Blades Of Destiny (Crown Service Book 4)

by Terah Edun

  He groaned and then rubbed his face wearily. “I deserved that, I did,” he grumbled.

  They both turned then as the empress’s representative cheerily said from halfway down the path, “I’m on my way back!”

  Barthis waved in acknowledgement of her. “As for your first official mission,” he said to Sara, “I told you, I had nothing to do with that. Those assignments were handed out below me—however, you have my word that it won’t happen again. Now can we get back on topic?”

  Sara nodded. He didn’t really sound like he was asking so much as commanding, and she recognized the difference.

  “Good, then,” he said. “Now, I can’t do much with the crown’s eye on me, but what little I can do, I will.”

  Sara eyed him speculatively. “She wasn’t just sent here for your official transfer of power, then, I take it?

  “No, she was not, although now that you mention it, that is one thing I will have you attend with me. And no arguments, please—my heart can’t handle it,” he said grimly.

  Sara wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, so she left it alone.

  Instead, she listened as he continued, “She was sent to watch me, and that was before a series of unfortunate events led to the decimation of the regiments I command.”

  Wisely, Sara kept to herself on that matter, although she’d hate to see how he characterized anything worse than what had just happened to them.

  He gave her a wry grin. “Yes, I’m not as unaware as I’d like this representative to think. I’m under scrutiny, too, you know, and what’s more, I’d like to do what my predecessor couldn’t and keep my job, but I am not without resources.”

  Sara nodded appreciatively.

  He went on, “But even with my help, you must do a lot yourself, and it is imperative to the survival of this empire that you succeed.”

  He paused and then said, “Find her, Sara Fairchild, and get her to talk, because this may be our final chance to question Nissa…on your terms. As you well know, I tried to break Nissa by the whip, and despite your interference, she said not but two sentences to me—neither of which I can repeat in polite company.”

  Sara’s lips twitched in amusement. She was fairly certain he wasn’t referring to her when he said “polite.”

  “But my methods will pale in comparison to the empress’s,” he said. “She is not known for her light touch with enemies of the empire.”

  Sara wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but she did sense the seriousness behind his words.

  She said with a click of her heels, “I understand now, sir.”

  “Good,” Barthis said with an acknowledging nod. “So bring that blasted Sun Mage and the Illusions Mage back to me. I’d prefer one if not both alive—with cognitive abilities intact, if you please.”

  Lady Chatteris walked up to them. “We would prefer it so, as well, and it need not be said, but you will be well rewarded for your efforts in this mission, Sara Fairchild.”

  Sara didn’t snort, but she barely held one back. Her face probably said it all, though, as she thought, If I live through it all—sure.

  However, when she spoke, her words were as measured and respectful as she ever came close to being.

  “Service to my crown is enough, my lady and my captain,” Sara said without a trace of irony. She meant it…as long as it didn’t interfere with getting justice for her family.

  If they thought anything of what she didn’t say, they didn’t comment on it. Instead, her captain beamed proudly, as if he had instilled such values in her all along, and Sara barely held herself back from rolling her eyes. She was coming to understand that Barthis was more than a man who would do anything in service of his greater good—he was also an actor with the dramatic leanings of one born for the stage.

  Chatteris’s eyes were focused in that moment on Sara alone, though. “That may be, but I will see that you are heaped with a mountain of gold, because the empire will be in your debt.”

  Sara nodded and bowed. Gold wasn’t a bad thing, but it didn’t exactly light her tail on fire, either. She couldn’t say duty was all that tempting, as well.

  But when Sara heard Chatteris’s next words, her entire body stilled.

  “Of course,” Chatteris said softly, “a woman’s bloodline is only as good as her predecessor’s death. If you do this for me, if you do this for your empire, I will have your father’s record purged, and have it noted for the official files that he was a hero of our empire.”

  Sara couldn’t believe her ears. While gold and duty didn’t set her blood ablaze, the possibility of redemption—before the whole of the empire, no less—did.

  She swallowed harshly as she looked back and forth between Barthis and Chatteris with wide eyes.

  Can it be true? Sara thought.

  “You can do that? You can clear his name?”

  The blood of the crown smiled. “I can do more than that if you come back with those prisoners in hand. Dead, I will purge his records. Alive, I will have notices posted all throughout the land reclaiming your father’s name as an honorable and true man—in death and in life.”

  Sara sucked in a breath, and even the captain looked astonished. She had never wanted anything more in her life.

  Without thinking, without reasoning, she said, “Done!”

  Eager to seal the deal, Sara reached out a hand and gripped the empress’s representative’s. Flesh to flesh, eyes meeting, they shook.

  And Sara had no choice. She would have to pull through.

  17

  As a wild grin and a recklessness overtook her, Sara had a minute to think about the repercussions. Not only of reclaiming her family’s maligned name…but of what would happen if the Illusions Mage had been right all along.

  What did that mean for her father’s legacy if Gabriel was right and he was alive? She had to think.

  It only took a moment for her to envision the repercussions, none of them pretty. In the empire’s eyes, a dead traitor had to be better than a fleeing coward, and they would stop at nothing to recover him and wipe the stain of her father’s actions from the records. If the daft mage had been right.

