The mood in the city of Crelt was grim. It was no wonder: its population was nearly doubled by Charles’s army and its camp followers and the households of the young nobles and politicians who made up his court. And they had just suffered their greatest setback since the war had truly begun.

It wasn’t just a military defeat, James reflected as he stalked through the city’s streets. The loss of the Battle of the River Clirith was a humiliation, even though the retreat had been orderly and they’d only lost a few hundred men. They were waging war; lost battles were near-inevitable.

It was how they had lost. The extraordinary magic wielded by the enemy. Felix Blackthorn was one of the most talented magicians alive, everyone knew that, but even he wasn’t capable of turning an entire battlefield into a swamp without being noticed. Even he couldn’t have turned day to night and peeled back clouds to reveal the stars.

James still felt a chill at the thought of it. He knew only too well how fortunate they had been to escape total destruction. And yet that wasn’t the worst of it: it was the otherworldly woman who had worked such great and terrible feats of magic.

He reached a stables that had belonged to an inn before the army had suborned it, stopped and leaned against its wall. It was a bright spring day, though the sun hadn’t yet gained its full summer strength, and he unbuttoned his jacket. And waited. And listened.

Sure enough, on the other side of the wall were a pair of stable-hands, talking as they worked. He heard the splash of water, and then a young voice with a thick Creltish accent: “You must have heard what they said about her!”

“Theola,” said another voice, older and male. “The Mage Theola, returned after five hundred years.” The words dripped scepticism. James was glad of it.

“My brother, he has a friend who was there,” the first voice replied, sounding a little affronted. A horse whickered softly. “He said she made the stars rise on a cloudy day, and that her voice – even over the noise of battle, everyone heard her clearly – “

That voice still gave James nightmares: it was not a human voice.

“What did she say?” asked the older voice. James struggled a little to guess the tone: curious? Still sceptical?

“I am the Mage Theola. I have returned. I fight for the true king.”

The true king. Felix, not Charles.

If this was true, it was the end.

“It can’t be,” the older voice said. It was easier this time to recognise the uncertainty behind the words.

“If it is,” the first voice replied, “if it is. Then we’re fighting for the wrong side.”

James had heard enough. He pushed himself away from the wall, whirled and marched straight into the stables. The main door was shut but not locked, so he waved his hand and opened it with magical force without breaking stride.

“Oi!” shouted the stable-mistress, an old woman with blindingly white hair. “What d’you think you’re – “

James pulled back the edge of his jacket to reveal the badge pinned to his shirt. The eagle and the oak: Charles’s symbol. Only his inner circle were permitted to wear it.

“Oh – forgive me, my lord – “

James ignored her, looking around for the right door. There it was, directly on the left, leading into the stable where the man and the boy he’d heard talking were at work.

“Sir?” said the man, flicking an anxious glance at James’s badge. The boy dropped his pitchfork.

“Theola,” said James with as much force as he could muster, a not inconsiderable amount, “has not returned. The woman who fought for the usurper at Clirith was an imposter, no more a Mage than he the rightful King. The Mages are dead. Immortality is a myth. The stars are on our side. And the next person I hear saying otherwise shall be whipped.”

The horse slammed a hoof against the ground and exhaled loudly. James was a magician and so less used to horses than most, but even he knew the signs of an agitated animal. He didn’t much care.

“Sir – sir, you’re disturbing the horse – “ the man stuttered.

“Have I made myself clear?” asked James in the same cold tone.

Silence except from the horse, which snorted again and gave James a distinctly unfriendly look.

“Have I made myself clear?” repeated James. He hoped they didn’t push him; he’d made his point and didn’t particularly want to enforce it.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Be about your business.” James spun around and left. He had no more time to waste on these stable hands. As he marched out he cursed the anti-teleportation wards that surrounded the city; this was far less dramatic and more time-consuming an exit than it would have been to simply vanish into thin air.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It couldn’t be helped, though: having enemy magicians teleport into their base of operations would be completely unviable, and adding conditions to the wards so that friendly magicians could do so would make them far more complex. And the more complex the ward, the easier it was to break. That counted for a great deal when the other side had magical superiority.

He’d spent enough time clearing his mind and assessing the mood of the city. It was time to return to the rightful king’s side.

The Duchess of Crelt was one of Charles’s most ardent supporters among the nobility. She hated the new laws Felix had passed which increased the power of magicians at the expense of non-magical landowners like herself, and it had only taken the promise of repealing those laws to earn her loyalty.

That was why the city was their stronghold now, and why Charles’s residence was now the ducal palace in its centre. James had been surprised that she was prepared to cede her own home to them, but it certainly showed she was committed to the cause.

He’d barely set foot in what they were calling the Central Square – it was a mimicry of the Central Ring in the capital Ryk, held by Felix for the foreseeable future – when he was hailed by one of the many guards who patrolled the area. “Lord Wilde! Where have you been? His Majesty has been asking for you for the last half an hour!”

