by Terah Edun
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“With certitude,” the captain replied. “We checked your magic levels—”
“Which were incredibly low for a War Mage,” Chatteris added.
“—while you rested,” the captain finished.
Then he blinked and looked at the empress’s representative askance. “What do you mean War Mage?”
Chatteris waved a dismissive hand. “Surely you could tell that her aura has changed just as well as I can. I’ve never met her before, and even I can see the transformation.”
The captain squinted at Sara. She saw him physically draw upon his own magic, and when he rose from inside his well, he cursed.
“Well, I’ll be a sheep’s arse,” he said, and the envy in his eyes was quite clear.
Sara shrank in on herself as she said nervously, “Surprise, sir?”
“Surprise indeed. But one we will discuss at length later.”
She smiled weakly.
There was one good thing about her surprise: later meant she’d at least be alive after this conversation. And judging by the dormancy of her inner darkness, she needed all the luck she could get right now.
As she contemplated her captain’s expression, she noted that he still didn’t seem happy about this revelation, and to be honest, she was still getting used to this new level of being a mage—one step closer to being adept, actually, and all that entailed. Including the surprising and unwelcome ability to now drain her entire magical well dry.
Those thoughts on her magic reminded Sara of something significant.
“When I met Gabriel…the transformation was initiated. But why did my entire magical storage drop so precipitously? I could barely call on my sword after being trapped with him for just a few hours.”
The empress’s representative and the captain exchanged thoughtful glances.
“Walk with us,” he ordered Sara.
Not waiting for her response, they started walking, and after testing her leg quickly, she was forced to catch up.
As they began to walk forward together, they settled in an even line, the captain to Sara’s left, and Chatteris to her right.
“Gabriel’s magic is what caused your magic to be drained so hard and so fast,” Chatteris said.
Barthis nodded. “It would have happened with any mage caught in his tangled web, but you especially—I’m assuming that you at least tried to physically fight him?”
He looked at Sara with a raised eyebrow. She nodded hesitantly.
He chuckled and clasped her on the shoulder. “Yes, you would have. But that was your downfall. It seems Gabriel is one of the rare mages able to power his creations with not just his own magic but also the magic of others, as well.”
Sara frowned. “I don’t understand—shouldn’t I have had to enter into an actual magical union with him in order for my magic to become his?”
“Yes,” Barthis said. “And that is exactly what you did. From what we know about his magical construction, pre-uprising, he is able to create entire settings and landscapes out of thin air. Those settings act as a secondary world somehow, and anyone trapped within alongside Gabriel are its fuel.”
“Well, that son of a bitch,” Sara grumbled. “He’s a freaking leech.”
“Yes,” Barthis said, eyeing her askance. “I didn’t have quite the word for his ‘talents,’ but that’ll do quite admirably.”
“Regardless of whether you call him a leech or not, the magic of all the Kades is powerful in ways that many can’t imagine, and often dark and fierce,” the empress’s representative said in a voice hinting at her lost patience.
Sara and Barthis fell respectfully silent as she continued.
“There are no mages in all of Algardis who can match their temperaments and skilled use of what seems to come naturally to them. The Kade mage you encountered, not to be confused with the rank-and-file mages they send on missions, hasn’t been seen in person in over three years. He is a mystery.”
“Other than his name and a general consensus about his gifts, though, no one knows where he came from or even what he truly looks like currently,” the captain added.
“That is, until you,” the empress’s representative said coolly.
Sara flashed a sharp smile and muttered, “Lucky me.”
The both ignored her and kept going.
Hesitantly Sara asked, “Sir, what did you mean when you said you wanted to see if I was still me?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” the captain said.
Sara stopped in her tracks.
She was tired of being freaking surprised by enemy attacks every which way, and to have her own command keep her in the dark was too much for her. She couldn’t work, she couldn’t thrive, in an atmosphere like that anymore.
Sara said in a voice heavy with emotion, “Sir, you say I’m essential to your plans. You pulled me aside and gave me a command that, I assure you, any other soldier would be thrilled over, but I am most certainly not. You say we’re taking the fight to the Kades. Well, I’m here to say unless I get the god’s honest truth before I take this plan to my own compatriots, I need to find out what I’m dealing with first.”
Barthis whirled around on his heel. “Or what, Lieutenant Commander? I don’t think I like what you’re implying.”
Sara shook her head sadly. She may have served under him voluntarily, but she no longer feared him.
“I’m not implying anything. I’m speaking the truth. I need to know what this has to do with the Kades. I need to know what this has to do with the mission you entrusted me with—finding Nissa Sardonien.”
Sara was also wondering how all these tangled lines were woven together.
Her father, Nissa, Matteas, Even Gabriel, they all seemed to be connected. Some with the thinnest threads, others with the broadest ropes, but it was all coming down to one thing in her mind—the empire’s secret and, perhaps, what the Kades knew about it, as well.
