by Terah Edun
But this quiet was stretching for far too long.
Sara frowned as she tried to keep her arm from trembling and failing. She’d been training with a weapon of some kind practically since she’d started teething. To not be able to hold just a sword up was unheard of.
She couldn’t be that exhausted. But apparently she was. Taking stock of her body beyond the pain of her broken shinbone, Sara found an abiding weariness that existed in every muscle that she had. If she hadn’t just been kicked out of a portal prison, she would have wondered where this weariness had come from. Because even when fighting dozens of her own mercenary compatriots and suffering wounds far worse than the one currently troubling her, she hadn’t been so exhausted that her body felt like it was a breath away from shutting down.
This was just one more sin that she would have to lay at the foot of the man named Gabriel.
Grimacing at that thought, Sara reached out to the darkness in desperation. “Help me. I need you to shore up my body—give me energy to fight and strength to expend.”
Can’t, it replied.
“What?” Sara spluttered at it, exasperated. Impossible. “I never had trouble before connecting with my own gifts. You’re just acting as the spigot to the well now, so turn it damned well on.”
Can’t, the darkness replied again grumpily. All gone. No more to share.
Her stomach plunging at those words, Sara thought this day couldn’t get any worse. Who’d ever heard of a War Mage, or a battle mage, for that matter, who couldn’t find the strength to raise her own sword?
She had to wonder why her ancestors hadn’t deemed it worth a mention in any of the texts passed down in the family. With dark amusement, it occurred to her that none of them might have ever had to deal with this problem. They’d all died either too young or in the midst of heroic battles that made them legends.
Sara, on the other hand, she was about to die on a little hill with no one else around to tell her tale.
Not die, conserve. The darkness yawned at her.
“What does that mean?” Sara snapped. It didn’t answer, and she didn’t bother asking again because she felt the darkness move with her. But not in a good way. More like a dog turning over in its sleep, or in this case, turning its back to her. And with that turn, it felt like every bit of her last power reserves went to sleep. The energy, bolstering her body like an exoskeleton she hadn’t even known she had, failed. If she’d had trouble fighting through the pain of bone sticking out of her leg before, now sweat was beading on her brow at the challenge.
She almost felt average.
Sara had to wonder if it this was how magicless humans dealt with pain. Weariness and illness. If so, she didn’t like it, not at all. It felt like death.
Meanwhile, the female leader’s gaze turned to Sara’s trembling sword.
If the leader saw desperation cross the War Mage’s face, she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she spoke to Sara with a bit of calm curiosity in her voice. “Do you intend to cut us down, Lieutenant Commander?”
“I—” said Sara hesitantly, because she didn’t know. What she did know was that if she lowered this sword, it wasn’t going to get raised again anytime soon.
Being weak was pathetic.
“Because if you do, I suggest you get on with it,” the woman said in a voice that suggested Sara wouldn’t like her response.
“Do I have your word that you intend me no harm?” Sara asked as every muscle in her sword arm trembled with effort.
An expression of benign amusement crossed the older female’s face. “You have it,” she said. “Now, if you’d be so kind as to lower that sharp sword of yours, I’d be inclined to introduce you to the representative who has deigned to grace your presence.”
Sara didn’t know what that meant, but she had no other choice in the matter at the moment. So, flushing and hesitant, she lowered her weapon.
“I’d be honored to meet this person,” she said with a dipped head.
The woman didn’t comment; instead she backed up her horse so another rider could come forward. This person wore a simple but expensive riding habit, including a set of split skits and a jerkin made of supple leather. Her hair was done up in an elaborate system of tiny braids and a slick bun. But it was her eyes that caught Sara’s attention and held it. At least for a moment—two chips of blue ice in a face that was as cunning as it was beautiful as she surveyed the warrior barely standing upright in front of her.
Trying to snap her focus away from the woman’s piercing gaze, Sara resettled her eyes on her attire, and there was much to take in. She had never seen such luxurious finery in her life.
That woman’s single outfit would have kitted her in armor for a good quarter, she’d bet.
As her mind took in the person who rode before her, the tiredness that was overtaking her also left her a bit…uncertain. Stunned, even. Trying to keep her head on straight, Sara stayed right where she was, not sure what to do. Not sure what she was expected to do.
11
Sara didn’t even know who this woman was, but she certainly knew enough to realize that she should be ashamed to stand before her in grubby clothes and a broken body. Sara hadn’t been raised in a barn, after all, and her mother had been especially militant about assuring Sara was able to dress herself properly and present herself well when called upon. Not that this was a ceremony requiring dress service, but it certainly felt…important.
She felt like she should know who this person was, even if she had never seen her before in her life. In the back of her mind, the connection was all but made. Even if Sara couldn’t recognize her, she did recognize what a terrible first impression she was giving at this moment while standing before a woman who, even after a hard ride, looked fit for duty.
On top of that, standing in front of her looking a mess with bloodshot eyes and bone sticking out of her shin like a gruesome ornament wasn’t precisely how Sara wanted to start off their first meeting.
But she wasn’t inclined to bleed to death on a hill, and so Sara waited silently as this new individual observed her.
