Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 (24 page)

Margaret said one simple word. “Sorry.” The fear, the resignation, and the shame on her face said it all. She’d betrayed Sara’s confidence. Nothing more needed to be said.

Sara smiled, not really worried about the apology. She was just pleased that for the first time the girl had left off silly terms like ‘sheepcakes’. For the first time, Sara could actually see the true nature of her eyes; stripped of the forced humor she carried, they were filled with pain.

“It’s alright,” Sara said gently. “Let them come.”

As seven bodies stepped from the tents and spread around her in a circle, she heard one familiar voice say, “We’re already here.”

Sara nodded and thought,
that’s fine. Because I’m ready.

A
s it turned out she
had
guessed right. It was the administrative official.

“You know,” Sara said conversationally, “I never caught your name.”

“Does it matter?” said one of the men in a lazy tone.

“Yes,” Sara replied, never taking her eyes off her tormenter.

The administrative man’s face morphed into a sneer. “I highly doubt it. We’re going to beat you so bloody you won’t remember it.”

Sara gave him a cold smile. “I’d still like to have it...for my records.”

Sara liked to remember every single person who instigated a fight or vendetta against her. It was too hard to know the names and faces of all the cronies, dead or alive, but the ringleaders...those she could manage. They were so few in number that she could remember and recall them all for the crimes they had committed, the lies they had told, and the people they had ruined. She never forgot the fools who came up against her with their bravado and their sickly smiles. And if they lived through the encounter, she made sure they didn’t forget it, either.

Her new addition to the list gave a coughing laugh as he looked around at his friends. His chuckle spread through his group of friends like a disease catching on.

Then he said, “The girl thinks she’s funny. Well, joke’s on
you
now. I’ll doubt you’ll remember anything after we’re through with you, but Lester is the name. Now it’s time you learn what happens when you disrespect your betters.”

Sara raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you call it? I simply call it being right.”

He snarled. “You’re about get a lesson in humility.”

“Just you?” Sara said bored.

He cracked his knuckles, and Sara watched as they all made themselves limber with rolled shoulders. That was fine. She didn’t scare easily.

Then a true smile graced her face, and Sara felt giddy with anticipation. “Oh good,” she said, “I’ve been so frustrated all day. It’ll be nice to work out my anger on such a fine load of strapping, dumb brutes.”

A snarl of anger roared from one of the men behind her. Three of them rushed her with thick links of chains in their grips, and four more of the men weren’t far behind with fists raised high. Sara found it fairly amusing. It was clear that they were serious about maiming her, if not killing her.

Guess I really made him mad,
Sara thought. At the last second, she jumped in the air and flipped to land cowgirl-style on the back of one of the thugs. She wouldn’t honor them by calling them people.
People
didn’t gang up with seven-to-one odds in the hopes of beating on one young woman, a near-stranger to them. People didn’t expect respect to be paid to them without earning it first. And people didn’t follow the orders of a man with no better morals than a wolf.

In fact,
Sara decided,
I think wolves have better morals. At least they have a code of pack ethics.

She was pretty sure she was right about that. But it didn’t matter. These humans would be eating the mud beneath her boots once she was through with them
.

Sara had the presence of mind to yell at the cowering girl in the corner before she started in on each one. “Margaret, stay back!”

After that, all she could feel was the simmering rage of battle magic below the surface, the roar of the fight as man after man came at her, and the serene calm of doing what she did best. She even held back a bit. But
just
a bit.

As she rode the man’s back down to the ground, Sara ignored the knives at her waist and decided to have some real fun. She grabbed the man’s outstretched hand, with the chain rattling in the air like a snake, and snapped back his arm, breaking his wrist in the process. It induced so much pain to his nerves that his fingers loosened and the chain flew from his grasp, over his back, and straight toward Sara. Just as she had intended. With a satisfied grunt, Sara grabbed the steel links in mid-air, snapped the heavy metal down on the back of his head, and let him fall to the ground with a bleeding wound for his troubles.

