The public speculation about my powers made me think that Uproar wouldn’t make a play for me unless I was in a vulnerable position, but this didn’t comfort me much.

  But no one openly answered Uproar’s plea for aid. Hawkhurst’s rustic setting ensured no mailboxes stood beyond our walls. That he couldn’t receive private communications made me feel confident I only faced a single player and not a strong one. If combat prowess wasn’t his advantage, I had to watch out for subterfuge and cunning.

  The situation would have been different had I placed the mailbox between the roundhouses or anywhere else beyond the castle walls. I’d located our mailbox by the manor out of convenience. Sieges numbered among the last things on my mind when I’d placed it.

  When Ida spotted me going to the great hall for breakfast, her casual mention of Fabulosa’s letter dispelled my hunger.

  I ran to the mailbox to retrieve it.

  It was great to hear from her, but she was so far away that she couldn’t help fight the orcs.

  I wrote back, catching her up on tricking Uproar to send the emperor after my sword. I told her about the emperor’s army, his bugbears, and siege machines and explained how I played Uproar by linking details about the new sword I made from the Artilith.

  Linking information about Gladius made no sense. If Fabulosa and I made it to the final two, I saw no reason to spoil the only advantage I might have against her. Digging beneath her feet would hamper her effectiveness with the Phantom Blade. I wanted to make her jealous, and she’d see its details the next time we met, but there wasn’t a reason to let her prepare for it.

  I asked Fabulosa which primal spells the emperor might use, and her reply arrived after breakfast.

  As time passed, the orcs worked on several projects. The first involved a trebuchet, which they finished in only a few days. We enjoyed watching their unsuccessful attempts to quarry stone from the westernmost edge of Hawkhurst Rock. A certain schadenfreude made their struggles hilarious, and the dwarves shouted jeers while the orcs worked. The town, bored with waiting, enjoyed the diversion.

  We watched them from the parapets, inside the wooden hoardings that sheltered us from elements and arrows. Though outnumbered, we felt more secure than our enemy, toiling below on foreign ground.

  They worked so hard that they didn’t bother touching the town’s structures, aside from sweeping them for spies and saboteurs.

  The teasing ceased when teams of orcs carried stones from upriver to the trebuchet. A hush fell across both sides as engineers weighed the stones before loading the payload into its sling.

  The smoothed boulder flew short of its mark when they launched it, rebounding harmlessly into the flooded moat. Orcs made adjustments to their machine before launching a second.

  Since the trebuchet team worked 300 yards away, well outside our range, we could only watch them adjust the counterweight and hoist another round of ammo. They aimed at the western wall midway between towers. I know this because they struck their target.

  When the projectile landed, neither side cheered when a progress bar appeared over the wall. It looked like a health meter from a nameplate, and its structural integrity lowered by 3 to 1,497 points. The orcs expected much more damage—we hoped for less.

  Angus broke the silence. “This bodes ill for us. Even a wee drip can draught a keg.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Fin turned to Yula. “Will they pound their attack drums at night like the goblins?”

  Yula shook her head without tearing her eyes from the construction sites, a gesture echoed by several Fort Krek soldiers.

  Fin asked another curious question. “What time would ye say is a likely hour of attack?”

  Yula squinted at the question. “Dawn. Eet gives whole day for battle. Feast by bonfire at night.”

  The discussion annoyed Angus, and he turned to Fin. “How does it make one nugget of difference when they pooch the castle? Ye hoping to get a good kip in before things get mental?”

  Fin flapped his hand at Angus and stalked off the parapet to sulk.

  Fifteen minutes later, the orcs weighed, chiseled, and loaded another rock into the trebuchet. It landed in the same section. The wall’s structural points dropped to 1,495. I tried using Mineral Mutation to change the projectiles to cotton, but their mass proved too much for the game’s targeting reticule to affect them. Unfortunately, the magic changed minerals to things other than minerals, so I couldn’t change our walls to diamond or steel.

  Looking through the Eagle Eyes, I studied the trebuchet. The contraption rolled on wheels across a wooden track. “Yula, are those for mobility? Is that to protect them from Glowing Coals?”

  The orc slowly shook her head. “Trebuchet on wheels has greater power.”

  I grunted. “Well, it also protects it from Glowing Coals. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t see how I could get within 30 yards.”

  “Zey are at maximum range. Eet will take many days to destroy wall.”

  Corporal Lazaar pointed to construction projects in the distance. “They’ll hit us with siege towers when the wall falls. Multiple breaches at once is the best way to minimize their losses.”

  I followed her gaze. Other undertakings included two siege towers with gravel roads leading to different wall sections. Half of the orcs hauled baskets of gravel from faraway mountain streams to make the path. Their slow progress matched the incremental progress made by the trebuchet. The rock road solved issues with both mud and Glowing Coals. And they designed their war machines for heavy-duty action. Like the trebuchet, they’d built the siege towers on long, straight logs like rolling pins.

  We might repel a single breach, but the emperor worked in redundancy. I pointed to a canvas long enough to house a circus. “What are they building in that big tent?”

  Yula shook her head and frowned. “Eet ees too small for siege tower. Too beeg for housing.”

  “Is there a war machine that can’t be built in the rain?”