Blue eyes met wildfire orange as the two women sized each other up.
For her part, the woman looked as if she’d just stepped out of the finest atelier on this side of the empire. She was dressed to impressed, but it wasn’t her outfit alone that caught the lieutenant commander’s eye—and made her regret her own choices this morning, forced on her as they may have been.
Then the woman slowly and deliberately pulled back a piece of cloak so that Sara could see the one thing that mattered most.
Mouth agape, Sara stared at the shiny medallion clipped to the woman’s breast. An embossed lion, the same image that fluttered high up on the pennants her entourage had brought. But this one was cast in solid gold, proud and strong—about the size of Sara’s palm—and was backed in silk as it shimmered for all the world to see—and to know.
It was the sign of the official voice of the Empress of Algardis in the field.
The person who spoke in the empress’s voice acted in her stead and ordered with her power. This person only answered to one other being, the ruler of them all, and she was here—atop a horse and staring down at Sara with a look of sharp interest in her eyes.
Even if Sara didn’t recognize what noble house this person hailed from, and couldn’t identify her lineage if her life depended on it, it was required of her to show this official representative of the crown all the respect her role demanded.
And not knowing her name was no excuse for poor behavior in front of the woman who was the living embodiment of the empress herself; Sara—as a Fairchild—knew that most of all. Hastily, she knelt, forgetting for a moment her aches and pains, forgetting that her very leg was split in two. And that was her downfall…and her most embarrassing moment yet.
She didn’t have time to correct herself as her right leg bent forward and her left buckled almost immediately under the intense strain of keeping a body upright with less streng
th and not nearly as many able limbs as it was used to. Sara fell forward in a comically slow fashion, but in her rush to properly account for herself as someone who at least had the training to respectfully kneel in a courtier’s presence, she’d forgotten the training that had been beaten into her head from day one.
Always know where your sword was.
As she fell, her razor-sharp weapon swept out and its sharp edge went straight for the hackles of the horse in front of her. The representative’s horse.
Sara could have said it was an accident. She certainly hadn’t meant to sweep her weapon out in such a way, but judging by the chuckle she heard from the darkness inside of her that was supposed to be asleep, Sara supposed that this was its way of helping her out. Or throwing her to the wolves; she couldn’t tell.
But outwardly, as her mind flashed a mile a minute, there was nothing to be done. The action was already in progress, with nothing but a quick-thinking soldier to stop it, and they were more likely to stab her than manage to deflect her blade from their positions astride their tall steeds.
So Sara groaned, partly in horror, partly in pain, as the weapon did what it was supposed to do. It cut the tendons of the horse’s right foreleg with a clean line. The tendons that kept it upright. The tendons that allowed it to walk. The horse’s screams were nothing in comparison to the roar of blood in her ears and the shouts from the individuals surrounding all around them as they moved into position.
As she fell, Sara didn’t see the representative’s attendants responding, but she heard them. The scrape of swords against scabbards as they were drawn, the anxious pacing of horses as they whirled around. Even the stamping of feet on the ground as some of the attendants and accompanying soldiers realized they needed to dismount to reach her. All to no avail. Because just as many of them only shouted in horror as they realized they were close enough for a front-row seat to the entertainment, but couldn’t react fast enough to make a difference.
By the time all the boots hit the ground, Sara was laid flat out on the ground and clearly not a threat to anyone, or so they thought, so no one tried to spear her with their weapons—yet. However, that presented its own problems, because she couldn’t get up with a broken leg, and she heard the scream of the horse above her as its own legs finally failed it. Had she just taken out one tendon, this might have been avoided. But Sara was a War Mage, even when she was stumbling to the ground like a toddler throwing a tantrum, and so with two of its ligaments so cruelly cut in half, the screaming steed fell.
Straight down.
On top of Sara.
She felt a thousand pounds of horseflesh fall onto her back, and the sharp crack of something in her spine as it did.
Hot pain flashed in her eyes and blood pooled into her mouth.
Whether she’d bitten her tongue or it was coming up from within, she didn’t know.
The only thing she did know, just before blessed unconsciousness took her away from both this lancing pain and her feverish embarrassment, was that the empress’s representative had fallen straight into a pool of mud. Her fine garments were ruined.
Eyes drifting closed, Sara couldn’t think of a worse way to end her escape from a mad kidnapper than this. But for the next few blessed moments, she wouldn’t have to deal with it anyway.
* * *
She drifted in peace and serenity for a bit before hearing someone in her ear talking about ‘silly fighters’. Then it went away, and as she groaned and fully awoke. Sara heard even more voices before she opened her eyes and saw who was gathered around her.
She was laid flat on a board of some sort. It was uncomfortable, but not more so than not knowing where she had been taken.
As her eyes opened and the pain of her leg flared, she groaned to both announce her alertness and the levels of her pain. She wasn’t normally a complainer, but judging by the brute of a man that sat on a horse beside her, she’d need all the sympathy she could get. His mouth was drawn down in a dark grimace, and he was gripping the pole to his left.
