This is a work of fiction written solely to entertain. All characters in sexual situations are 18 or older. Thanks for reading!
The masked man moved nimbly. Vel and Naevia followed him down the alley, and then lost sight of him as he turned left through a door.
"A trap?" Naevia stopped next to her brother, her shoulder pushing against his side. The dagger in her hands glittered with the faint afternoon light that angled in above the tan buildings around them. "Perhaps we should have the man send us a pigeon instead?"
"I don't think he trusts such communication." Vel took an uncertain step toward the door. "As our cousin said, pigeons are brought down with an arrow. Men, not so easily." He took another step and peered into the doorway. There seemed to be a narrow passage on the other side. "Let's follow him."
"Oh, you are brave,
Your Grace
. Guide me by your northern light." Naevia tried to make a joke of it, but her knees trembled as she followed Vel through the door. Once on the other side, they could see daylight from the other side of a narrow passage. They moved quickly through, staying close together, ignoring the doors on either side. When Naevia looked back, she saw that the door they had entered through was now shut behind them.
"It's not a trap. If it was, we would be dead." Vel exited the passage with his sister and looked around. They were in a wide, grassy field, squared off by the buildings around them. All around were scattered large pieces of masonry, sparse at first, them more of them the closer they got to the tower at the center of the square. The blocks, mostly rectangles, had implanted themselves in the grass with the force of their falls. Vel looked up and marveled at the broken tower above them. Even decaying as it was, it was truly a marvel. He tried to imagine what it had been like in its prime, when it had pierced the clouds.
"There he is." Naevia pointed to the grand double doors of the tower, standing partly ajar. The man in the silver mask looked back at them, his face glinting in the sun. He then disappeared into the tower. "Do we follow still?" She didn't like the thought of entering that decrepit building. Few dared to explore the old towers. And fewer still returned.
"We would be fools to enter a magic tower." Vel slid his sword back into its scabbard. There was no trap, and a sword wouldn't help him should a stone block decide to cave his head in.
"Perhaps others would be fools to follow us?" Naevia shrugged and put her knife back under her stola. "Or at least that sounds like Father's thinking. If the masked man is father."
"So, we go?" He took his sister's hand and approached the tower, listening for loosening stones from above. But all he heard were the sounds of the city from outside their abandoned square.
"Up, it seems." Naevia squeezed her brother's large hand as they entered the tower. The inside had clearly been looted, but showed none of the signs of vagrancy that one would expect from an abandoned building. There had been a grand entrance hall, and she tried to imagine it with elaborate sconces, beautiful tapestries, and fine furniture. The tile floor was cracked here and there where stones had fallen from the ceiling above. "The stairs are over there."
"Does it feel ... different in here?" Vel's senses throbbed with some indefinite portent. A raw buzzing faintly pressed at his skin. He followed Naevia to the stairs and climbed.
"I do feel ... something. Perhaps it's the shadow of the place's magic?" She moved ahead of Vel in the narrow stairway, her feet creaking each wooden step.
"Maybe." Vel watched her round butt ascend above him. He tried not to stare, but her form was captivating. Especially as her hips swayed under that nearly transparent stola.
They climbed and climbed. Each time they came to a floor, they looked out, but saw nothing of the masked man. After five floors, it was clear they had more courage than the looters had. Each floor boasted intricately engraved fixtures, grand furniture, and finely embroidered tapestries on the walls. All of it covered in dust, but otherwise unharmed. Up they went.
Naevia was a sweaty mess by the time they finally found the man waiting for them on the seventeenth floor. He was waiting in a hallway, but disappeared behind an oak door when they saw him.
"He's ... here." Naevia huffed and puffed as she walked down the hall and peered into the room. It was a suite with a bath and toilet through a door on the left, a great room in the middle, and a bedroom to the right. "Did they have plumbing on every floor?" Naevia was amazed.
"With magic, even the common man could live as a duke." The man's voice was no longer a croak. Both his children recognized Gallio's cool speech immediately. He stood in the doorway to the bedroom and removed his mask. "Well, maybe not the common man, but at least those that could afford to live in the towers."
"Father," Naevia and Vel said. She rushed into Gallio's arms, but Vel hung back.
"It is good to see you, child." Gallio patted her red hair and pushed her away. He looked at his tall, skinny nineteen-year-old son. The lad looked awkward and gawky. Nothing like Fortinbras. "Is it true? Your brother's gone?"
"Yes. The queens regent made me the Duke of Ostia Novus." Vel crossed his arms over his chest uncomfortably. They knew from his letter that he was alive, but looking at his father's face was akin to seeing a ghost. "Fortinbras has disappeared. But now that you're back --"
"He is dead." Gallio's thin line of a mouth turned down in a frown. "I should not have left him as I did. He was the best of us, but too young to lead."
"But father ..." Naevia didn't want to contradict him, but clearly Vel was the best of the Tullius clan. Fortinbras was a bully.
"And, to correct you, Vel, I am not back." Gallio shook his head. "You two should not have come. You bring trouble with you."
"We brought no one." Naevia retreated to her brother and put her arm around his waist protectively.
"Do you take me for a fool?" Gallio retrieved a spyglass from under his cloak. As he looked out the window, he pulled it to its full length. "Look down there, in the alley between the market and apothecary." He held out the spyglass to his children.
