The Mage’s Apprentice comes out on April 14th! Here’s a snippet to whet your appetites. 😀
“You’re a man now. It’s past time you begin a trade. Jacob Miller has agreed to take you on in his smithy. You leave at dawn.”
Alain nodded. “Yes, sir.”
In all honesty, he’d been pledged at the age of seven, but as an only child, with an ailing mother, his apprenticeship to Jacob had been deferred to care for Mother. Now that she was gone, the time to leave home came at last.
A woman giggled from his father’s room. Mother had been in the earth for only a month before his father’s mistress — Mother’s cousin — had shown up at their doorstep. Younger than his mother had been at the time of her death, Terese resembled Maggie Caradas so much, Alain couldn’t bear to look at her. Neither Terese nor Father spoke a word about Mother, and Alain fell into the background — an inconvenience they would soon rid themselves of, come dawn.
Though Mother’s illness had been unknown, Alain had the feeling Father knew the cause, just as he’d been privy to what killed Belin two years ago today.
Laughter erupted from Father and Terese, filling the small home. Disgusted, Alain finished packing his meager belongings and started for the door. A knock stopped him. They rarely had visitors.
He opened the door and found himself face to face with a stranger in mail and leather armor. Though a helmet rested in the crook of one arm, Alain made out the border of the royal insignia. For a moment, he wondered if someone else suspected his father of Belin and Mother’s deaths and reported it to the queen.
“Good day,” the stranger said. “I am Lial Jarnan, Guard Captain to Her Highness, Queen Lysea.”
“Good day to you as well,” Alain replied, even more apprehensive than before. Why would the queen’s captain be here?
“Do I have the pleasure of addressing the master of the house?”
Alain shook his head, partly to clear it of wayward thoughts of his father’s arrest. This was no house call for a crime. “He’s… indisposed. Shall I fetch him?”
“No need. What is your name, son?”
“Alain Caradas, sir.”
“How old are you, Alain?” he asked.
“Nineteen, sir.”
Lial nodded. “You will do much better than an aging farmer.” He produced a scroll. “By order of Her Highness, Queen Lysea, you are hereby conscripted into the queen’s army. You are to report to the barracks in Salitras in three days’ time.”
Alain took the scroll and resisted the overwhelming urge to hug the captain. His chance to leave this place behind had just neatly presented itself, rolled into a sheet of parchment and tied with a bow.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I shall be there promptly.”
The captain bowed and turned. Alain watched as he swung up onto his saddle and rode away down the lane to the next house. Alain glanced down at the scroll as he shut the door.
“Who was that, boy?”
He showed his father the scroll. “Jacob Miller will have to find another apprentice.” At the expression of anger forming on his father’s face, Alain took great delight in handing him the scroll. “I’ve been conscripted.”
Erlin snatched it out of Alain’s hand, untied and unrolled it, and grimaced. “I see. Well, then. I suppose you are correct. When are you to report?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Alain lied. The sooner he got away from here, the better.
“Very well.” Erlin handed the scroll back to him. The ribbon drifted to the floor. “As you were.”
With that, Erlin left Alain and returned to his room, where his young wife no doubt waited naked on his bed. Alain left them to it. They couldn’t care less where he went, so long as he earned money to send home. Alain had absolutely no intention of sending a single copper. Slinging his pack over one shoulder, he glanced around the room he’d spent so long in as a child. Today, he began a new life — his real life.
Katherine Cook 