Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (20 page)

An icy chill ran through Sara’s veins as she watched the girl’s face carefully and realized she wasn’t lying.

Girl
, she thought.
She looks hardly three years younger than myself.

“Now,” said the girl with a pause, “if you’re through interrogating me, miss, I’ll take these clothes.” She nodded her head at the pile at Sara’s feet.

Sara let a smile twitch onto her lips. The girl had sass.

“You may take them,” she said after a moment. The girl nodded, bent over, and lifted her pile into a laundry basket. As she did so, Sara asked softly, “What’s your name?”

“Kaitlin, miss,” the indentured servant answered as she stood with a defiant tilt of her head.

Sara smiled and nodded. “Well, Kaitlin, would you do me a favor?”

“What’s that, miss?”

They watched each other for a moment.

Then, deadly serious, Sara said, “Burn them.”

Kaitlin’s eyes rose in surprise, and then she nodded with a smirk on her own face. “With pleasure.”

Sara watched as Kaitlin silently walked away; the brass-and-silver collar was almost hidden by the long braid of her dark hair. Sara knelt down and scooted to the edge of the pool. She tried to let go of the irritation inside of her at the thought of Kaitlin’s situation as she did so.

“You don’t even know the girl,” she grumbled to herself.

No, I don’t,
she thought.
But I know someone just like her. Me. They took everything from me. Burned my family name to the ground, slaughtered my kin, and broke me. Or, at least, they thought they had.

Sara had the feeling that the system wasn’t as all-powerful as it thought, and just as she saw fire in Kaitlin’s eyes, she knew her own burned with just as much passion. Passion for justice. Passion for retribution. And Sara would make sure she had hers.

Sara trembled as she let her foot sink into the pleasurable feel of the hot water. Just as she pushed off the edge and dropped her whole body into the steaming mineral water, a dark question pushed at the border of her thoughts. As she slipped below the surface of the water and closed her eyes, she went from light to darkness. She felt the water embracing her like a child in the womb. Felt the abrasive properties of the minerals, enhanced by encampment mages no doubt, attack the dirt that clung to her skin. As she sunk lower into the deeper end of the pool by stepping off the ledge that ringed the outer edge, she felt weightless.

And she let the thought come forth.

I’m not sure if I mean I will have my retribution...or she will.

After some time passed, Sara burst up through the surface of the water with a few swift and furious kicks of her legs. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but when she returned to the surface she saw clean garments waiting for her, alongside an impressive pile of soap, combs, gels, and other materials she wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

Deciding to go with the simplest option first, she grabbed a scraper from the pile and became embroiled in the task of scrubbing the worst of the dirt deposits from her skin. It felt like heaven to free her skin from the dirt, but the water around her began to darken from the scraped material. Fortunately, all of the pools were self-cleaning, whirling in a constant rotation that removed the dirty water and brought forth more fresh water from below. Once again, mages were to thank for that. But that didn’t mean Sara had to watch the process. She closed her eyes, scraped all over her skin until she felt raw in places, let the deep steam envelop her like a blanket, and listened to the soft conversations going on in the pools nearby.

When she heard footsteps approaching, she didn’t stop scraping, but she did position the tool so that the handle was perfectly balanced along the seam of her inner wrist, with the hook splayed between her fingers like extra digits. She may not have been allowed to bring a weapon inside, but she could easily make one if forced to.

The only reason Sara didn’t turn around and confront the person coming up on her pool was because they were walking slowly and deliberately. Not as softly as a thief sneaking up a footpath, nor as drunkenly as a soldier on his way to a bath he didn’t know was occupied. Steadily, like a person who knew where they were headed, and that was straight toward Sara. Still acting naturally, Sara let her magical senses flow out from her like tentacles searching for prey in the mist. She hit on several very powerful magical sources, including the person coming toward her, but none of them were being drawn on for power. That didn’t mean the mage couldn’t call upon their powers in an instant. But it did mean that they had not yet chosen to do so.