  The orc commander shook her head again. “I have seen zees before. Eet ees great sack of hot air. Eet carries powder zat burn eyes.”

  Angus spat on the ground. “Quicklime. ‘Tis the basest way to kill a foe. The kindest thing it does is blind ye. It’ll swelter your skin right off. Not even deep elves use it.”

  I exhaled heavily at the news. I expected us to repel one breach, but two siege towers and a wall collapse seemed the least of our worries. What looked like a circus tent would turn into a hot-air balloon loaded with chemical weapons at the time of battle. “Will the ballistas take care of it?”

  Angus answered before Yula. “They need only rise high enough to avoid our fire. Ye can see by the design—ballistas shoot for distance, not height.”

  “Can we modify it?”

  “Not without Greenie.”

  Yula arched her arm upward. “Zey go to great height before attack.”

  Of course, the balloons would be too high. They wouldn’t bother making them if opponents could shoot them down with ballista bolts or arrows. The Boulder Bullets wouldn’t be a factor against them, either.

  Beaker wouldn’t be a help. The orcs knew we had a pet griffon circling overhead. They wouldn’t go through all the trouble of launching an attack zeppelin if one noisy griffon could undo their effort. Only a tiny amount of damage dispelled my Familiar. I couldn’t count on him to foil a chemical attack. If the orcs trained wyverns, attack bats, or flying Familiars of their own, it would do us little good to send him after the balloon.

  As the days passed, the orcs erected their towers and lengthened their roads. The tower’s upper platform reached enough to span our moat and connect to the parapets.

  Unfortunately, the mud stopped at Hawkhurst Rock, so the enemy lost no troops constructing the path. Mineral Mutation wouldn’t stop them. I couldn’t transform enough of the rock surface to impede the imminent invasion. Even if I undermined enough area, they could steer the towers toward another section of wall.

  Maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew, but baiting an emperor seemed the only way to access the last relic.

  I wrote another letter to Fabulosa outlining the enemy’s strategy of dumping quicklime on us before making three breaches. I could only be in one place at a time and didn’t see how we could avoid being swamped by their superior numbers.

  I reread the message, hoping to glean a clue to what surprise lay in wait. Our trip to Fort Krek included a side trip to Malibar. Fabulosa and I had taken separate carriages the first day, and she claimed not to have found any magic items. Had that been a fib?

  Excited at the prospect of a mystery gift, I went to Fabulosa’s old room and knocked on the door. Ida, its current occupant, answered. “Ida, can I check something out in your room?”

  “My room?” She stepped aside as I entered.

  I moved aside bedrolls and mattresses people used for a makeshift flophouse, temporary lodging while the enemy held the town. I shuttered the windows and pushed aside the bedding.

  My haste to access her quarters brought out the worst in Ida—the old Ida who spotted a con or insult with my every gesture. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  Beaker screamed at me from outside the manor, mirroring Ida’s mood.

  Closing her shutters antagonized Beaker. Preventing him from roosting on the windowsill drove him crazy—whether from curiosity or the injustice of being forbidden to visit Fabulosa’s old room, I couldn’t say. I only wanted to play it safe and cut out variables for whatever surprise my old partner had in store.

  I unsummoned Beaker rather than put up with the indignation. “I’m sorry, pal. It’s just a precaution.” I flipped blankets and mattress set on the floor, feeling for the hidden cache.

  “A precaution?” Ida stood with hands on her hips while I felt along the floorboards. “I don’t see the sense of tearing apart my room. Do it in yours if you’re so inclined to disassemble the building.”

  “Fabulosa said she hid something in her old apartment. That’s here.”

  “If it’s gold, it belongs to the settlement. You’ve barely worked off 6 percent of the manor—and I’m using the word ‘work’ in the broadest definition.”

  “It’s not gold. Fab said it would protect us.” I cast Detect Magic, but nothing in the southwest corner glowed.

  Ida picked up on my consternation. “What’s wrong now?”

  I felt around the floor for anything loose, trying my best to ignore Ida. “It’s not glowing, so it’s not magic. It’s going to be tricky to find.”

  “Is it alive? I hope she hasn’t been keeping rats under my floorboards.”

  “I don’t know. But it’s supposed to be something to help us.”

  “So why do we need to close the windows? Is it explosive? I’ve bought my clothes with my own money. If you set fire to them, repayment should come from your pocket, not the settlement’s. It’s hard enough balancing the books without mixing funds.”

  “Nothing is going to explode. At least, I hope it won’t.”

  Ida shuddered. “If it’s critters, please deal with them immediately. I’ll not have creepy crawlies loose in my belongings.”

  My fingers finally identified the loose floorboards. I lifted it, revealing a long canvas roll labeled with a crude letter Z written in charcoal. When I lifted the package, it slipped from my hands, tumbled across the floor, and stuck to the wall.

  I rolled away at the sudden movement.

  Ida fled the room, arms in the air, shrieking. “Bats! I knew it! There are bats in my room!”

  I shielded my face, but the bundle remained still, yet stuck to the wall. Using Move Object, I plucked it from a safe distance and guided it into my grasp. Nothing inside the bag moved, but it gently pulled away from me.

  I unwrapped the bundle and laughed. “Oh, Fab. You are a sneaky little partner.”