Chapter 2: Even Though She’s Stuck in the Tower, My Friend Gets What She Wants

Two days.

Two whole days without humming behind me. Two breakfasts eaten in peace. Two nights where I slept with the window open because nobody was watching it from a rooftop. I had forgotten what birds sounded like. Turns out birds are loud. Good for them.

The Tower stood on the north hill, tall, white, and polite about blocking out the sun. My grandfather built it. That is the kind of sentence that should come with a fanfare, but it really just means he stacked some stones with magic before he grew too old to stack them. The Tower was his gift to the kingdom—a place to study magic. Real magic. The kind that defended borders, melted armies, and did all the things my grandfather used to do on a Tuesday.

Getting in makes you elite. You skip regular school. You skip regular life. You wear a nice robe.

You also don’t leave.

Not for holidays. Not for birthdays. Not for childhood friends who cry into a lunch box on your behalf. You go in and stay in until the instructors decide you are finished.

I did not cry when I heard that rule. I want to make that very clear. I did not cry. I may have smiled for forty minutes without blinking, but I did not cry.

“Alfred. Guard up.”

“Guard is up.”

“Your guard is at your hip.”

“My hip is very important.”

“Alfred.”

The wooden practice sword came down on my shoulder with the exact force a father uses when he wants his son to feel it tomorrow. I staggered. I did not fall. Falling would have been worse.

My father stepped back and rolled his shoulders. He was not even sweating. I was sweating in places I did not know had sweat glands. My shirt was a rag. My hair was a damp mop. The morning sun kept hitting my eyes like it had a grudge.

“Again.”

“Can I have some water?”

“After.”

“I might die either before or after.”

“Then you die with a sword in your hand. Grandpa would be proud.”

“Grandpa would tell me to sit down.”

“Grandpa would tell you to stop whining.”

He raised his sword. I raised mine. The training yard smelled of dust, old wood, and the faint ghost of last night’s dinner from the kitchen beyond the wall. Somewhere, a chicken was squawking about something. I felt a deep kinship with the chicken.

“Come.”

I came.

Here is the secret my father knows and I wish he did not.

I am not weak.

I am lazy, which is a completely different sin.

I have watched my father train since I could hold a stick. I have watched guild swordsmen spar in the back courtyard. I have watched my grandfather’s old retainers try to teach me footwork while I pretended not to listen. I listened. I cannot help but listen. My body remembers what my mouth would never admit.

So when my father swung, I moved. Not elegantly. Not the way he wanted. But the wooden blade passed through empty air where my ribs had been, and my own blade was already coming up in a short, low cut that would have clipped his wrist if he were a slower man.

He was not a slow man.

He caught my blade on his, rolled it aside, and tapped the flat against my cheek.

“There you are.”

“That was luck.”

“That was reflex.”

“Those are the same words.”

“They are not.”

He stepped back again. He was smiling now. Small. At the corner of his mouth. He only ever smiled like that when he had caught me doing something I had been trying to hide.

“You dodged with your hips. Who taught you to dodge with your hips?”

“Nobody.”

“You taught yourself.”

“I tripped.”

“You tripped in the exact direction my sword was going.”

“Lucky trip.”

“Alfred.”

I lowered the practice sword. My arm was shaking. Not from weakness. From the lie. Holding a sword while lying about how good you are with it is surprisingly heavy work.

“Father.”

“Why do you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Pretend.”

I did not answer. I looked at the dirt. The dirt had a very interesting crack. The crack was shaped like a worm.

He waited. He is very good at waiting. I am very bad at waiting to be waited on.

“Because if I’m good, you make me guild leader.”

“Yes.”

“And I don’t want to be guild leader.”

“I know.”

“Then why do we do this?”

“Because your grandfather did not raise his grandson to die the first time somebody pointed a real sword at him.”

That shut me up.

He walked over and took the practice sword from my hand. He weighed it, nodded, then set it against the rack. He turned around, crossed his arms, and I knew from long, painful experience that a Father Speech was coming. I braced.

“Your grandfather was the same.”

“The same what?”

“The same clueless about girls.”

“…we are not having this conversation.”

