Read The Innocent Mage for Free Online

walled City, they were girded by an impressive pale cream sandstone wall with a number of entrances each guarded by a pair of liveried Olken resplendent in crimson and gold. The two sentries decorating the gates that Dathne led him towards straightened at their approach, smiling.
    ‘Morning to you, Mistress Dathne,’ they murmured, waving her under the stone archway with a single, disciplined glance for the unkempt stranger tagging at her heels.
    ‘And to you, Pamfret, Brogan,’ Dathne replied. Taking Asher’s elbow again, she hustled him along a raked blue gravel pathway that wound through lavish garden beds.
    After the hubbub of the market square and their breathless rush up the sloping High Street, the garden’s tranquillity was like a cool draught of ale. Asher reclaimed his elbow and slowed, sucking in the perfumed air. Took a moment to consider his surroundings. To his far right rose the pure white walls of the palace, and to his left, just visible behind a belt of massive oak trees, a single column of midnight blue stone pointed fingerlike to the sky.
    Dathne caught him staring at it. ‘The Prince’s Tower.’
    ‘You mean he lives up there?’
    ‘And works. Why? What’s wrong with that?’
    Skin crawling, Asher stared at the stone spire. ‘Houses ain’t s’posed to be tall,’ he muttered, remembering Restharven’s cosy stone cottages. ‘It ain’t natural. What if it fell down?’
    Dathne laughed. ‘It’s nearly three hundred years old, Asher. If it was going to tumble it would have done so long before now. Besides, the Doranen don’t build anything without stitching it up tight with magic. Trust me, it’s perfectly safe.’
    ‘You’ve been in there?’
    ‘Of course I have.’ She started walking again, fingers plucking at his sleeve to keep him with her. ‘Dozens of times. I often have books the prince finds interesting. Hes probably the finest scholar in the kingdom, you know, Reads the original Doranen texts as fluently as if they’d been written yesterday.’
    ‘Oh aye?’ said Asher, profoundly uninterested. ‘Goodfoi him.’
    She looked at him sidelong, one eyebrow raised, a of mischief in her eyes. ‘Do you like books?’
    He’d never owned a book in his life. He could read, after a fashion; Ma had insisted on enough schooling for that, at least, before the wasting sickness whittled her to bones and eyes and put her in the ground. Once was dead and gone, though, the sea had swallowed him whole and school had become a haphazard affair, days there as scattered as flotsam on Bottlenose Beach. He shrugged. ‘Books? Don’t think on ‘em much one way or the other.’
    ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Too busy fishing, I expect.’
    Was she laughing at him? He glared. ‘Fishin’s a grand life. I ain’t found one grander.’
    ‘Did I say it wasn’t?’ She raised her hands in mock surrender. ‘You’re too easily prickled, Asher of Restharven, I don’t know anything of where you come from. Could you’re the most important man in the village, and if that’s so then I’m pleased for you. But a word to the wise now. Here you’re the new boy and Matt won’t stand brangling. It upsets the horses, and in his eyes there’s greater sin. Is your skin so tender you can’t take a little teasing?’
    Asher felt himself burn. With six brothers unloving and Da pickled and stewed and blinded with grief, he’d learned early to meet aggravation with greater aggravation or pay heavy price. He scowled. ‘Any brangling won’t be ‘cause started it. A body’s got a right to earn a livin’ without havin’ to sleep with one eye open ‘cause some iggerant shit-shoveller can’t leave well enough alone. And if your

    precious Matt ain’t a man to see that, then I’ll turn round right now and find m’self a different job.’
    She stopped and swung about then, bony fingers closing hard on his wrist. In her face, a riot of uncertainty. Her eyes, plain brown and piercing, searched his face over