  For right now, in this moment, she didn’t have time to linger over right or wrong, dream or fantasy, because when she thought of the yarn Gabriel had spun for her and the promises the blood of the crown was making, there was no contest. She had something concrete in her hands, a woman’s word, which was her bond. Curse Gabriel and his foolish dreams. This was real. This was more than hope. It was tangible. She just had to get Gabriel and Nissa in one place…and turn them over to their worst enemies. She could do that. It was what she had been born to do and had been training to do all her life. Take down enemies of the crown.

  Swallowing deeply, Sara promised herself she’d do just that.

  For a moment, she looked at the two people who could turn her world right around. She wondered if she could trust them with her secrets, as well. But she knew that she couldn’t. The only person she could trust in the world was her own blood, and she had precious little of that these days. So she swallowed the squirming ball of anxiety in her throat and didn’t tell them about what the Illusions Mage had whispered in her ear. That her father maybe, could be, was alive.

  Somehow, Sara knew they would inform others, and those others would in turn inform those most likely to gain by hitting the man, dead or alive, who had been her world for so long. Instinct told her that a dead traitor turned hero was a much better spin than a commander in the field gone missing and suddenly returned. Presumably with news of ill will and traitors within the Imperial Courts of Algardis that they wouldn’t want to hear.

  Deciding not to ponder on the matter more, Sara turned to another more pressing issue.

  “What will my official orders say?” she asked as she imagined going back into camp and demanding to be given horses and the resources she needed to get halfway across the empire, when they were stretched so thin in the first place.

  Barthis nodded
and said, “I’ve already ordered that you’re to take soldiers off the line and get the basic supplies needed to kit them out.”

  Her ears tingled on ‘basic’. “I’m not getting through Kade forces with basic weaponry. I need spelled swords for the fighters. I need modified armor for my sprinters. I need a few goddamn mages, while we’re at it.”

  She knew and he knew that the mages were precious commodities, and what was more, their contracts were voluntary. He didn’t have the authority to go behind the Mage Leadership’s backs and order them anywhere else.

  For a moment, Sara wondered what those mages on their side thought about serving and fighting against their own leadership. The ordinary citizens of the empire were idiots, but really, could it be that these elite individuals also didn’t know? She didn’t see how that could be true. But then again, a lot about this war wasn’t making a lot of sense.

  “As I mentioned before,” her captain said with a squeeze of her shoulder, “I’ll have supplies, advanced ones, waiting for you not a mile or two off. Men to bolster your force, as well.”

  Sara nodded and then looked between he and Chatteris uncomfortably. This was as much of a send-off as Sara was going to get, and they had basically dumped the fate of their empire in her lap. She didn’t consider it an honor. But as a duty, it would serve. She didn’t have much else to look forward to, after all—going back to Sandrin just meant returning to back-alley fights and maybe the hope, maybe the promise, of guardsman duty here and there.

  At least here, she was making her own destiny.

  At least here, she was more than just the daughter of the notorious Fairchild.

  She was Sara, and while her methods were unorthodox, there was one thing that could be said about her—she got shit done.

  She wasn’t ashamed to act on that, either.

  “Remember your duty, Fairchild, and this will go smoothly,” the empress’s representative snapped.

  “Find Nissa, find Gabriel,” Sara parroted back.

  Barthis shook his head. “Finding her is only part of the process. You’re to track down Nissa and, through her, find a way into the secret campaign headquarters of the Kades. Once you have that and you have confirmed their leader Gabriel’s presence, we will move in.”

  Sara’s lips twitched. That had been what she’d said. Their words just happened to be prettier.

  The empress’s representative said coldly, “And we will squash them like the bugs they are.”

  Sara raised an eyebrow and looked back in the distance. They had walked far enough to have some privacy during their conversation, but also far enough that she could see their forces easily, and it wasn’t the type of grouping that inspired confidence. A couple hundred armed mercenaries and soldiers was all that remained of what had been once a proud encampment of several regiments, numbering in the thousands.

  Sara wasn’t blind to the fact that it was a pathetic accompaniment by any standards now, though it was true by no fault of their own.

  Still, she didn’t mince words as she asked the empress’s representative, “With that show of force?”

  Her words were entirely uncomplimentary, and they knew it. But neither Barthis nor Chatteris reprimanded her, because, unfortunately, it was true.

  Wincing, Barthis said, “It’s true that we lack strong offensive capabilities at the moment…”

  “Not that it seemed to help you much when you did have them,” Chatteris said.

  Ignoring the snub, the captain continued, “But we’ve learned from our past mistakes. Even when we barely made it out of this last Kade attack with the skin on our backs, we did survive with pertinent information gathered for the cause of the empress. Information that should allow us to overcome Kade defenses and their guerilla tactics.”

  He means my information, Sara thought, but outwardly she was noncommittal because it would serve no good. That was neither here nor there now, but it made her surer that perhaps the right way to move forward wasn’t always the Imperial Armed Forces’ way.

