The Sartious Mage (The Rhythm of Rivalry) Read Online Free Page B

tried the next. Open.
    Thankfully, I had the wits to leave a trail of SE. They wouldn’t know which door I’d gone in, but there weren’t that many to try.
    The room I’d chosen probably wasn’t the best choice. It had one other exit, and perhaps exit wasn’t the right word, as all I appeared to be looking at were six tall windows side-by-side. They gave view to a wide walkway that led to another part of the palace. I threw a chair through one of the windows and leapt out after it. Only then did I realize this walkway was on the second story, overlooking a massive garden that was twice the size of my farm back home.
    As I ran across the walkway over the garden, I noticed there were hundreds of people mingling, some dancing to music, and then I recognized the song—I didn’t know the name, but it usually was played before a wedding. One of the King’s daughters was getting married, I remembered. It must be happening there.
    Could I somehow use that to get my cure? No. Not important, then. Someone started singing with one of the worst voices I’d ever heard. It was too loud not to notice, like a hyena with a broken leg.
    There was a door to the building ahead, making me realize there was probably a door to the room I’d just left as well. The King wasn’t going to like that I’d broken one of his windows for no reason, but the thought just made me more eager not to get caught. I checked behind me as I pulled open the door. A torrent of guards was flooding into the walkway.
    In a frantic scramble, I dragged a small wooden table behind me as I hustled through the room and threw open the next door. I left the table there in the doorway and set it on fire with a quick blast of Bastial and Sartious Energy mixed through my wand. The floors in every room were either stone or marble, so I wasn’t worried about burning the entire place down.
    Voices of doubt were starting to hammer away at my rage, especially since I was heavily winded from the sprinting and the spells. When I nearly fell down a set of spiraling steps, I decided I needed to hide somewhere to regain my stamina.
    I approached a bend in a wide hallway, but a buzz of chatter coming around the bend stopped me. I took a quick look around the corner—an entourage of women were following a young lady in white while she gave orders. They didn’t seem to see me before I retracted my head, but they would as soon as they made the turn. There was nowhere else to go but through them or back the way I’d come.
    So I jumped into the nearest room. Its door already was open, and I closed it after me.
    A lock! The door had a lock! But even before I could turn to see what kind of room it was, someone was jiggling the handle from the other side.
    “Why is this locked?” It was a girl’s voice, deep and thick with a noble accent. “Who has the key?”
    I flipped around to find a place to hide.
    “Hurry now,” said the same voice, now heavy with annoyance. “Unlock this door.”
    The room wasn’t very large, though still bigger than any one room in my farmhouse. It seemed to be a dressing room. There were two mirrors, each taller than me, mounted onto a massive wardrobe. The rest of the room was more of a storage place for maybe two hundred extravagant dresses hung along a series of metal bars strung from wall to wall.
    “Here it is, Lady Lisanda,” a soft-spoken servant said.
    I wiggled through to the back row of dresses, finding the tallest one and squeezing between it and the wall.
    “Don’t hand it to me, open it! Prince Varth Farro will be touching my hands soon. Wouldn’t it be wise not to dirty them with that filthy metal?”
    “Very wise,” a few voices answered while the key rattled into the hole.
    The door opened. I heard footsteps enter. “Leave me alone,” Lisanda Takary ordered them with contempt.
    “They’re expecting you shortly, my lady,” one responded.
    “They’ve waited this long for the wedding, they can wait a little longer. Don’t