14
Sara waited patiently for them to come to the same conclusion she had long ago. She meant what she had said; she was done being the stooge sent out on their harebrained schemes without a solid reason why.
It wasn’t that she didn’t respect her position within the rank and file—she did.
It was that she had more respect for the mission that every single soldier committed to serving the empire accepted. The mission to defend against all enemies, mage and mundane—in this case the Kades—and she knew she had to go in with both ears open, eyes ready, and mind keen. So she only asked for what she knew her cohort of soldiers would demand knowledge of when she relayed a request for them to go on this mission with her. She only demanded what a good leader would know. That was something she’d learned in her time serving: prepare for the worst and be ready for the unexpected.
Outwardly calm as she folded her hands in front of her and looked at the two people facing her, Sara hoped they decided to just tell her and stopped being difficult. It was them, after all, who had said they needed her, not the other way around. If this was a normal situation and she hadn’t been so caught up in her quest to clear her father’s name, she might have even just walked away from it all—to hell with them and their furtive natures.
But secretly, she needed them, or rather their approval, as much as they needed her and her gumption.
“My, she’s a frank one, isn’t she?” Chatteris said as she studied Sara.
“Sometimes too much so,” said Barthis through gritted teeth.
Sara stood solemnly in the middle of the road and waited for them to convince themselves that she needed to know. As she did, she thought it odd that the nature around them was cool and undisturbed—by the brutal nature of the combat and the attacks their forces had seen over the past few weeks. Another sign that they were nowhere they were supposed to be. She had to wonder if they were even near the imperial road that Gabriel had dropped her off at before. From her glimpses around, it didn’t look like it. And aside from the haw
ks that flew by on aerial missions and the cool, crisp breeze floating by, there was nothing to indicate they were anywhere near an inhabited part of the empire.
Which left a few places in Sara’s mind—none which were acceptable. Some were known for a shortage of food and others for a shortage of everything else, including lakes to bath in and defensible positives. She didn’t like it, but then again, she also wasn’t in charge of troop movements. She’d leave that to her betters.
But this? Now? She was in charge and she would damned well get the knowledge she needed to succeed, so she continued to hold out with a dagger-like gaze.
It wasn’t long before the captain’s shoulders finally slumped—the first to give.
Then, grumbling, he looked to the woman who had as much, if not more, power as he in the field and said, “How did it come to this?”
The empress’s representative and the captain exchanged a long look.
“It was decided long ago,” Chatteris replied, and she didn’t sound like she was very happy about it.
The captain flushed red, in anger perhaps, as he retorted, “If the courts had just…”
Chatteris shook her head tersely. “Leave it be. It’s in the past. We gain nothing by questioning the authority of the throne.”
We? wondered Sara as she eyed the woman who was reportedly first cousin to her imperial majesty and second to no one else at court. Sara hadn’t taken any genealogy course seriously, besides her own, but she suspected that the rumors of Lady Chatteris’s close blood ties to the empress were true. This was why to see her even hinting at the crown doing a bit of wrong was heretical.
Heretical and just a tiny bit frightening. Sara was a tried and true soldier, but that was all she was. But even she, as a common citizen, had been mildly disturbed about the whispers throughout the empire. Oh, they weren’t big whispers. But it was precisely those little ones you had to worry about. The small talk in the taverns. The gossip as the maids scrubbed laundry. The chatter as weapons trainees fought with staves and blunt-tipped swords in endless bouts.
Those whispers had never really been direct. Sara’s father—who had overseen most of her training—wouldn’t hear about her or anyone under his protection stepping out of line and whispering ill of the imperial family. But nevertheless, she had heard them as a child. And that was at the beginning of the Kade uprising. It had been half a decade or more since then, and the Kades had only grown stronger, putting more of the heartland territories under their iron grip. People had begun to wonder why the crown had stood for it for so long. Why they hadn’t just wiped the lot out like a bad stain. Then the whispers had turned to assumptions that maybe they couldn’t.
It was only then that Sara would politely but firmly put an end to any whispers within earshot, with the end of her knives if need be. But that didn’t stop the hundreds or thousands of others out of reach who had kept up their campaign of mistrust against the imperial family.
She hadn’t been one of them. Her father and her family had traditionally shown unconditional loyalty to the imperial family and faith in the ability of the Imperial Armed Forces to defeat any foe.
But that was before Sara had taken up a position on the front lines. Having seen what she’d seen, well…she could honestly say she didn’t know just how infallible the crown truly was.
So to see a member of that family possibly talking up the whispers that had dominated her childhood was more than a shock—it just felt wrong. But looking over at the empress’s representative, Sara knew that it wasn’t in her right now to confront Chatteris, even if she had the power to, so she decided to just move past it.
Deciding she had misheard the last part and really didn’t want to have it repeated, Sara turned the subject back around. “What does this have to do with Kades and their powers, or even their revolt?”
The captain’s jaw stiffened, but it was the empress’s representative who said, “Just tell her. She needs to know.”
