2024-09-19 00:01:47Jack turned, his demeanor instantly shifting as he sized up Alex.
Puffing out his chest like a blowfish, his fists clenched, and his eyes narrowed with hostility.
"So, you're the one extorting and harassing my sister, huh?" Jack sneered.
"Let me warn you: a pathetic man like you had better stay away from her. Keep pestering her, and you’ll be digging your own grave."
Alex snorted, amused.
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Chapter 762
The country did not finish processing it that day. It took about a week.One man had walked out of the Grand Convocation as the winner, and the country slowly worked out what the word winner actually meant in this case — because the wager had not been for money, and it had not been for pride.Every tower in the United State of Magic now belonged to Alexander.…It had never happened. Not once in five hundred years, not in the founding, not in any of the six wars the recording glass had settled.Seven colours. Seven traditions. Seven separate five-century institutions that had spent their entire existence refusing to sit at the same table for longer than an afternoon.All of them, now, under one name.And the name was White.…There was one other thing that came out of that afternoon, and for a lot of people it was the more interesting story.Beatrix Hargrove had walked into the betting hall before the first bout and put Regent Group, Ferrowgate, and every White Tower branch on the tab
Chapter 761
Nobody in that arena had a word for what they were watching.Twenty thousand people had come to see two grandmasters throw five hundred years of art at each other.What they were looking at instead was an old man on his side in the sand with his arm over his face, and a young man crouched on top of him, working.“He can’t cast,” somebody in the fourth row kept saying, to nobody. “That’s Yorick. That’s the third-ranked magician alive. Why can’t he cast?”Up in the commentary box, a man who had called this tournament for nineteen years had stopped speaking entirely.…Alex hit him once more and Yorick stopped trying to get his hands up.The referee came over the rail at a dead run, robes hiked up in both fists, and two stewards came after him, and all three of them arrived at once and none of them touched Alexander.“Enough. Enough — hold!” The referee got between them, breathing hard, and put one hand out at Alex without quite making contact. “The bout is concluded.”He turned to the a
Chapter 760
By the morning of the tournament, every person in the United State of Magic understood the terms, and they understood them in the simplest possible way.One man against five.Alexander of the White Tower would fight the best magician each remaining tower could put in the ring — Blue, Green, Yellow, Brown, Red — and if he lost a single bout to a single one of them, he lost everything.Regent Group, the fastest-growing company in the country. Ferrowgate, as big as Regent Group, on transfer. Five hundred and fifty-five towers.All of it handed to whoever put him down.And in exchange, every tower that lost to him handed over its own.…The five of them had met the night before to settle the order, in a room with no windows and seven chairs.“Blue first,” Brown’s master said. “If Blue wins, it ends there and the rest of us never have to walk into that ring at all.”“And if Blue loses?”Nobody enjoyed the silence that followed.“Then he takes Blue,” Green said quietly. “Every branch of it.
Chapter 759
“How dare he.”The grand elder of the Blue Tower was on his feet, which at seventy-eight he did not do often, and the messenger had gone the colour of the floor.“Three hundred years. Three hundred years this tower has never once been dragged into somebody’s private quarrel, and now a boy sends a letter demanding a fight between towers — our towers — as if we were street men rolling dice.”“Sire—”“Who does he think he is?”“Sire, it isn’t a demand.” The messenger held the paper out at arm’s length. “He sent terms.”…Blue’s hall was cold at that hour, blue glass in every window, three hundred years of careful men in portraits down both walls.The grand elder snatched the page and started reading it the way you read something you intend to be angry about.Then he stopped.He read it again, from the top, slower.Nobody in that hall said anything, and the silence went on so long that the messenger began to wonder whether he was allowed to leave.“Yes,” the old man said finally. “Tell hi
Chapter 758
Garrick Vail let out a breath that was almost a laugh.“Somewhere warm,” he said. “You’re threatening a fire magician with warmth.”His own front room. Nine feet between them. The lamp turned low on the wall, the ashes cold in the grate.“For people like me, kid, warm is nothing—warm is bathwater.” He clenched his fists, unleashing twin coils of fire around his hands.“You’re right.” Alex nodded. “I should have been clearer. The invitation is to hell.”Vail stopped smiling.“They tell me it’s very hot down there,” Alex went on. “And you being what you are, I thought — well. At least he’ll have something to play with.”“What do you want?”“You spent tonight in a room above a restaurant arranging my death.” Alex stood up. “You commanded three hundred men to burn us. So of course I came here to kill you. What else did you think this was?”Vail’s hand was already coming up.Nineteen years as the strongest fire magician in the Arcanum State, and he did not hesitate, and he did not waste a
Chapter 757
The inside of a minister’s carriage smells like lamp oil and old leather.“Why,” Alex said, “do you want to make an enemy of the White Tower?”The blade did not move. It lay along the side of Penn’s neck, above the collar, exactly where a man can feel his own pulse.“Do you think we’re easy to bully?”…“You—” Penn’s voice came out in pieces. “You dare. You dare point a sword at a Minister of Magic.”“That’s not an answer.”“Do you know what happens to a man who lays a hand on me?”“So it’s like this.” Alex sat back a little, which somehow made it worse. “When you sit in a room upstairs and arrange for four towers to come and end me, that’s government. But when I answer it, that’s a crime.”“That is not—”“You can build the knife,” Alex said. “I’m just not allowed to look at it. Who exactly do you think you are?”“You’ve already lost,” he said. “Do you understand that? It’s done. Four towers. Ferrowgate’s money behind every one of them. I signed it tonight, upstairs, over a good bottle
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