She used her strong thighs to raise herself up underwater, just a little bit, without shifting the position of her upper torso. All the while, she continued to scrape off the dirt. As her right hand kept busy, she gradually submerged her left, allowing it to dip low enough to touch the rough, sandy layer below. It gave her the firm perch she needed to crouch and spring into action at a moment’s notice. When the person stopped a few feet away, Sara stopped feigning ignorance, lowered the scraper, and opened her eyes. She couldn’t see who had approached, as she was laying on her side, but she could feel the weight of their eyes on her back.

“Can I help you?” Sara Fairchild asked softly.

“Yes, you can,” Nissa Sardonien answered just as quietly. The next sound Sara heard was the rattle of the chains that bound her would-be killer as the woman closed the distance between them.

S
ara scrambled to her feet and faced the sun mage. She was still in the water; the pool was deep enough that she could retreat to its depths and be provided some measure of protection against Nissa’s famed powers. Sara didn’t quite dare crawl across the ledge, and she knew that the pool was deep enough that, if she had to, she could fling herself back which made her feel that she had at least some control over the situation. That would be a last resort, if Sara couldn’t talk her down or attack her head on. The waters might protect her.
Might
.

Although, Sara had yet to see Nissa’s magic in action. Quite frankly, she hoped she never would.

“I’m not here to fight you, Fairchild,” Nissa said with a lowered head.

Anyone else would have taken a person at their word. Just not in this situation and not facing an enemy mage of formidable power. Least of all not Sara Fairchild. Nissa Sardonien was a criminal of the highest order, and she would treat her as such. She had to wonder what idiot of a jailor had freed her or been killed by her as she escaped. Either option was a direct strike against the jailor’s character; it was just that the latter was slightly redeemable in the fact that he or she had died in the attempt.

It reminded me of her father’s tales of his mother actually. When her father first started out as an arena gladiator, he had been nothing. Financially destitute, unknown to the spectators, and without a benefactor to fund his training or his weapons. He’d walked onto the field with a simple sword of shoddy make and a shield that shattered with the first blow of his opponent.

Sara thought of her father leaning over her tired body. Sara had been lying flat on her back on the hot sands of the training grounds, sweat pouring down her face, her lungs wheezing for air. Her arms were aching from blocking attack after attack from the restrained, but still fierce, onslaught of her father.

He had eventually sat down next to her splayed body and said, “
Do you know what my mother told me the morning I walked out of the door for my first arena fight
?”

Sara had painfully turned a weary head to look over at him and blinked—or at least, she had tried to. She had already been able to feel her left eye swelling closed from a blow she had blocked a little too slowly.

“What?”
she had managed to wheeze out.

Her father’s eyes had twinkled as he carefully put a finger on her face and traced the swelling under her eye.
“You’re going to have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.”

Sara had sat up and leaned over on one arm.
“She said that?”
Her voice had risen in disbelief.

Her father had laughed.
“No. She said this: Come back with your shield or on it
.”

Sara was silent for a moment and then she frowned.
“What does it mean?”
she had asked him.

He had cleared his throat and said, “
It means you either come back with your shield in victory, or come back dead on top of your shield with an honorable death
.”

“Because your shield is big enough for you to lay in!”
Sara had said in excitement as she forgot the painful aches on her body and her swelling eye.
“At least, one of your shields can do that.”

“Yes, yes it is,”
her father had responded.

With a pout, Sara’s mood had changed as she said,
“But I’m not dead, and I lost my shield.”

Her father had shook his head.
“In your case, it’s not a literal translation.”
He had stopped, looked up at the sky, and back down at her while Sara had waited patiently for him to speak.
“You did well, my fierce little girl,”
her father had finally said.
“Very well. You didn’t give up. You didn’t surrender, and you’ll grow stronger as you get older. You’ll be a force to be reckoned with one day.”

Sara had perked up at the praise.
“Even against you?”

“Especially against me,”
her father had promised as he stood and scooped her up from the sands.