“Absolutely clueless. A legend with a sword. A disaster with a smile. Your grandmother chased him across three countries.”

“Three.”

“Three. He thought she was being friendly.”

“…”

“He wrote in his journal, and I quote, ‘She is very devoted to my training. I am grateful for the company.’ She had followed him into a war zone, Alfred.”

“I hate this story.”

“You should love this story. It is your story.”

“It is not my story.”

“Sakura-san will make a lovely wife.”

I choked on nothing—just air. I coughed into my elbow for a full minute while my father stood there, arms crossed, eyebrows doing a little dance of pure paternal evil.

“She is in a tower.”

“Towers end.”

“She is sealed in a tower.”

“Seals break.”

“She is sealed in a tower by royal decree for an unknown length of time that I have been praying is forever.”

“Praying is sweet. You should pray at the wedding too.”

“Father.”

“I have already spoken to her mother.”

“YOU HAVE NOT.”

“I have not, but I enjoyed your face.”

My face was, I am certain, the color of a boiled shrimp. I turned away and stomped over to the water barrel and shoved my entire head into it. The cold hit my scalp like a slap. I stayed under for as long as my lungs allowed. When I came up, my father was still standing there, still with his arms crossed, still smiling that tiny awful corner-smile.

“You like her.”

“I do not like her.”

“You like her a little.”

“I like her the way a mouse likes a cat. The cat is very pretty, yet the mouse still runs.”

“Mm.”

“I am the mouse in this metaphor.”

“I understood, Alfred.”

“Just checking.”

He tossed me a towel. I caught it one-handed, which felt like showing off, so I immediately dropped it and picked it up again badly. He pretended not to notice. That was, in its own way, a kindness.

“Back to work.”

“I just drowned.”

“You dipped.”

“Spiritually, I drowned.”

“Sword up.”

I picked up the sword. I set my feet. I let my shoulders drop the way my body knew how to drop them when nobody was supposed to be looking. My father saw. Of course, he saw. His eyes went narrow and pleased at the same time, like a man who had found a copper coin he’d dropped years ago.

“There.”

“There what?”

“That stance. Hold it.”

“I am holding a stance.”

“You are holding your ground. Your real ground. Don’t lose it.”

He came in fast. Faster than before. Whatever game we had been playing earlier was over, and this was the other thing, the thing I had been avoiding my whole life. Real speed. Real weight. The practice sword whistled.

I moved.

I didn’t think. Thinking would have killed me. My feet slid on the packed dirt, and my blade came up at an angle I did not remember learning, and steel wood met wood in a clean, hard crack that rang up my arm and into my teeth.

He pressed. I gave ground. He pressed again. I gave ground again.

On the third press, I didn’t give ground.

I turned his blade aside with a flick of my wrist that came from somewhere very old in my bones, and for exactly half a second, the tip of my wooden sword was resting against the soft place under his jaw.

We both stood very still.

A bird yelled. The chicken yelled back.

“…lucky trip.”

“Shut up, Alfred.”

“Reflex, probably.”

“Shut up, Alfred.“

He stepped back. He was grinning now. Full-on grinning. The full, awful father grin, the one that meant he was going to tell this story at dinner for the next forty years, and there was nothing, nothing in this world I could do about it.

I lowered my sword. My whole arm was trembling. Not from fear. From the effort of not smiling back.

That was when the gate opened.

Not a herald this time. A royal messenger. Different coat. Black and gold, trimmed with the king’s sigil in heavy thread, the kind of outfit you wore only when what was in your hand mattered more than what was on your back. Two guards flanked him. Real guards. Palace guards.

He did not bow to my father. He bowed to me.

That was the part that made the air stop moving in my chest.

He held out a scroll. The wax seal on it was deep, deep red, and pressed with a crown.

“Alfred Takafumi II.”

“…yes.”

“By order of His Majesty the King, you are summoned to the Royal Academy of Magic. You will depart at dawn.”

The practice sword slipped out of my fingers and hit the dirt with a small, stupid thud.

Somewhere across the city, on the north hill, sunlight caught the white stone of a very tall tower.

I did not look at it.

I had a very bad feeling it was looking at me.