  “And now that we have those tactical details,” the empress’s representative hurried to add—to reassure herself or the captain, Sara wasn’t quite sure, “the imperial family will be able to draw up more support and more soldiers from the families of the empire and the scions who could most send us aid.”

  Sara rolled her shoulders. This was all getting into politics she really didn’t want to hear about. It was enough for her that they’d be ready as soon as she was. Her job wasn’t to rally the entire army, after all; it was merely to fight its battles.

  “Why can’t we call up fresh troops now?”

  That apparently was the limit of the Chatteris’s benevolent attitude. “For what? To mount an attack against a Kade force you can’t find?”

  “No,” Barthis said. “We stick to the plan and we locate the two leaders first and level them all together. Our backs may be to the figurative wall, but we can be devious snakes and figure a way out and through, as long as we have the upper hand.”

  Sara would have been more inclined to call them desperate snakes, but she kept that tidbit to herself. Now that she knew just how much they needed this to work, she wasn’t going to take advantage of them, but she was going to do what needed to be done her way. After all, their ways had clearly all failed. They wouldn’t be out here in the ass-crack of nowhere with barely a hundred soldiers and the backup regiment the empress’s representatives had brought along with her as her personal guard to show for it, otherwise.

  Now it was her turn, and with a smile, Sara realized she was finally ready—to take command, to disperse with the secrets and lies, and, most importantly, to clear her bloodline’s name.

  * * *

  Hours later, as she mingled among the group, Sara realized that the ones who had survived had done so through luck and not much else. That was all she could really call it when she stumbled upon a training session of soldiers who barely had enough skill to handle a staff, let alone a proper sword.

  When she found Karn and Ezekiel together, it was more by mistake than any particular pattern she’d found. While their reunion was just chance, she was happy to say that ball of misery and failure in her gut was dissolving a little bit at a time.

  “Ezekiel!” she cried out in a voice filled with passion that startled even her.

  When she wrapped him in a hug and he hesitantly reached around her and did the same, with more pressure in his grip with every passing second, she felt the slightest tear form in the corner of her eye.

  It was good to be home; she felt that in her bones. And even if she didn’t precisely have a roof over her head or a bed to call her own, she still had a friend of warm flesh and blood in her arms. A friend she’d written off for dead so thoroughly that she hadn’t bothered to ask for a record of his remains. Maybe it was because she’d buried and burned too many friends on this battlefield. Maybe it was because she couldn’t take much more heartache. Or maybe it was because she just never seemed to get a break to slow down.

  But now that was neither here nor there, because he was here.

  As she stepped back awkwardly, clearing her throat, she looked up to see a brilliant smile on the scholar’s face.

  “You look well,” he said in a teasing manner.

  “You look not dead,” she retorted.

  Rolling his eyes, he said, “About that…”

  “Yes,” Sara said with a frown as she looked around. “If you’re alive, where’s Humpty-Dumpty?”

  A choked laugh was the only reason she knew Karn had overheard her.

  Ezekiel responded, “He’s alive, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, now I have to hear the story of this particular fellow,” Karn declared.

  “Later,” Sara dismissed. “It’s not really worth of our time. First, we need to get the group together and on the road.” She barely paused for a breath before raising an eyebrow at Karn. “Where’s the rest? Where’s Reben?”

  Ezekiel and Karn exchanged wary glan
ces.

  “About the others…” Ezekiel said slowly.

  Sara took a step back. “What about them?”

  “They’ve decided…” Ezekiel said.

  “We’ve decided,” Karn said.

  “Yes?” Sara asked. She had halfway expected him to say they were all dead, so whatever came next couldn’t be half as bad as her visions.

  “That whatever it is you have planned to get back at these lily-livered cowards, we’re all in,” came a voice that sent a low thrum of delight through Sara.

  She turned around and blinked. Then blinked some more. Because it wasn’t just Reben who faced her. Arms crossed, mulish glints in their eyes, and weapons in hand or strapped to their sides, were Isabella, Marx, Linus, and Sanir. Behind the people she knew were a half-dozen or more that she’d only occasionally bumped into. She even noted a few faces who were especially remarkable because they’d been a part of the fighters who’d beaten her into the dirt when she’d first come to camp.

  But those divisions, if they were present at all, weren’t visible now. Everyone had a stubborn look and a stance that said they weren’t going anywhere.

  And all of them, to a man and a woman, were staring her down.

  18

  If Sara didn’t trust Ezekiel, standing at her shoulder, and several of the others implicitly…well, she would be calling up what energy she had left at the moment to go down fighting.

  Instead, Sara smiled weakly at them all and said, “Good to see you all.”

  No one said a word. No one even smiled, which felt a little hurtful to Sara. They may not be friends, but damnation, she’d led most of them—safely, she might add—through two battlefronts. The least she could get was a courteous smile or two.

  As she shifted uneasily before their focused gazes, Sara thought about giving in and just telling them her plans, but she sensed something else was afoot. They weren’t just being pigheaded—Sara got the feeling that they were…hurt.

  “All right, what’d I do this time?”