Blades Of Destiny (Crown Service Book 4)

by Terah Edun

  Her captain shrugged. “And other decisions are best dealt with on a higher level, and the empress and her council doled out the information we needed to move forward against our enemies when we needed it.”

  Sara’s askance look made her thoughts on that clear.

  So much so that the empress’s representative hurried to add, “We had to. Can you imagine the dragons’ response if they knew our defense grids were even partially vulnerable?”

  “The dragons seemed to already know,” Sara said sarcastically. “I fought them on the battlefield already.”

  Barthis waved a dismissive hand. “Not those stump-winged idiots. They are the bastard brethren of the true dragons.” Sara raised an eyebrow as he clarified, “The dragons of Sahalia.”

  “And these Sahalians will use any hole in our defense forces as a means of attack,” Chatteris said coldly. “So you can see why it was imperative that we keep the betrayal of the Council of Mages to as few people as possible. It was the only way to keep this a secret.”

  Sara sucked her teeth and shook her head. “A secret that has basically hampered our entire strategy. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps our citizens might have supported this war more, your court more, had they a collective and known enemy to face?”

  Barthis smiled grimly. “This enemy is one no ordinary citizen should ever face. We did this as much for their protection as we did it to keep our borders secure.”

  Sara could have argued with them on the merits of their intentions all day, but she knew they would get nowhere. What was done was done, and what needed to be done now was to move on, so she could at least face down the threat as it stood. And perhaps save those who deserved it.

  “Speaking of which,” Sara said, “what exactly are we talking about here? One or two of the council, right? Are they holding the others hostage?”

  The two others exchanged dark glances.

  “Not exactly,” the empress’s representative said with a weary sigh.

  Barthis said, “What she means to say is we aren’t just facing a pair of angry mages with the keys to some of the most destructive power in our realm. We’re facing down the whole council.”

  “What?” Sara said. “All of them—every single one of the eight legendary mages who are our opposition amongst the Kades are from the Council of Mages?”

  Chatteris met her eyes with an angry glare. “Those who survived the cleansing. There were twelve mages on the council. Four were murdered outright with accidents along the way”

  “Murdered?” Sara said caustically as she interrupted. “Just like that?”

  “Yes, just like that,” Lady Chatteris replied coldly. “In fact, we had to perform intensive autopsies to even verify our suspicions on the matter, after most of their deaths had the appearances of a more…natural passing.”

  “If that’s the case, what made you suspect that it was foul play then?” Sara asked while looking back and forth between them.

  “The fact that they all died within a six-month time frame would be the answer,” her captain said dryly.

  “And as for the rest, we assumed they fell in line to become the Kades,” Lady Chatteris. “It was either that or be killed.”

  Sara was confused. “How can you assume something like that?” she demanded. “How can you not know who leads the most dangerous faction in the empire?”

  “Because they’re so damned powerful,” Barthis shouted. “And quite good at covering their tracks, as you well know.”

  Sara flinched. She did know, and he had a fair point.

  “We’re not even sure of the identities of all eight Kade leaders—we just have some guesses and a lot of hints,” Chatteris said.

  Suddenly, it all came together. Why the courts were so evasive in announcing the threat to the empire and why they’d been so stubborn about keeping information close to their chests. They hadn’t known much at all. Sara could have castigated these two on this, but they were just the messengers, and she had bigger trout to hoist above the fire.

  So instead, Sara said, “So you don’t know their identities, aside from the one or two you’ve met in the field. I take it this is why you’re so interested in Gabriel, my Illusions Mage, then?”

  Caught—they both nodded.

  But Barthis admitted a second later, “Until today, we only knew that one of the Kades threw out mind-altering illusions. We weren’t sure of his visage or even his name. You’ve solved that in hours.”

  “By mistake,” Sara pointed out.

  “Whether it was error or providence, we don’t care. You have a habit of stumbling upon the empire’s greatest secrets, and at least for now, we want to use that in our favor.”

  Sara eyed him suspiciously, but his words weren’t duplicitous as far as she could tell, which worried her more than one would suspect. If he didn’t have anything to do with her father’s execution or the person hunting her for his journal…then whoever it was had to be more powerful than the captain of two of the empire’s most elite mercenary guards.

  That didn’t sit well with her.

  “And for you to have brought those details to us, alive, is more than some of our best spies have done in months of work,” said the empress’s representative.

  Sara shrugged. “It’s not like I was looking for him. He came to me.”

  “That may be so, but he had to come to you for a reason,” Barthis said, looking at her with an assessing gaze.

  Sara froze. She didn’t want to tell them about Gabriel’s…theory about her father, because she couldn’t trust anyone, at least anyone here, with that information. But she had to give them something.

  “He’d heard about my confrontations with several groups. Wanted to know more.”

  There, that wasn’t precisely the untruth. He had asked about her fight with Barthis. She just didn’t mention that Gabriel had laughed his head off when she’d recounted spitting on the captain.

  The empress’s representative waved a dismissive hand. “Even I’ve heard of the disrespectful daughter of the Fairchild line, but that doesn’t explain why he went through the trouble of gathering you up.”

