Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (detective books to read txt) 📕

“You may have a point there,” I said.

“Oh, I have points everywhere,” Leah said. A wicked-looking stiletto appeared in her hand for a moment, and then vanished just as fast.

“I thought you said that this was going to be more of a relaxed vacation sightseeing?” I said. “I didn’t realize that I should have been coming along armed.”

“Hope for the worst, prepare for the best,” Leah said.

“Don’t you mean, prepare for the worst, hope for the best?” I asked.

Leah considered this a moment. “No,” she said after a little while, “I think I prefer my way better.”

Chapter 9

As we approached the mammoth gates into the city of Manafell, my thoughts went quiet within my head. The sheer weight and size of the place squashed all the buzzing internal chattering into silence so that it was only me and my eyes and the great weight of stone in front and above me.

It was a bizarre sensation to be standing outside of a proper fortified city. Of course, I had seen such impressive and intimidating sites on the silver screen, and so there was this odd feeling of familiarity to it, almost as if I had been here before.

But all the tens of millions of dollars of cinema production in movies like Kingdom of Heaven or The Lord of the Rings or Troy could not emulate the feeling of weight and impregnability that those walls and their towers, which marked the outer limit of Manafell proper, impressed upon me.

The walls must have been as thick as four pickup trucks parked end-to-end. They were slightly overhanging so that scaling them was impossible. They were topped with crenellations, where stone-faced guardsmen patrolled. Steel glittered menacingly from brightly polished swords, shields, and chainmail. Every single one of the guards was dressed in an ensemble of bright green cloak, meticulously shined armor, and lethal looking morning-stars. The morning-stars were not pretty weapons, but they conveyed a sense of seriousness to the men holding them. They could be quite easily used to cave in the heads of anyone who fancied climbing a scaling ladder.

It was, undoubtedly, an impressive display of military might. However, I couldn’t help but notice that the soldiers’ helmets were almost identical to those worn by the men manning the border burrow. There was just no getting around the fact that they were very penis-like. It was a bit of a faux pas on the part of the chief armorer or whoever decided on the designs of the helmets.

The open gates were so big that they could have been repurposed as a keel for a war galley. The iron bolts studding the massive planks were as big as my fist. It was, all in all, a very serious gate and matched the four stern-faced guards standing on either side of them. Most of the people hurrying through the gates kept their eyes down and the faces averted from the guards, as if catching their eyes was a sure way to get yourself noticed and into a spot of hot water.

We left the pegasi tethered in a stable that some enterprising gentleman dwarf had set up just outside the gates. Leah flicked the dwarf a couple of coins and told him that it would be in his best interests not to do or say anything that would offend the great steeds.

“Not a problem, madam, not a problem at all,” the dwarf croaked in a froggy voice. “You can trust me to look after these fine fellows.”

Thunder snorted so hard that I was sure I saw one of the boards in the wall flap outward.

“Ladies, I mean! I do beg your pardon!” the dwarf said hurriedly, trying to soothe the pegasus.

“Are you not worried about leaving the pegasi with that guy?” I asked Leah as we walked away. “Pegasi can’t be all that common, can they? What if he tries to sell them on to someone else?”

Leah snorted. “Gods, I’d love that little chap to try. Thunder and Lightning would have him sailing over Manafell like a comet with a single kick.”

“Why couldn’t we just ride them in?” I asked.

Leah gave me a look. “Queen Hagatha likes a nice clean city,” she said. “And the thing about pegasi, horses, mules, and all the rest is that they have so little regard for humanoids. They’re quite happy to relieve themselves anywhere.”

“Lucky for some, eh?” I said drily.

“That’s what I’ve always thought,” Leah said, with no trace of irony in her voice.

We joined the river of travelers and traders, shadowy figures, and fantastically attired adventurers, and headed through the gates. Unlike the rest of the bustling pack of folk surrounding us, Leah made no attempt at hiding her face. She waved to the guards like an excitable child, not caring a whit for their flinty eyes and set jaws.

“Morning!” she said to an armored elven woman standing nearest to us. “Any idea whether the Queen’s in today?”

The elf looked dourly at Leah, in her holey blue woolen sweater and with her bright pink hair. “Have you got an invitation to tea or something?” the elf asked, her tone about as rude as it was possible to be without resorting to cussing.

“Tea? Gods, I hope not,” Leah said pleasantly. “Surely, she’d have something stronger than tea?”

The guardswoman did not get a chance to answer, because we were buffeted along by the horde of people shoving and pushing to get into the city. We flowed through the gate, under a portcullis, and found ourselves in a huge crescent-shaped piazza. I felt a hand on my wrist, and Leah dragged me out of the flow of incoming traffic and up onto an ornately carved fountain shaped out of glass and marble to resemble a spreading larch tree.

I took a breath,