Her eyes were drawn to follow the pole. It ended in a crosshatch to another pole carved of the same wood, crudely tied together with twine, and as she turned to look around while biting down against a wave of dizziness, she saw another pole corner opposite her, attached to a different rider’s horse. As she swallowed harshly and raised her head to see, she realized that below her torso was another set of corners and poles.
They’d made her some sort of pallet. A pallet carried between all four riders and horses. Just how long had she been out?
“I’d stop moving so much if I were you,” someone to her left said in a conversational tone.
Miserably, Sara asked, “Why am I so dizzy and nauseated?”
She was fighting back the urge to let some bile erupt from her throat, which wouldn’t be a good thing seeing as she still lay flat on her back, and movement seemed out of the question, judging by the flare of pain in her spine just from raising her head.
“Because you landed on the ground and a war steed fell on you?” came the voice again. “My war steed, by the way. My favorite of my stallions, and now he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Sara said, confused. “Yours?”
She was trying to remember what had happened to her in the past few moments and realized that she was drawing a blank. The last thing she recalled was an angry shout at a man named Gabriel, a difficult morning with Barthis, and then an attack on a tent, her tent, while Matteas Hillan quivered at her feet. But now it was difficult even to remember who this woman was, although Sara’s brain was telling her in no uncertain terms that she should.
“Yes, mine,” said the woman with rings on her fingers and flashes of some gold in her hair. “Though, I’m not so sure you’ll be able to remember all that just yet. You’re so loopy with healing herbs—the best my healer had to offer, by the way—that I’m surprised you’re awake.”
“She shouldn’t be.” A man on a donkey trotted up and threw something directly in Sara’s face.
She flinched automatically, but that didn’t stop the cloud of dust from raining softly down on her cheeks, forehead, hair, and nostrils.
She inhaled their intense mixture in the next breath and felt herself falling back into her slumber without a complaint. Anything was better than being awake and knowing you were in trouble, that you had somehow brought it upon yourself, but not quite realizing why.
As she drifted off into her dream state, an exhausted Sara had an amusing thought: I guess I’m going to get that sleep after all.
* * *
“Wake up.”
A voice laced in fury and sounded a lot like her former captain. There was no way it was him, though. He was dead. They were all dead.
He had to be.
No one was that lucky. Lucky enough to survive not one, not two, not three Kade attacks—but four. She knew he was dead…and she even regretted it a tiny bit. Barthis may have been an asshole who willingly left his dead—and sometimes dying—behind on the battlefield, all in the service of the greater ‘good’. He also might have been a tiny bit on the psychotic side, as well, judging by what he’d put that first Kade prisoner through. But he had had some good points to him.
Sara couldn’t say she’d miss him. But she could say that a hole would be left in his wake. A hole of gaping leadership where the men and women of the Imperial Armed Forces expected a leader to reside. Unfortunately for them all, the empress especially, he was gone, and so were the majority of the collective he had named to command under him.
That was at least half the reason he’d promoted Sara so quickly; she didn’t care what he said. He’d had few other options after going through everyone else. And now he was dead. And she was sleep-dying, and honestly…she wasn’t even mad. Just tired, weary to her bones, and ready to concede that if she didn’t wake up again, well…maybe that was for the best.
She didn’t have answers to the questions she’d sought out, and it was looking like every time she got close enough, the
person who would lead her further either died or disappeared.
Just thinking about the people she’d lost made her groan some more.
And there was that annoying voice again insisting that she wake. Like they controlled her.
It was starting to tick her off.
The only reason she was able to keep her calm was because it would exert more energy to get mad than it would to just roll over again.
So she did what she wanted to. She rolled over and ignored the voice.
12
She even got a few moments of peace out of it, but that voice just wouldn’t let her rest.
Finally, fed up and grumpy, Sara shouted, “No! Just leave me alone.”
She was more than just ill-tempered, though. Her heart was filled with sorrow. Because in the last minute, it had occurred to her that not only was the captain she could safely say she mostly despised and somewhat respected dead, but alongside him her friend and confidant Ezekiel Crane. All because of her. He’d followed her to the tent newly assigned to her as an officer, after all, and that was the only reason he’d been there. It was only through some miracle that she hadn’t died in a blast of fury alongside him, because she’d been so close to the tent entrance that when Gabriel had opened the portal behind her, she’d flown out and through to safety.
Now she was left here alone, to face whatever was waiting for her out of this dream state.
No hope to find her father, with Matteas dying right alongside her friend. He hadn’t even told her where the damned journals were in the Madrassa, and she knew for a fact that the institution was humongous.
No family to commiserate with, because both her father and mother had been murdered, regardless of what that liar Gabriel had said.
And no friends to temper her anger with. Just emptiness. So she could be forgiven for her lack of desire to rise from this dream. Doubling down on this narrative, Sara rolled away from the voice in a comfortable bed, which was how she knew this wasn’t real. She’d woken up in a lot of places lately, none of them comfortable. In fact, with her injuries, she should be laid up in a cot somewhere, being poked by at least two healers, and she knew it. So this just had to be a figment of her imagination.