  Before Sara could speak up and trip herself up anymore, Chatteris continued, “But maybe, just maybe, we can use whatever connection he thinks he has with you for good.”

  “I don’t think…” Sara started.

  But they weren’t listening.

  Eagerly, the empress’s representative said, “He might even come looking for you again.”

  “And we’ll be ready,” Barthis snarled.

  Sara smiled weakly. His return wasn’t exactly something she was looking forward to. Gabriel had managed to do something no one else had ever done before—politely hand Sara her ass.

  “Suppose that doesn’t happen,” Sara said, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.

  “We shall do everything we can to ensure it does,” the empress’s representative said with a frosty look.

  And Sara quickly remembered her place in the pecking order—which, apparently, was to be seen and not heard when plans were being made.

  “Or he may be in the same location as Nissa Sardonien,” said Barthis.

  He didn’t seem to notice the quelling look Chatteris had given Sara, which was fair enough—there wouldn’t have been much he could have done.

  “Go on,” said Chatteris.

  He continued, his gaze far away, “If he’s with the Sun Mage, we can kill two birds with one stone. Find her and find him. Not only would twenty-five percent of the Kades be in our hand then, but both of them would have actionable intelligence we could use against them to track down their fellow leaders.”

  Chatteris nodded. “You’re right. Even if we had one of them now, we’d be able to mine them for nuggets of information.”

  Then she sighed piteously. “But seeing as that isn’t possible, since the latest one escaped her clutches, it just…looks…bad. You see that, right?”

  Sara did see. Chatteris, however, wasn’t speak
ing to her. Barthis looked between the two women with a bit of confusion on his face.

  Slowly, he said, “What I saw was a woman who managed to get away from a very dangerous situation that contained no less than an explosion and a rain of arrows. Surely you witnessed the same?”

  Sara realized that he was just being cautious in arguing with the empress’s representative. But she didn’t need caution, she needed justice. A leader who would stand up for her even at his own expense.

  But Sara also knew that that had never been her captain, and he made no bones about the fact that he did what was in the best interest of himself and the whole, before the individual or even the minor faction.

  It had worked well for him so far, but being thrown overboard wasn’t really anything Sara wanted to be a part of. Stepping forward with a clenched jaw, she prepared to plead her case, but the captain spoke first.

  Surprise ran through her like lightning as she listened to him speak.

  If she’d expected anyone to grow a backbone, well, it hadn’t been him.

  “We realize just how this looks, but perception is not fact.”

  Sara’s eye twitched. A defense, even a barely existent one, from that man? No one would have ever thought it possible.

  However, his thin push for her wasn’t enough to convince Chatteris of anything. She returned his words in a similar icy tone. “We do not deal merely in suppositions here; we deal in visualizations. And what I have seen supports the facts presented.”

  Sara gulped. She knew now that this woman had no intentions of standing by her side. It was easy to realize in that moment that she wasn’t just in the casual presence of a leader, she was standing before the empress’s blood. The words spoken next only served to emphasize that.

  “But,” Chatteris said in a tension-filled voice, “there is a way to really, truly understand what happened, to not just rely on what our eyes have told us, but what the truth is, isn’t there?”

  Her voice in the end was lit up by coy hopefulness, so artfully done that Sara would have believed that Chatteris was on her side, had she not been the instigator in the first place.

  Still, she listened as Chatteris set out a plan with Barthis, careful to keep a pained expression off his face as he took in her words.

  “Now it is absolutely paramount that the Fairchild girl find Nissa Sardonien, so the whole world can know but one truth. After all, without concrete facts and a prisoner to back up those facts…well, I can’t be responsible for how the court views this transgression.”

  Sara knew exactly what she was referring to, but the captain was a little slow on the uptake. He said, “And just so we’re clear—what is this transgression? Being kidnapped?”

  Sara’s stomach flipped as she burned to question the worldly woman herself, but knew she couldn’t speak up—Barthis and Chatteris had both made it clear that this was a discussion between leaders, and Sara, although newly promoted, was not among her peers in this instance.

  So she stayed mute, like a good soldier.

  Now it was up to Barthis to put together the dots she had already seen coming together so prettily, like a linked chain about her neck, minutes before. It took more time than she was comfortable with for him to piece together the unsaid threat that lingered over Sara’s head, which was sad, because he wasn’t an ignorant man—he couldn’t be and be in charge of the Mercenary’s Guild…and perhaps the whole of the Imperial Armed Forces, as well.

  Sara wasn’t quite clear on who that last duty fell to now that it seemed the entire command of the encampment had been left dead, aside from the man who stood before her, but that wasn’t her problem—it was his.

  The empress’s representative was saying without speaking the words that the crown could hold Sara liable for deliberately losing Gabriel, the fabled Illusions Mage and a threat to the throne. People had been flogged for less, and for Sara—the daughter of a man the whole empire knew was a traitor—the optics weren’t pretty. Not at all.

  Apparently, Barthis finally saw that too, because he frowned and said, “Let’s not be hasty now.”

