Rute gave Oliva another helpless look before speaking softly. "Oliva, Aislin... please invite our guests to come out with us!"
The entrance to Sia Tower was already right before them... the hundred or so mages standing at the doors, and the three Ninth-Circle Mages at their head, were clearly visible.
Although Rute now understood that, in Sia Tower, any important matter probably required all three to act together, and no single faction could appear as the representative of the entire Mage Tower.
Still, when three Ninth-Circle Mages came out to welcome him at once, he could only accept this excessive courtesy and respond with due politeness.
Yet Rute could not help feeling a little puzzled... a Mage Tower could never have an even number of rulers with a say in its affairs.
Voting only produced quick results when there was an odd number.
An even number? Hah... someone was bound to keep switching sides like a spinning top, anytime, anywhere.
Getting a firm agreement then would be far too difficult... even knowing it was a bad idea, someone would always pay too high a price for greater benefits.
Rute did not believe the woman in charge of Sia Tower could fail to see that.
So... did that mean another Mage Tower would soon fall into Sia Tower's clutches?
Rute knew very well that, for the next hundred years, or even several hundred, even if Black Mystery Tower was publicly designated Sia Tower's fourth power bloc, it would be so in name only.
Abstention was the only vote they could cast... that fellow from Kament Tower was still around, after all!
Whatever private schemes he might currently harbor, in public he would obey the orders of the Archmage who controlled his soul.
And the other Archmages of Sia Tower certainly could