He nodded, and Sara actually saw a weight begin to lift off his shoulders, as if he had been waiting years to speak this truth.
“The Kades are our greatest enemies,” he said wearily. “But once, not so long ago, they were our greatest future.”
Sara crossed her arms, listening intently.
“Go on,” she said softly when he paused and looked away, possibly still processing how difficult it was to speak on this matter.
Gathering his thoughts, Barthis said, “Most people know that the Kade uprising originated at the school for the magically adept, the institution we call the Madrassa. But what they don’t know is that the Kades were more than just a rebellious faction bent on anarchy. They are and were our greatest living mages, tasked by the empress to defend the empire—in this case, against encroachment from Sahalia—and answerable only to the empress.”
Sara was stunned, but noticed something missing from his explanation. “I know the Kades were powerful, but no mage that strong answers to the empress alone. The Council of Mages was built for this sort of thing, to govern and to rule disputes between the mages, as well as initiate the development of practical magic guidelines to rule our interactions with the environment around us.”
Chatteris said, “That is true, but the secret we have kept from the empire is that the council has not been in session for some time.”
“Some time?” Sara said. “You mean they’ve sat on their asses while their own initiates have started a war?”
The captain laugh bitterly. “I only wish it was so.”
Sara raised an eyebrow as a sense of unease came over her. “Please dispense with the mockery,” she said. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I’d rather not be here at the moment—instead, I should be tending to my dead friends.”
The other two exchanged glances.
“You know, you’re not the only one who lost someone in the past few weeks,” said Barthis.
“No, but I’m definitively the only one who seems to care,” Sara snapped before she could stop herself. And as she looked at the swirl of emotions in his eyes—shame, hurt, anger, and darkness—she knew that she had been wrong.
Still, he didn’t say anything, just slowly unclenched a tight fist at his side. Sara felt some of that shame herself. Not just because she’d lashed out, but also because, whether she liked it or not, Captain Barthis was a better battle mage than her.
He’s not War Mage, you are, the darkness chided her from deep within her psyche before it shifted back into a deeper sleep.
She didn’t bother correcting or confronting it. It wasn’t listening now anyway. All she knew was that as a War Mage, she was hobbled now, required to store up strength and replenish it with internal rest, whereas before, she had felt like she was practically overflowing with power. What use was leveling up if you got sidelined in the process?
Nevertheless, looking at her captain, she had to wonder if he was perhaps a better man than she…torture notwithstanding. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to regenerate like she, had he been pushed to the edge and stepped over it. She just didn’t know. What she did know was that, at the moment, he was keeping it together for all of them, all of the individuals who served under him, not just herself.
“Where did you find her?” Chatteris finally asked in exasperation.
Barthis shrugged. “She found us. I can’t take credit for her impudence—not solely, anyway.”
Sara felt herself bristling, but she held back her anger and her retort by biting down hard on her tongue. They were mocking her, when it sounded like they had dropped the ball. Why hadn’t they gone to the council and demanded they stop this stupid uprising in the first place?
Finally, Sara turned their attention back to the present. “It seems to be me that you dropped a major opportunity to go to the council and demand action in regards to this uprising before it became bigger than it is.”
The empress’s representative ruffled her hair as she looked away from both of them—almost in shame.
The captain said, “
I don’t think you understand. The Kades aren’t just initiates who someone broke free of the restraints of the Madrassa. The Kades are the former Council of Mages for the Empire of Algardis.”
At that moment, Sara was sure she needed to clean out her ears. Something, anything, to explain away what she thought she had just heard.
When nothing was forthcoming, she went on the offensive, with a litany of blistering questions that would have put an eager pupil to shame. Because she was furious, and she had every right to be.
They had just announced that the very foundation where the Algardis Empire set its cornerstone of knowledge and practical expertise of magic was compromised. The Council of Mages not only ran the empire’s external defenses, they were also considered prominent and preeminent members of society.
How could they have kept this hidden, was her first question.
Her second—who else had they told? Because a revelation this groundbreaking was too big to keep secret, and yet it seemed the entire empire of Algardis was in the dark.
15
After Sara worked her jaw and tried to restrain herself from snapping at her two superior officers, she finally, grudgingly, asked the question that was foremost in her mind.
“How can no one else know about that this?”
Barthis quickly avoided answering the question by looking pointedly at Chatteris. Knowing that the ball was in her court, she reluctantly replied, “Because the empress declared it in the empire’s best interest to keep this information controlled.”
“So the entire topic of the Kade uprising just became…anathema?” Sara said, aghast. She looked back and forth between the two of them. “How could you let this happen?”
It was quite clear who she was talking to at that point.
“I know it’ll come as a surprise to you, but some things are above my pay grade…including this,” Barthis said.
“Look how well that turned out,” Sara snapped, her hands on her hips. She knew she shouldn’t speak out of turn this way, but at least this time her defiance wasn’t ending with spittle in his face or a fist to his eye. He was lucky that way.