“I shall go to him at once,” James replied, not bothering to justify his absence. He had been planning to go to Charles at once anyway.

He was well known in these circles as one of Charles’s most powerful magicians and his close friend besides, so he was unchallenged as he marched through the palace corridors. Charles had chosen luxury over accessibility for his apartments, one of the few luxuries he afforded himself, and so it took a good five minutes for James to reach them from the Central Square.

A footman stood outside the door, but he swept James a shallow bow as he saw him approach before smoothly opening it. “Lord Wilde is here, your Majesty.”

Charles was sat at the desk in the room opposite, listening to a woman James recognised as Olivia Fielding, a logistics officer. But as he saw the door open, he held up a hand and stopped her mid-sentence. “James! I was beginning to wonder if you were lost again!”

He was never going to live down that incident from the beginning of their occupancy of the city, was he?

“Thank you, Olivia. I believe I understand the essentials of the situation. We shall continue our discussion at a later time.”

Fielding was clearly unhappy with that, but she bowed deeply and left. James stepped to one side to let her pass, and then entered his friend’s apartments.

Charles was worried. He did a good job of hiding it, but James had known him intimately for years. The signs were easy enough to spot once you knew them: the slight furrow of the brow, the tension in the way he held his hands, the narrowed eyes.

“James,” he said. “Would you set up privacy wards?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Normally he called Charles by his first name, but at a time like this he could probably use the reminder that he was King, even if he was not crowned.

He had made enough privacy wards over the last four years that it was practically second nature; he hardly had to think about tracing the line of the room out in chalk or drawing the complex set of interlocking circles on the door, and channelling in enough magic to fuel the ward for as long as it would be needed was simplicity itself.

“It is done.”

“Good,” said Charles, and slumped forwards, letting his head fall into his hands.

“Charles – “

“Tell me truly,” he said. “Do you think that Theola fights for the usurper?”

James hesitated for a long moment. He wanted to tell his friend the same thing as he had told the stable hands (though without the threat of whipping, of course). But that would go against the promises they had made each other when they were still teenagers, before any of this began.

People will lie to me, James. They’ll tell me what they think I want to hear, give me advice that is biased towards what they want of me, hide ugly truths from me. I want there to be one person who will never do that, who will always tell me the truth, however little I want to hear it. Will you do that for me, James?

I swear I will.

He’d kept that oath ever since, and he would not break it now. “I don’t know.”

Charles winced but said “Elaborate.”

“The feats she seemed to perform are beyond the power of any known mortal magician. But I say seemed because they could be faked. Trickery and illusion could give the appearances of having done far more than was truly done. It could have been a great ritual performed by dozens of magicians working in concert. And even if she does have that power, who’s to say that makes her who she claims to be? There simply isn't enough evidence to work with.”

“Do you think you could know, if you were given more evidence? If, for instance, you worked and fought and lived beside her?”

James narrowed his eyes. Charles was scheming something, wasn’t he? “Probably, yes.”

“Good. Then that is what I want you to do.”

There it was. “To be clear,” James said. “You want me to infiltrate the enemy camp and get close to this supposed Theola in order to find out who and what she really is.”

“Precisely. It shouldn’t be too difficult: you heard the rumours of the returned Mage who fought for the rightful King – “ Charles couldn’t keep the bitter note out of his voice – “and wanted to join her in that fight. You’ll need a false identity, of course, but you and I are no strangers to that.”

“No,” said James.

“You refuse an order from your King?”

If Charles had said that to anyone else, it would have been a deadly threat. It wasn’t, not with James. “With respect, your Majesty – “ he mirrored Charles and switched back to the formal address – “I am needed here. We lack for magicians of the highest ability already, and who knows when there will be an emergency for which I am needed?”

“Your capability as a magician is precisely why I must send you. It is no use sending someone who does not understand enough of what they see to tell if it is real or not. You are the only capable one I can trust with this task, and it must be done.”

Charles had a point. He’d set his mind on this, it seemed, and once set his mind was nearly impossible to change. James resigned himself to accepting this mission. But he had to tell Charles the real reason he had refused at first.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“I know. I don’t want you to leave me either. But if it is a choice between your companionship now and the throne in years to come? That is no choice at all.”

“Two questions,” James said, “and then I will obey you.”

“Ask them.”

“Do you think that Theola fights with the usurper?”

“It is impossible. The Mages lived five hundred years ago. Immortality is a myth.”

The same words James had used against the stable hands earlier. But where he had said them with force and venom, Charles sounded like he was only trying to convince himself.

“When I have the answer,” asked James, “what should I do?”

“If she is a fraud, then you must of course expose her. If she is not… then you must do what is necessary to preserve my claim to the throne.”

James didn’t know what frightened him more: the fact that his closest friend had just tacitly ordered him to kill a Mage… or the fact that he knew without doubt that if it came to that, he would obey that order.