“Father, put me down!”
a young Sara had screamed with laughter.

“Soon, my daughter, soon!”
her father had promised with his own booming laughter as he swept her around and around like a bird in flight. By the time he was through, they had both been dizzy, and Sara had been so happy that many of her aches and pains were just dull thoughts in the back of her mind.

Now as she stared at an enemy before her, Sara wondered what her father would say now. Whatever it was, she couldn’t think of it, so she approached the situation in the same way she would have in Sandrin. Cautiously. Carefully.

“Raise your face so I can see you, and back away slowly,” Sara demanded.

Nissa said nothing. She kept her head bowed and bunched up her legs, as if to stand.

“Stay on your knees,” Sara ordered.

Nissa shuffled back and raised her head defiantly.

Sara flinched when Nissa’s visage was visible to her eyes. The sight didn’t just scare her—it horrified her. Three parallels scars bore grooves in the cheeks on either side of her nose, marring the pale skin that reminded Sara of winter’s roses.

Tough as nails, Nissa said, “This is what your people do to prisoners of war. To mark all those who see us.”

Sara swallowed hard. “It keeps you from running off, I take it.”

Nissa smiled grimly. “Only because it puts a bounty on my head. Any person with these markings outside of imperial custody or the Algardis encampment has standing orders to be killed on sight.”

Sara grimaced, but she couldn’t really see the fault in that. “So what do you want me to do about it?”

The question was entirely rhetorical in her mind.

“I want you to take me back to the Kade mages,” Nissa said simply.

Sara laughed so loud that the conversations around them died off into stares and hushed whispers. “You’re a hilarious woman, Sardonien,” Sara said. “Now go be amusing somewhere else.”

Nissa shook her head. “You don’t understand. Do you really think these shackles can hold me?”

Sara glanced down at them and settled more calmly in the water. She didn’t turn her back on Nissa. She didn’t relax, but she didn’t think she would be having much of a problem anymore.

“They’re mage shackles. Unbreakable and inviolable,” Sara said. “So, yes, I think they will hold you.”

A small tic appeared in Nissa’s face. “Only for a time.”

Sara shook her head slowly. “Even if you could free yourself from your restraints, why would
I
help you? We don’t have the greatest history, if you remember, and you’re an enemy of the crown.”

Nissa rolled her eyes. “Let’s not overstate things. I was captured by your empress, and yet she didn’t kill me. Why do you think that is?”

“She wants information from you, clearly,” Sara said. “And she’s given the field-deployed commanders the leeway to do it. It’s a simple case. Torture the prisoner. Get the evidence needed to bring down their sect. In your case, the Kades.”

Nissa frowned. “Then tell me why I’m free to wander around this compound. Until they decide that it’s close to time to torture me, that is.”

“That makes no sense,” Sara said flatly.

Nissa smiled and raised up her cuffed hands. “See these? They’re triggered to the boundaries. In addition to restraining my powers now, they’ve reconfigured them so I couldn’t leave even if I tried.”

Sara said, “Now that I believe.”

“Not without help that is,” Nissa said. “Which is why I wasted precious moments of freedom from my guards by seeking you out.”

Sara shrugged. “If they let you go anywhere alone they’re bigger imbeciles than I thought.”

Nissa shook her head. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Neither do I,” said Sara flatly.

Nissa bared her teeth in a grimace. “What if I said I could help your cause?”

Sara sighed and shrugged. “Tell the mercenary commander or the supreme mage. You need not come to
me
.”

“I’m coming to you because you were
right
,” Nissa said urgently.

“Right?” asked Sara as she began to unbraid her hair. This conversation clearly wasn’t going anywhere too fast.

“Right not to trust your battle mage captain,” Nissa said bluntly.

Sara grabbed a comb as she continued to watch Nissa carefully. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Nissa replied, “How about the fact that the Algardis imperial courts started this war.”

Sara didn’t pause attending to her hair. “In response to your belligerence and destruction of the countryside.”