Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (15 page)

“Ma’am,” prompted the stretcher bearer.

Sara flicked cool eyes to him, and he grimaced, pressing his lips into a thin,
silent
line. She said, “One more moment. Just one more. Ezekiel,” she said, leaning over him. “
What
were you wrong about?”

Ezekiel’s lips moved again. Sara watched his eyes twitch as well. It reminded her as nothing so much as a dog in a sleep. Dogs dreamed. Not many people knew that. But they did, and Sara had had a particularly small terrier as a child that had loved to chase her prey in her sleep. Her little legs would move like she was running after it in leaps and bounds. Her ears would twitch back and forth when her legs paused, listening for the prey’s movements. And when she had caught the scent again or heard the little rabbit’s feet hit the ground running again in her dream hunt, she would sometimes vocalize the tiniest bark. Nothing like her normal voice, which could be heard across the courtyard. But a bark nonetheless.

Ezekiel’s twitching eyes and moving lips told her the same story. He was dreaming.

“Can people sleep-talk?” Sara Fairchild asked no one in particular. It was clear that whatever this was—and she was almost certain it was a dream—it had no answers for her. She was holding up the crew for a fool’s errand.

Regardless, the other stretcher bearer answered her. “My brother was a sleepwalker his whole life. Hell, he did anything and everything in his sleep. Caught him once walking down the middle of the street at half past midnight. Two blocks, I tell ya. Didn’t stop for anything until he got into his favorite bar, sat down on
his
stool, and drank a whole tankard of mead.”

Sara gave him a slightly impressed look. “Really?”

She wasn’t easily surprised. This, however, surprised her. If she could have seen herself through the bearer’s eyes, she would have seen that the open emotion on her face transformed her from a hardened warrior back into what she was—a seventeen-year-old girl covered in swamp water.

Whatever the bearer saw in her face must have encouraged him to go on, because he said, “Really. He drank himself under the table.”

The original bearer scoffed. “And how’d he do that? Pay with dream money as well?”

“Nah,” said the tale-telling carrier with a grin, “I paid for more drinks. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen. He drank and drank. Came back home, went to bed, and woke up to my sister-in-law’s blistering tongue. He still hasn’t lived it down.”

Sara laughed—her first laugh since entering the swamp. Perhaps her first laugh since this hellish month had begun. She didn’t know, but she did know it felt damned good.

It could have been the laugh. It could have been the story. But Ezekiel’s hand raised out of the catatonic state he laid in and Sara automatically gripped it. This time, when Ezekiel began whispering in his sleep, she leaned forward and heard the full whisper.

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I killed Vincent Fairchild.”

Sara reared back in surprise, and her hand shot to the pommel of her knife. She didn’t draw it...yet. Just gripping it cautiously, like a child latching onto its mother’s teat. For comfort.

Because Ezekiel could only mean one person—her father. Commander Vincent Fairchild.

Ezekiel’s muttering ceased, and his hand dropped limply from her grip. Not that she tried to prevent it. His eyes stilled, and she watched as he fell back into the deep coma-like sleep he had inhabited before. As if by whispering those words, his conscious had stilled—his debt absolved.

Sara’s lipped curled into a snarl at the very thought of absolution by confession. The absolution she gave him or anyone else would be at the tip of her sword. But Ezekiel was defenseless now. Defenseless, and quite possibly hallucinating. Not that that was a known property of the poisoned bite, but it was the only other explanation for his words.

Sara hoped it was.

She raised up her face and caught the two stretcher bearers exchanging silent glances. She wasn’t sure if they were worried that she’d attack Ezekiel or she’d attack them. She was plenty sure they hadn’t heard what Ezekiel Crane had said, because
she’d
barely heard even after leaning back down to hear what he had said.

Sara cleared her throat. “Take him up to the ship, please. I’ll be following right behind.”

They collectively muttered, “Yes, ma’am,” and took off without another glance.

Sara watched the stricken man with more secrets that she would have ever given him credit for be borne across the swampy terrain and up onto the ship deck with the help of some skilled earth mages. They had devised a simple yet effective system of pulleys using materials from the swamp around them.

