Towers Fall by Karina Sumner-Smith

Author:Karina Sumner-Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Talos
Published: 2015-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

A noise woke Xhea from a deep, dreamless sleep. She froze, every muscle tense as she listened.

She heard the click of the apartment’s door closing. Footsteps—soft, muffled—in the room beyond.

Xhea assessed her options. She had her cane and the blankets in which she curled; though, lost in those blankets’ embrace, Xhea did not think she could rise quickly or quietly. She had no knife, no spell, no way to cause a distraction. If she screamed, would anyone respond? She doubted it.

The footsteps that crept toward her were not a child’s, not another dark magic user. Eyes closed, feigning sleep, Xhea looked into the magical spectrum and saw the glow of bright magic in the hall beyond—a dull glow in the shape of a person. As she watched, the intruder came to stand in the open bedroom door and rested a hand on the doorframe.

Xhea drew hard on her power, stifling a gasp at the effort; the binding was little looser than before, and she paid for the thin thread of magic with pain. Yet the intruder did not pull a weapon or gather a spell, only stood in the doorway, watching.

Xhea hesitated then looked closer, seeing not the Enforcer she’d expected, but only a stoop-shouldered person, their breath quick with fear.

Slowly, Xhea sat and opened her eyes.

“You’re awake,” the intruder said. Her voice was soft, her words subtly distorted by the masking spell over her face.

It was one of the servants Xhea had seen earlier, the one who’d carried the towels. Yet there was something else, too. Something in the woman’s stance, the way her long-fingered hand clutched at the doorframe—something, perhaps, in that voice—was familiar.

“No thanks to you,” Xhea muttered. The words came without thought; the fear that had bound her tongue was leaving her, as was the tide of adrenaline on which it had been borne.

Still, she didn’t want this woman—the Spire’s servant, the so-called nobody—to see her hands shake, and so she shrugged and carefully pushed her nest of blankets aside.

Xhea expected an apology; strange, that desire, yet she only noticed it when an apology was not forthcoming. That more than anything made her turn back to the servant, narrowing her eyes.

She had a slender build, her curves hidden by the uniform’s severe cut. Her callused hands were marked with half-healed cuts and bruises, and her skin was pale in a way that made Xhea think it had been a long time since she’d seen sunlight. She was a woman, no scrawny teen like Xhea herself, and yet she didn’t look old.

She held nothing: no towels or sheets, no cleaning supplies, no message, spelled or otherwise. She only stood, poised, as if waiting. As if unsure what to do next.

“What do you want, anyway?” Xhea asked, sounding every bit the angry adolescent she surely looked.

“Manners,” the woman snapped, and Xhea blinked. The woman, too, seemed to take a mental step back, as if surprised that word had come from her mouth.

And something in that word, or the

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