  Chatteris waved a hand lazily. “Hasty, no. Direct, yes. The girl must earn her place in service to the crown. She must bring back one of these traitors to the throne, if not both, to be the hero you claim her to be before the empire’s eyes.”

  16

  Sara was watching the calculating gleam in Chatteris’s eye carefully. Even if she hadn’t been deadly serious, Sara knew as well as she did that Chatteris had nothing to lose. She was in the superior position, after all.

  Being the blood of the crown had its perks.

  Even so, Barthis looked ready to object. And Sara was mildly grateful that he at least didn’t seem to want his subordinate openly browbeaten. At least, not by anyone but himself.

  Or maybe it is that he objects to her infringing on his authority, Sara thought wryly. In either case, if the expression on his face was anything to go by, she’d better speak up before they landed in the same shackles that had formerly graced the wrists of the Kade invasion leader.

  As Barthis stiffened, preparing to say something, maybe do something, in Chatteris’s presence, Sara spoke up. She didn’t want to start a war or even lay out a threat, she just wanted to get going.

  So she said the last thing either one of them expected.

  “Not a problem.”

  As she eyed them with confidence in her eyes and terror in her heart, she noted that they both looked like they had been hit over the head with a lantern for a moment, although the empress’s representative recovered quicker.

  Barthis said, “What?”

  With a clap of her hands and a smile on her face, Chatteris said, “Delightful!” As anger rose in Barthis’s eyes, she continued, “I so knew that we could count on you, young woman.”

  Sara pursed her lips, but managed to hold back the stream of impolite words she wanted to launch at the bitch.

  Instead, she stood up straight and said, “I know what I need to do, and I’ll get it done, Captain, my lady.”

  It was the absolute last thing she wanted to promise, but she would have said anything to get out from under their speculative eyes and into the hinterlands.

  Pausing and taking a look at the empty area surrounding them, Sara thought, The farther hinterlands, anyway.

  At least then she would be on her own with nothing but her group and herself to be responsible for. No assignments getting in her way. No battles to be fought. Just a quick escapade to who knew where under the cover of the darkness.

  It was the last part that was a big ask, though, and it was a little exasperating that Chatteris had homed in on Sara as the only one who could go on this mission. They could choose someone else, pick someone, but the tiny, wiggling doubt in her mind said she didn’t want them to select another individual. Her duty and sense of honor commanded that she take up the mantle offered to her, despite how absolutely absurd this challenge was.

  Barthis cleared his throat and looked over at Lady Chatteris. “If we could have but a moment?”

  Looking between them with a satisfied smile, the empress’s representative replied sweetly, “Only just. I’ll circle back around.”

  Then she did as he asked, walking off to eye a species of flower, as if it was worth more than saffron itself. Looking at the bright, starlike bloom, Sara had the feeling it was.

  As Sara turned herself back to look at her captain, she saw the conflict in Barthis’s eyes as he said, “You don’t have to do this, Sara Fairchild.”

  It was softly spoken, and even she could tell he didn’t necessarily want to take on the full wrath of the crown’s blood…but it meant the world that he would at least try.

  Sara swallowed and gave him a weak smile. “I think that I do. If not for my family’s lost honor…then for the empire.”

  He frowned but didn’t do her the disservice of lying to her face and saying that wasn’t true.

  Instead, he sighed heavily and said, “I wish it wasn’t s
o, but your fallen sire’s darkness stains even your bright light still. If anything would clear the Fairchild name, recapturing two of the empire’s greatest enemies certainly would.”

  “But why would you even want to?” Sara asked, shocked that he even seemed to care.

  “It may come as a surprise to you,” her captain said while impatiently waving his hand, “but there’s a reason I took a special interest in you. Aside from your rather colorful ways of introducing yourself.”

  “And that reason would be?”

  He huffed. “Think on it for a second.”

  She did, and she looked at him dubiously still. They’d had more than their fair share of fights and tense interactions. She couldn’t think of one cordial session between them at all.

  Finally, he said, “I may not be as active on the field as I once was, but once upon a time, battle mages looked out for each other. Our families even intermarried at one point.”

  Sara was not exactly astonished. This wasn’t news to her, but he hadn’t really been acting with camaraderie toward her, so it was not as if she expected special treatment.

  As if he could read her line of thought, he said, “Not that this changes the fact that I’m your superior, but I do recognize that the bond between us—thin as it may be—at least requires an effort. In this case, I will send scouts ahead of you with supplies and give you the best routes I know to set off on your mission. I owe it to you. I owe it to your father…and no, don’t even bother asking why.”

  Surprise rocketed through Sara, and she let it show on her face.

  “I wasn’t going to, sir,” she said. “Though I would wonder why this debt didn’t prevent you from leaving me, us, for dead on our assignment in the fields.”

  He gave her an angry look that just about set her hair on fire. “Gods, woman, can you ever just let sleeping dogs lie?” he barked.

  “As long as we’re speaking freely, sir?” Sara asked.

  He nodded.

  “No,” said Sara with deep satisfaction.