Sara stood alone, with her fists on her hips as tried to decide what to do.

B
etween Ezekiel being loaded on the ship and her own boarding, Sara hadn’t made a decision. Not a significant one, anyway. She knew her highest priority at the moment was getting answers from a hopefully soon-to-be-cured Ezekiel Crane. What came after that, well...that would come afterwards.

With a sigh, Sara leaned on the side rails of the airship and held on tight as it ascended into the sky. Once they gained enough altitude, she noticed that the ship stopped hovering in midair as if weightless, and instead began to push forward through the winds like a ship on water would ride the waves at it headed out to sea. 

Staring out at the blue sky and fluffy clouds, she realized something that had been pushed out of her mind while they were in the swamp. Their tribulations at the hands of the natural predators of that noxious swamp had been only one part of her journey. As the ship creaked and turned in the winds for a northeast heading, she knew that the real journey was now beginning.

Slipping back from the railing, Sara turned and grabbed onto the shoulder of an airship sailor mid-stride. She didn’t know who he was and she didn’t very much care to learn. He had been nearby and as good as any person aside from the airship captain to answer her questions.

In fact, he was better,
she noted thoughtfully as he turned in her grip to face the person who had halted his journey.
Better because he’s low enough on the totem pole that he might have heard things from behind closed doors and be willing enough to disclose those secrets without realizing the importance of what he was reporting.

At least, that was her hope. In either case, it was always better to question the invisible lackey. Officers tended to know precisely when to shut their traps before they spilled too many beans. This man on the other hand was clearly not an officer. Perhaps a deckhand. Perhaps a boatswain. It didn’t really matter who he was, as long as he was forthcoming with what he knew.  As he whirled about and opened his mouth to spew
something
angrily, he changed his mind when he saw who had grabbed hold of him...or rather, what. Sara had no doubt that he had not the foggiest clue who she was or what her reputation was on the streets of Sandrin.

She wasn’t prideful enough to think she had a reputation that spread across the empire. What she
did
have, however, was a profusion of knives and weapons about her person. His face paled as he took in the inventory, and he swallowed whatever angry words he had had on his lips.

Contritely, he asked, “May I help you, miss?”

Sara smiled. “Where are we going?”

He raised an eyebrow. “To the Algardis encampment, of course.”

“Where would that be?” She stayed calm as she let him go.

The man glanced away towards the helm as a stiff wind brushed by their ship, and several nearby men hurried to grab onto something. Not Sara. Not this sailor.

He simply widened the space between his feet and leaned into the wind; Sara mimicked him in order to keep her balance. The sailor waited until the captain had turned the ship into the wind before returning Sara’s gaze. From the look on his face, he had decided to humor her.

Finally he said, “Two miles west of the Kade fortress.”

“Fortress?” repeated Sara.

“Aye,” replied the sailor firmly. “And in-between their fortress and our encampment is the battleground of the first civil war the empire has ever seen.”

“And this...civil war. What are we walking into? Are battles happening as we speak?”

The man grimaced. “Nah. The Kades have ground troops, but that’s not their specialty. They prefer sneak attacks and bombardments from far away, cowards that they are.”

“Sounds like what we encountered on the road,” Sara said.

The sailor nodded. “Heard about that.”

“What about at the Algardis camp itself? Is it ready to withstand any attack from the Kades? How much longer will the Kades mages be able to resist our onslaught?”

She was thinking of the tactical advantage the Algardis troops must have with greater numbers and superior fighting mechanisms. Surely, this would be over quickly. She was also wondering if she would have time to find Matteas Hillan and uncover the conspiracy against her father
before
she was re-deployed home. This was the full might of the Algardis empire, after all. She had no idea how the Kades had lasted this long.

“Could be...” said the sailor uneasily, his voice trailing off.

“Could be what?” Sara said sharply.

“Could be a week. Could be months.”

Months
, Sara thought with surprise. But still...he had been helpful. Perhaps she could get more out of him.

Sara lowered her hands and folded them politely in front of her waist, trying to look as innocuous as possible. She wasn’t certain she succeeded, but the man didn’t run away screaming, either.

Sara waited patiently for an answer that didn’t come.

