Chapter 11: The Wizard's Tower
From the lower city, the tower looked tall but reasonably distinct—a real structure with clear edges. Standing before it, that clarity dissolved. Its peak vanished into a thin layer of cloud, the outline blurring as though the city's sky had carelessly swallowed part of it. Wind threaded through the gap between tower and cliff, carrying a low, sustained hum.
"This is the place you said we could get into with forged documents." I couldn't help confirming with him again.
"That's right," he said, then walked toward the entrance.
The door of the wizard's tower was stone, at least one and a half times a man's height, its surface smooth and plain to the point of deliberateness.
I had seen descriptions of this door in the literature—the famous "Unadorned Door." Wizards supposedly believed the most complex spells hid within the simplest forms. Seeing it now in person, I had to admit the description was accurate. Whether the defensive enchantments layered upon it were equally austere remained unknown.
A man sat on a stone bench just inside, back against the wall, turning a smooth copper coin between his fingers.
The tower keeper.
Cade handed over the documents naturally, as though they were genuine.
The keeper took them, unfolded them, and looked for perhaps three seconds. His expression never changed. I felt my fingers tighten slightly inside my coat pocket, then release.
The keeper folded the documents and handed them back.
"Go ahead."
Cade's hand paused for a moment, suspended in the air.
Before Cade could take the documents back, the keeper shifted his gaze to me.
The glance was brief. But that look carried the slight loosening that comes only after identification is complete. I had been receiving diplomatic protocol training since age twelve and had seen this expression on many faces. The diplomatic training manual called it "recognition confirmation"—a microexpression that appears when someone waiting sees the target they've been expecting.
He withdrew his gaze and returned to playing with the copper coin.
Cade tucked the documents back into his inner pocket. The door didn't need to be opened at all—we simply passed through it and crossed the threshold.
The tower's inner hall was high. When I looked up, my neck was already tilted to its limit. The ornate ceiling rose to a height beyond any building's proper proportion. The walls were black stone with metallic veins flowing slowly across their surface. Light seeped in from somewhere, its source concealed. The air held the scent of old books mixed with a sweetness I'd smelled in Corvus's laboratory.
I stopped at the corner of the entrance hall, waiting until the corridor's curve blocked the view back to the keeper before speaking.
"Did you see that?" My voice was very low.
"I saw it."
"He didn't verify those documents at all."
"Just went through the motions," Cade said. "Our pass wasn't that piece of paper, miss."
"He recognized me," I said.
Cade nodded, looking at me with meaningful eyes. He had learned not to ask embarrassing questions, but that didn't mean he wouldn't observe.
"The keeper let us in because of you. He was ordered to allow passage."
I stood against the wall for several seconds.
I had thought Osric needed to wait for me to come to him. I was wrong. Osric already knew I was coming and had prepared the process, including the specific detail of "letting me think I'd gotten in with forged documents."
This meant Osric had an information channel, and someone on the other end could tell him what time I would arrive, from which direction, and who would be with me.
Only one person in the palace could do that.
My father.
Something caught lightly in my throat.
My father had let me go, allowed this to happen, even spared the pursuit. He went further—he paved the road ahead. Osric was some kind of reception my father had arranged. I thought I was running away, but I was walking on a path my father had laid out for me, and the lights on both sides of that road were ones he had lit, one by one.
Should I be grateful?
The answer lay somewhere deeper. For twenty years he had maintained a distance with me that I couldn't read—sometimes near, sometimes far, always suspended there, never settling into anything solid. For the first time I realized I had always circled that distance, always pausing beside it before turning away, always viewing it from the side.
"Normally, someone with an invitation would have been met in the lower city already," Cade's voice pulled me from this tangle of thoughts.
"Because he wanted me to walk here myself," I said, more to myself than him. "If he'd sent someone to find me, I would have thought they were coming to take me back. Letting me walk here myself means arriving at this place was my choice, unrelated to his orders."
Cade considered this.
"Sounds like a clever man."
"He is," I said.
At the far end of the inner hall stood a young man in a gray assistant's robe. Seeing us approach, he bowed slightly.
"My Lady," he said. "Master Osric is expecting you."
I glanced at Cade. He remained where he was, giving me a slight nod—meaning he would stay here.
I followed the assistant deeper into the tower.
The corridor was long, footsteps echoing against the stone floor, one step after another.
The "me" Osric was waiting for—was it Princess Mia, or something beyond the princess? The answer lay behind that door at the corridor's end, and I was about to find out.