Ink Mage Read Free Page A

swing, using her own momentum against her. She started to go down and threw out her arms to catch herself, losing the sword. She cursed herself. Amateur !
    Kork suddenly had one arm around her, pinning her arms at her side. With the other hand, Kork held the flat of the gentleman’s blade against the soft, exposed flesh of her throat. Rina knew Kork would never hurt her—with the possible exception of some tutorial bruises with the wooden practices swords. But in that moment when she first felt the cold steel against her jugular, she also felt fear, the brief but palpable knowledge that she could be alive one moment and dead the next.
    He held her that way, helpless.
    Rina cleared her throat. “So. Do you yield?”
    “Jibes will not save you on the field of battle.”
    “They’re pretty good jibes.”
    He released her.
    She stood away from him, one hand going instinctively to her throat. She half thought her fingertips would come away sticky with her own blood. They didn’t. “Fortunate that I have no immediate plans to find myself on the field of battle, isn’t it?”
    “Plans are what people make when Fate is sneaking up behind them,” Kork said. “Tomorrow we shall alter your training.”
    Rina sighed. “My dear lovely giant, you don’t really think any army is getting over the Long Bridge, do you? This place is impregnable.”
    Another of Kork’s grunts. Rina thought she detected grudging agreement.
    The Long Bridge was named for the simple fact that it was a mile long, the only way over a deep and icy chasm to the fortress city of Klaar. The stone bridge was just wide enough for two wagons to pass each other and, as her father put it, could be defended by a cripple and an infant with slingshots.
    The bridge ended at a large gate in the outer wall, behind which was the town of Klaar. In the center of town was the Duke’s castle and keep. Theoretically, if the outer wall were breached, the citizenry could fall back to the keep.
    No invading army had ever breached the outer wall. None had ever made it off the Long Bridge.
    “How do you think they built it?” She asked, still looking at the bridge.
    “Magic,” Kork said.
    She frowned at him. “An engineer from the University in Luxum designed it and supervised the construction. This is a matter of record.”
    Kork shrugged.
    Rina said, “When I asked how they built it, I meant what sort of mathematical equations, the tools used, manpower. Those sorts of things.”
    “Magic.”
    “I keep forgetting you’re a savage from distant lands,” Rina said.
    The hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
    Kork nodded at the army camped on the far side of the Long Bridge. “You’ve seen enough? We can go inside now, get warm?”
    “I want to go down into the town,” Rina said. She was restless, wanted to feel the tense energy of the commoners.
    “I’d prefer you didn’t, daughter.”
    She turned, saw the Duke with a gaggle of advisors behind him. “Father?”
    Arlus Veraiin smiled at her. His presence was always reassuring. Still handsome at his age, with a perfectly trimmed white beard, hair thinning on top, but bright blue eyes just like hers.
    “I need you dressed to receive guests,” the Duke said. “Hurry along now, please.”
    “Guests? How could they have come through the Perranese army?” Rina asked.
    The Duke said, “The guests are the Perranese army.”

CHAPTER THREE
    See, this is why you don’t sneak into the castle kitchens to steal a pastry , Alem thought as he walked the halls of the castle’s residential wing, a wicker laundry basket under each arm.
    Alem was a stable boy. No, head stable boy. He’d started as a shit-shoveler and had been raised to stable boy when he’d shown he could handle the horses. Now, five years later, he was head stable boy and would likely be stable master when old Nard retired or passed. The point was, Alem was definitely not a maid.
    But that didn’t matter to fat Bruny, who ran the