Then she said, “Look you could tell me the rest of it or I can ensure that me and my fellow mercenaries make sure you don’t leave this ship walking straight.”

The man blanched. “That ain’t right.”

“This entire situation isn’t
right
,” Sara said wearily, “I just need some answers.”

He gulped, looked away and back at her. “You didn’t hear this from me, you know, but Kansid wasn’t exactly happy with the changeover in command in favor of your captain, if you catch my meaning.”

“I might,” Sara said.

And she did. Several days before leaving Sandrin, Captain Barthis Simon had received his orders to relieve Captain Kansid of his command. To hear that Kansid was upset was unsurprising. It was bad news for Sara, though, because Kansid would still control his original regiment of mercenaries, which Matteas Hillan served in. If Kansid left before she spoke with Matteas, there was little hope of her ever uncovering the conspiracy surrounding her father’s death. She had until they arrived at the Algardis encampment to learn the layout of the command structure and ingratiate herself with Kansid. If he planned to fight with Captain Simon over his reassignment, all the better.

At least, better for me
, Sara thought.
With those two arguing instead of transitioning duties from one to the other, the Red Lion regiment that Hillan is assigned to will be around that much longer.

Carefully, Sara asked, “Unhappy enough to challenge him when we set down?”

“Unhappy enough to consolidate his position amongst the mages, the mercenaries and the soldiers,” said the sailor. “More than that, I don’t know. Kansid commands the Red Lions. You know and I know that you mercenaries don’t like dealing with each other, much less working in coordination with each other’s captains as they are now.”

Sara nodded companionably, as if she had been a member of the mercenary guild for years instead of the few weeks since she’d blustered her way in—most of which had consisted of wandering around a swamp and watching her comrades drop like flies.

“Whose side are you on?” she asked.

“The empress’s,” the man said with a shrug. “And rumor has it that her spies had written you lot off for dead until the mages insisted that you had a plan. Caused some tension, you see? My captain was staking a lot of her command on this air ride. Securing all that fuel, commandeering four of the imperial mages, and searching a damned swamp ain’t easy.”

“You didn’t know where we’d emerge from in the swamp?” Sara asked curiously.

“Do you know how many clearings there are in that damned bug-infested moss pit?” the sailor demanded while grabbing onto a flailing rope in irritation. Whether to stop his hands from doing something else or to get the end of the rope out of the air from where it could do injury to someone’s eye, she didn’t know.

Sara decided it was caution for his fellow travelers from the way he quickly tied off the loose end of the rope in a sailor’s knot around a thin pole.

“We didn’t see you until that fire show you lit up over half of this side of the swamp,” he continued ruefully. “We were about to turn back, actually. Give up. Let the emperor’s spymasters and their non-mage network know we were wrong.”

“Wrong about finding a lost group of mercenaries?” Sara said.  “Forgive me if I seem a bit callous, but I wouldn’t pay one thousand shillings to save this lot. We’re the empress’s people through and through, but not worth launching the kind of search-and-rescue mission you did.” Sara gestured around. “The magic alone needed to keep these ships afloat could arm enough battle fire to set the whole country ablaze.”

The man grinned as the winds began to pick up. “You’re not wrong, lass. You’re not wrong.”

“Then?” Sara said in a leading tone.

“It became partly a matter of sticking it to the empress’s mundane brigades and spies. A pride thing, you know? We need to show the empress that we mages are useful out here. We haven’t defeated the Kades yet, but we’re going to,” he said.

“And also partly a matter of...” Sara said, leading him further, hardly even paying attention to his blustering about magic.

She had grown up knowing that there were tensions between mages and mundanes in all elements of the warrior caste. The mercenaries. The soldiers. The intelligence network. They all provided different functional levels in the empress’s system of protection, advancement, and war. The intelligence network was closely allied with the soldiers. The mages tended to work alone. The mercenaries were a rare breed. Ranks filled with both mages and mundanes—magical and non-magical folk, that is—in an effort to justify their existence. The mercenaries would perform tasks that soldiers refused and mages were incapable of doing. They had the combat training, and often the magical skills, to do what needed to be done.