She had the weapon she needed now. Flexible, formidable, and light of weight. To top it off, she’d snatched it right from the hands of her foe. Still smiling, Sara stood up with an exaggerated stretch and faced the remaining six men. “Well, that was fun. Now who’s ready to give me a
real
challenge?”

Her tone was mocking. Even gleeful. She was a battle mage; it was in her nature to enjoy a fight, even if decorum said it was wrong to gloat in the middle of one. But the six men said not a word, and they stood frozen in a ring of witless stares around her as they realized just what they were in for at that moment. She wasn’t just some fresh recruit learning the ropes. She had been training all her life for down-and-dirty fights, and it had been a long time since she lost. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t waver, and even if they had, Sara knew she wouldn’t have shown mercy. She was ready to crack some skulls.

The second brute that came for her was more of a challenge; he was a charging bull of a man, with his head lowered and fist jabbing forward like a bareback fighter in the ring. She took him to his knees with swift, jarring kicks at his kneecaps, one of which gave a satisfying pop as it twisted out of place. He went down to the floor, and she whipped the chain out with a satisfying snap at his face. Once. Twice. And he was out cold.

She had planned not to kill them, but when the third man jumped on her back like a stinking monkey and howled with the same sound, all bets were off. She had just gotten clean in the baths for the gods’ sake. She didn’t need him and his grimy hands clinging to her body like a bad lover.

Sara fell to the ground and rolled. She brought her elbow up in a sharp jab right at his throat. That didn’t stop him from pinning one of her arms to her side with a vice-like grip as he hugged her from behind. With one arm still free, it wasn’t a very effective offensive tactic.

But she soon realized he didn’t need it to be. He had pinned the arm with the chain, which kept her from launching her own formidable offensive. It also opened the opportunity for another one of the men to bring his fist down with the force of a falling brick. Before Sara knew it, he’d managed to punch her twice in the face while his buddy kicked at her from behind. She barely heard the men’s taunts over the pounding pulse in her skull. Soon, the roaring in her ears overcame her, and she screamed aloud.

Sara was screaming in pain and fury. She screamed for a reason. Whatever she did was a tactic in her arsenal. Screaming allowed her to lurch forward and clamp her teeth down on the hand of the unsuspecting man who had landed two free blows on her face, and it kept his attention away from her free hand. He howled in horror as he jerked his hand back, she clamped down and his flesh came off in her mouth. She grabbed a small knife from his waist, still determined
not
to kill them, and stabbed him as hard as she could near the thigh. She deliberately missed the femoral artery, but the knife still managed to tear a long and painful gash down his thigh. He fell away from her with a renewed wail and laid out on his back, clasping his leg with agony written all over his face.

Before his partner realized it, Sara had twisted out from his grasp, turned around, and punched him so hard in the face that he was out cold immediately.

Breathing hard and staggering to her feet, Sara secured the loose chain in intertwined loops between her fingers. “Who’s next?”

A man with the sneering face of a lizard step forward. He came at her with a running leap and Sara made quick work of him by slamming the linked chain straight up into his ballsack, watched him fall down to the ground howling and silenced him with a quick kick to the head.

“Like I said,” Sara said dryly, “Who’s next?”

Every remaining man’s face was as pale as the moon.

When they hesitated, she said tauntingly, “Lester, what about you?”

“You’re about to get what you deserve,” he said while stepping forward and waving the others back. “She’s mine.”

Instead of coming up against her with more chains or even a knife, he approached with a martial arts stance, his bare fists raised and his legs spread evenly.

Sara hummed in approval. She had to give it to Lester, she didn’t think he’d had it in him. Doing a semi-honorable thing, that is.

It’s probably his manly pride, though, not honor
, she thought uncharitably.
Can’t let a woman beat you, and you certainly can’t take her out of the fight by stabbing her. That wouldn’t seem right.

“Well, then,” Sara said with a delighted smile, “it’s you and me. I hope this has been worth your little vendetta.”

Lester hissed like a snake and did some false, quick jabs in the air. “It’ll be worth it when I wipe that smug smile off your face, woman.”

