her. “How long until the army is ready to march?”
“The majority of the army will be ready to depart in two days, Your Majesty,” General Pollack said, carefully. “That’ll be long enough for us to distribute the new weapons and give the men some practice, as well as getting the rest of our supplies in order. If you give me five or six days, we can have three more regiments worked up, ready to join the line of battle.”
“I see.” Alassa said nothing for a long moment. Emily could guess what she was thinking. Time was running out. They had to get to Whitehall before it was too late, and yet they would be leaving Zangaria practically undefended. Void wasn’t the only threat. There were noblemen who wanted the throne for themselves and commoners with their own ideas about the proper balance of power... “How long does Red Rose have?”
“It’s hard to say, Your Majesty,” General Pollack said. “As long as they control the nexus point, they should be fairly secure. However, food will be in increasingly short supply.”
Alassa grimaced. “Then we move in two days, if the armies are ready,” she said. “Melissa - will that give you long enough to get into position?”
“It should,” Melissa said. She winked at Emily, then looked back at Alassa. “And we’ll do everything in our power to convince any observers that Emily is with us.”
“We can spread rumors too,” Emily said. She was reasonably sure everyone on the council was trustworthy, but what about the rest of the castle? The squires, the archivists, the latrine cleaners... if one of them was under enemy control, he could send a warning to his true master. “Let them think I’m being held in reserve until the army reaches Whitehall.”
“Good thinking,” General Pollack said.
“Then we’ll meet again, shortly before the army marches out,” Alassa said. She stood, brushing down her dress. “Dismissed.”
“Emily, a word,” Jade said, as the councilors stood and headed for the door. “We need to talk.”
Emily glanced at Jan, then smiled as she realized Jan was already hurrying from the chamber like a schoolboy fleeing a detested class. “What can I do for you?”
Jade met her eyes. “The sergeant is in a terrible state,” he said, flatly. “It’s time to consider drastic action.”
Emily stared back at him, balling her fists. “You mean... kill him.”
“Yes, to save the rest of us,” Jade said. “I don’t see any other choice. Do you?”
“I don’t know.” Emily swallowed, hard. She understood the logic, she knew Jade wasn’t any happier about the whole affair than herself, but... she owed the sergeant too much to just let him be killed. Jade might consider it a mercy kill. Emily did not. “Take me to him.”
“As you wish,” Jade said. “And I suggest” - his voice made it clear it was an order - “that you prepare yourself for the worst.”

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