(Click for links to previous chapters.) My guards are still in a snit the next morning, despite knowing for a fact that I spent the night in my own room and Alan spent the night wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the main hall, just like almost everyone else. (He would use Destroyer’s … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 60

(Click for links to prior chapters.) More days pass as Taver prioritizes fixing the holes Orsin created in the defenses and I decide what projects we can undertake on the civil side. The scribe, bless him, kept track of how many people suggested the same thing, and the city aqueduct/fountain system is the winner by … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 59

(Click for links to previous chapters.) So Taver and I divide the work and start trying to set Blythe to rights. Taver, of course, takes charge of the city defenses, determining what weaknesses have developed due to Orsin’s syphoning of funds, and setting priorities for fixing them.  I get to spend time deciding the amount … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 58

(Click for links to previous chapters.) I decide it is time for another walk around the city and demand Alan join me. He doesn’t want to leave the grimoires until Gregor promises to put a guard on them, which insults the priests until Alan explains that he wouldn’t want some other Sorcerer to sneak in … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 57

(Click for links to previous chapters.) Breakfast is too early and too crowded. Leumr had believed Gregor’s ‘first light’ command and had beat on the keep door until the guards let him in despite that it was still a good hour before dawn. Of course, this woke up Alan. Three of the priests are there … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 56

(Click for links to previous chapters.) We search Orsin’s room in waves, first Alan, a priest by his side, slowly and carefully finding nothing. Then Gregor accompanied by a master carpenter and a master stonemason. Conners, Travers and Leumr wait in the doorway, the first two impatiently and the last gratefully. I lean against the … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 55

(Click for links to all previous chapters.) I send for the tattooed prisoner and then wait. For him to be brought across the city, stripped, a ‘map’ of his tattoos made, and as many words translated as possible. Kale reports to me as I otherwise sit alone at my table in the shadows.  My guards … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 54

(Click for links to previous chapters.) Kale has provided a pavilion and chair for me just outside the keep, so I can talk to the long line of people who think they have something important to tell or to ask me. One or two of them may be right, but to find those one or … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 53

(Click here for links to previous chapters.) The mercenaries are bundled off to a barracks, to be watched by the City Guard, and those released from the cells are sent home as family comes forward to claim them. Captain Conners is carried away by the City Guard, with orders from me to rest and heal … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 52

(Click for links to previous chapters.) Orsin meets us, standing alone at the Keep’s main door, smiling. I hide my concern, I have a lot of practice not showing what I feel, and I do it well. But if he is smart, if he greets us and goes back to court willingly, we might not … Continue reading Spire: Chapter 51