Sara shrugged. “Since it’s you and me now, and you’ve kindly left your two remaining goons behind, I can only do the same.”

Lester looked confused as he looked back at his men and then again at her, standing alone in the ring.

Then he looked over at Margaret, who sat huddled in the corner as close to a tent as possible, as if the billowing fabric would protect her. Sara didn’t know if Margaret was cowering near the tent for protection from Lester, or protection from
her
, but it didn’t really matter. The young woman looked equally scared of them both.

But that didn’t mean Sara didn’t feel protective of her, and she definitely didn’t care for Lester’s dark look in Margaret’s direction.

“Don’t look at her, look at me!” Sara called out fiercely.

Lester turned his eyes back on Sara with a smile. “If you think that cowardly guttersnipe can help you, you’re crazier than I thought.”

Sara smiled as she deliberately dropped the looped chains from her hand. “Who said anything about her?”

His eyes widened as he watched the links fall to the ground in a clinking pile. He flicked his eyes up to her. Now she had his full attention, and Sara aimed to keep it.

Slowly, she reached down to her waist and unsheathed her knife. Lester flinched and changed his stance warily, waiting for her to grip it tightly and move in. Instead, Sara held the knife outward with a light grip. She could see that he grew less and less worried that she would throw it at him as she extended her arm to its full length, straight out from her side, and dropped the knife to the ground.

“Now we’re even.”

Lester looked up at her in wonder and raised an eyebrow.

Sara deliberately misunderstood his gesture and said, “Sorry, I don’t take off my sword for just anybody. You have to get to know me first.”

Lester caught the sarcasm and gave her a dark smile of his own. “Fair enough,” he said.

Sara shrugged as she ignored the sting of the cuts on her face and the soreness in her legs from the kicks of the monkey-man, cracked her knuckles, and said, “Shall we?”

Lester chose that moment to come at her with a flying kick, which she dodged with a leap back. She dodged jab after jab, and while she had to admit that his technique was good, her was still better. Sara hadn’t just trained in swordplay, knife fighting, and battle magic; she was also very familiar with hand-to-hand combat. And what was mixed martial arts but the basis of hand-to-hand fighting?

Soon, Sara became bored with avoiding his attacks and decided to go on the offensive. Using the collective tips of her fingers, she hit him at key points in his upper and lower chest, triggering painful flares and forcing him back. When he briefly lowered his head for a gasping breath, she rushed forward and around him. Sara swung up around him as she came from the side, secured a chokehold around his neck, and brought him down to the ground, using gravity and her own momentum to put him down quickly. She kept her chokehold until several seconds
after
he stopped struggling.

She stood and kicked the knocked-out Lester a few times for good measure. She smiled and put her hands on her hips as she looked over at the two remaining men in the ring.

One of them called out, “We surrender.”

Sara raised an eyebrow and looked at the other man. “You too?”

He nodded swiftly, although she didn’t trust the look in his eyes.

“Too bad,” Sara Fairchild said in a sing-song voice. “I’m in a pissed off mood.”

They barely had time for their pallid faces to go lily-pale in fear before she was on top of them. Sara swiped the feet out from under both of the men before she set about pounding them into the ground with her fists. Each blow satisfied her baser desire for revenge. Revenge for her father, revenge for her mother, revenge for all the dead mercenaries left on the trail behind them. Revenge for Kaitlin, a woman brought down by the greed of nobles, and revenge for Margaret, a girl who cowered before the thugs sworn to uphold the law.

Sara was breathing hard by the time she finished. She felt immensely satisfied, and all seven men were down for the count.

Quickly, she spit out a wad of blood and saliva from her mouth, a gift from the man who had gotten two lucky punches on her face before she’d bitten the flesh straight off his hand. Then she stood up. Directly across from her, huddled on the ground, was Margaret Verhaas, and she didn’t look the least bit happy...or scared.

In fact, she looked horrified.

Sara frowned and wondered why. She had just defeated the men who had had a chokehold around Margaret’s life.